“Is there something you’re not telling me? The fate of your company, your father’s empire, everything rests on that union. You aren’t having second thoughts, are you?”
“Of course not. I know the stakes. I just needed to know.” I realize that coming here was a mistake. Deniz's wealth is linked to my father's. If our empire crumbles, his will too. I just wish there wasn’t that other voice in my head that tells me not to trust him, not to trust my father, not to trust anyone.
14
Kennedy
After crying myself to sleep,I awoke in the morning hours and decided to run a bath. The massive tub in the middle of the bathroom was a welcome distraction. The events of yesterday are too painful to reconjure. But that doesn’t stop my mind from replaying them over and over again.
I gave in to him after that kiss. A kiss that was everything. I have never felt my soul merge with another like it did in that one kiss. But what happened after scared me to the core. I was dumb enough to put myself in a vulnerable situation. I let my guard down. I pushed too far. Sai was in the room, but it’s like it wasn’t him, he didn’t even sound like the same person.
I sink into the warm water, holding my breath as I sink beneath the surface. I close my eyes and wonder what it would be like to let go, to let myself sink into nothingness. I refused to see Amy when I returned last night. I still can’t face her, not after that. I break through the surface of the water and gasp for breath—Sobs wrack through me, and my body trembles. My skin still burns from the whip, but it’s my ego that burns the most, the fact that I let a man almost break me. I was taught better by my mother. I know better. Amelia is my best friend, but I cannot get in the middle of this mess she’s in, not at the risk of my own life. I wrap a towel around me and enter the dark bedroom. I want to call my mother, but the last thing I want to do is stress her out.
He sits on the edge of my bed; in much the same way, he sat the last time I saw him, his head bent into his hands. This time he’s bathed in moonlight. He runs his hands through his hair, tugging at it.
“Leave,” I say, my voice not afraid, not shaky. I will not cower away from this monster.
The droplets of water on my skin and the water in my hair send shivers down my spine. I walk toward the man who hurt me, and when he lifts his head, and his eyes meet mine, I have to suck in a breath. There is pain there, something a man like Sai normally would never show. He reaches for me, his hands wrapping around my waist as he tugs me close to him. I let him because I don’t know what else to do. He buries his head in my stomach, and his body shakes with the sobs that wrack through him. I don’t move to touch him. I can’t, not when my body still hurts from the very hands that hold me.
He moves away, his arms still around my waist. He looks up at me.
“There’s a story my father used to tell me growing up, about a woman who gave her life, sold her soul to the devil to save her unborn baby—that the child’s soul was tainted, cursed. He’d forever be a monster, grotesque and ugly to the core. Nothing could save him. Not when he grew up without love. The world would shun him, shun his warts and imperfections that may not show on the outside yet they marred his soul. Made him so vile, the world would hate him, and he’d eventually lose his soul in the process.” He whispers. “Not the ideal bedtime story for a kid, but my father repeated it every night, so I would remember that it was I who killed the woman he loved. That I was and would always be a monster.”
I feel the hairs on the back of my neck, stand on end. “I used to listen to him, and a part of me believed him. But then I had this tutor. He would remind me that monsters were things for books and that my father’s grief and sadness were the only real things. He assured me that I was beautiful on the inside and out.” Tears stream down his face.
“When I was thirteen years old, I realized my tutor had lied. There was no good in the world. For my birthday, my father gave me a whore.” I flinch at the word. He lets out a breath, his hands moving over the towel on my body. I expect to cringe, but I don’t. “She was beautiful, older than me, probably eighteen, long chestnut hair, blue eyes.” He reaches for the place my towel is folded together, undoing it so that I’m standing bare in front of him. Standing, he uses the towel to dry off my hair, and I let him, entranced by his words, needing more.
He runs his hands down my back to my buttocks then reaches for the robe on my bed. He wraps it around me, tying it at the front. He pulls down the covers on my bed and wordlessly climbs in, patting the space next to him. I join him, my head on the pillow facing him. “That was the day I realized my father was right, that there is good and there is evil, and I have both inside me. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want his friends watching as she kneeled before me, sucking me off.”
I wrap my arms around me, feeling colder than I have ever felt in my life. What must that have been like for a child?
“The men laughed, some had women or men of their own kneeling in front of them, or on their laps, having sex or performing acts that still haunt my dreams. My father didn’t. He just watched, like he was waiting. After I reached an orgasm, I was instantly hard again, it went on like that. The woman called me ‘master’ and asked me what I’d like her to do for me. She lay naked on the floor, pleasuring herself, gawked at by all those people in the room, and it angered me. It’s the first time I heard it.” he pauses.
“Heard what?” I ask, hanging on every word.
“The voice, in my head. He whispered the vilest of things. Told me to do the vilest of things to that girl. I shook my head, but the room started spinning, and it was like I blacked out. When I woke up, warm liquid coated me. And I was on top of someone. I used my hands to stand up, and that’s when I realized what covered me. Blood. I was naked, still inside the girl. She laid lifeless beneath me, her eyes wide open. I shook her, but she didn’t budge. Her throat had been slit.”
I’m shaking, and he wraps an arm around me.
“My father just smiled at me. ‘I told you’, he said, ‘you’re a monster, Sai. Poison runs through your veins’.”
It is Sai’s turn to shake now, tears running down his face. “I’ve tried to keep it at bay. Medication. Counselling. Buthealways comes back. I never, ever wanted to hurt you like that.”
I reach out and cup his face. “There must be something.” I whisper. He closes his eyes, and we stay like that for the longest time. Eventually, his breathing evens, and I know he’s fallen asleep. Tears stream down my face as the first rays of light peek through my curtains. Sai is the kind of man I've been warned against, but I can't walk away from him. I'm drawn to his brokenness, addicted to his pain. I move my hands, and his arms tighten around me.
"Stay, Güzel, stay, and chase away the shadows." he pleads, and my heart aches for this dark, lost prince. So, I stay and drift off to sleep in the arms of a man, who’s just admitted that he’s a monster.
* * *
“Hey, Mom.”
“Where have you been lost, stranger?” she asks. She sounds like she’s someplace busy.
“Just busy with stuff, it’s Amy’s engagement party tomorrow.”
“And you’re calling me when you should be calming her down.”
“Yeah, I-”
