Chapter 6

POV DEFNE

Adem did not let me touch the phone.

The photograph remained on the screen between us, bright against the black glass, humiliating in its simplicity. There was no kiss, no embrace, no proof of anything except the fact that I had left the parking garage with him after midnight, but sometimes implication was more dangerous than evidence. A woman like me did not need to be caught in bed with a married billionaire to be destroyed. Being seen beside him at the wrong hour, in the wrong condition, was already enough for people to invent the rest.

My hands curled slowly into fists at my sides. “Berat sent it.”

Adem’s eyes stayed on the message for a moment longer before lifting to mine. “Are you certain?”

“No,” I admitted, because fear made certainty tempting but not always honest. “But he would enjoy writing something like that.”

The word still burned on the screen.

Whore.

I had been called many things since my parents vanished, some of them whispered behind office doors and some of them sent anonymously at three in the morning, but that one carried a particular kind of violence. It did not accuse me of owing money or being careless or foolish. It reduced me completely, made my desperation something dirty, as if surviving had already made me guilty.

Adem locked the phone and placed it face down on the counter.

“You won’t answer any unknown numbers from now on,” he said.

The command irritated me immediately, maybe because part of me felt relieved by it. “You can’t just start giving orders about my life.”

“I already have.”

I stared at him, caught between anger and a strange, humiliating sense of safety.

“That’s not protection. That’s control.”

He looked at me for a few seconds, and the silence between us sharpened. “Sometimes those are the same thing.”

“They’re not.”

“No,” he agreed, too calmly. “But in your current situation, you may not be able to afford the difference.”

The worst part was that he did not sound cruel when he said it. He sounded practical, and practicality had always been more dangerous to me than cruelty. Cruel men wanted reactions. Practical men made decisions and expected the world to arrange itself around them.

Before I could answer, he picked up his phone again and dialed someone.

“Find out who took the photograph,” he said when the call connected. “Start with security footage from the garage, street cameras near the south exit, and every vehicle that followed mine after we left the tower.”

A pause.

“No. Tonight.”

Another pause, shorter this time.

“And Baran, if this reaches my wife before I decide how to handle it, someone in your department will be unemployed by morning.”

He ended the call without waiting for a response.

I should have felt horrified by how easily he threatened people. Instead, my mind clung to one phrase.

My wife.

He didn’t called her Enise.

My wife.

The words reminded me, with humiliating force, exactly what I was doing in this apartment. I was not some wounded girl in a fairy tale, rescued by a lonely prince. I was an employee standing in the penthouse of a married man while a stranger threatened to expose us as something we were not yet, but might become if I was weak enough to stay.

“I need to leave,” I said, more to myself than to him.

Adem’s expression did not shift. “No.”

The simplicity of his answer made my temper rise.

“You don’t get to say no every time I make a decision.”

“I do when your decision is reckless.”

“My life was already reckless before you entered it.”

“And yet you’re still alive, which means some part of you is capable of choosing survival over pride.”

That silenced me longer than I wanted.

He crossed the room toward a dark hallway and returned with a folded shirt in one hand. It was white, crisp, obviously his, and probably worth more than the rent of my apartment. He placed it on the counter beside me without ceremony.

“Change.”

I looked down at my blouse.

The blood near the collar had dried into an ugly brown stain. One sleeve was wrinkled where Berat had grabbed me earlier, and the buttons near my chest were strained from the force of being shoved against the pillar. Until that moment, I had been too overwhelmed to notice how ruined I looked.

“I can’t wear your shirt.”

“You can wear that one,” he said, glancing at my blouse, “or you can wear mine. Choose quickly, because my lawyer will be here in twenty minutes.”

My eyes snapped back to his. “Your lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“At this hour?”

“He’s paid enough not to complain.”

The answer was so absurdly calm I almost laughed, but the sound became trapped somewhere behind my ribs.

“Why is your lawyer coming here?”

“To draft the transfer documents for your debt and the confidentiality terms necessary to keep you alive professionally.”

I felt the floor drop beneath me.

“You’re serious.”

“I rarely say things for effect.”

That was true. Terrifyingly true.

The apartment suddenly seemed smaller despite its impossible size. Everything around me felt too expensive, too sharp, too removed from the ordinary rules that governed other people’s lives. Adem had spoken to security, summoned a lawyer, offered me his shirt, and started restructuring my entire existence in less than ten minutes.

I had spent eight months drowning.

He had begun building a cage before the night was even over.

“What confidentiality terms?” I asked carefully.

His gaze held mine.

“The kind that will prevent debt collectors, former lovers, journalists, and anyone else from using your situation to reach me.”

I heard what he did not say.

Or to reach my wife.

Something bitter rose inside me before I could stop it.

“So this is about protecting yourself.”

“Partly.”

“At least you’re honest.”

“Would you prefer comfort?”

“No,” I said, though I was not entirely sure. “I’d prefer not to be treated like an inconvenience.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but as if I had finally said something he found worth examining.

“You think that’s what you are?”

“What else would I be?”

The question left my mouth too softly. I regretted it immediately, because for a moment the room went still in a way that felt too intimate.

Adem walked closer, slowly enough that I had time to move away and stupidly did not. When he stopped in front of me, there was enough space between us for decency and not nearly enough for peace.

“If you were merely an inconvenience,” he said quietly, “I would have sent my driver, paid your debt anonymously, and forgotten your name by morning.”

My throat tightened.

“You don’t know my name.”

“I know more than that.”

The quiet certainty in his voice sent a chill across my skin.

Before I could ask what he meant, the private elevator at the far end of the penthouse chimed.

Adem did not look surprised.

I turned toward the sound just as the doors opened and a man in a gray suit stepped inside carrying a leather briefcase, his hair damp from the rain and his expression carefully neutral. He looked first at Adem, then at me, then immediately looked away with the professionalism of someone paid very well to notice nothing.

“Mr. Sahenk,” he said. “I brought the preliminary documents.”

Adem took the folder from him and opened it on the counter.

My name was on the first page.

My full legal name.

Defne Leyla Sabanci.

Beneath it were numbers, creditor names, account references, addresses, and details I had never told him. My apartment building. My frozen bank accounts. My parents’ case file. Even Berat Vehbi’s name appeared halfway down the page, marked under associated personal risk.

A wave of nausea rolled through me.

“You investigated me,” I whispered.

Adem did not deny it.

He only turned another page and said, with terrifying calm, “Of course I did.”

I stepped back from the counter, my heart pounding so hard it hurt.

The lawyer shifted uncomfortably, but Adem’s eyes remained on me.

Then I saw the final page.

It was not a debt transfer. Not a confidentiality agreement. A private arrangement contract.

And under the section marked personal terms, one sentence had already been typed in bold.

Defne Sabanci agrees to remain under the direct personal protection and supervision of Adem Sahenk for an initial period of ninety days.