Chapter 5

POV DEFNE

Adem did not answer the call immediately.

For several long seconds, he only watched the screen illuminate the marble counter while the phone continued vibrating between us. The sound seemed unnaturally loud inside the quiet penthouse, cutting through the tension that still lingered in the air after his hand had been against my face and his body had been close enough for me to feel the heat of him.

Enise.

I knew that name long before I ever saw her in person. Everyone in Istanbul’s corporate circles did. Enise Sahenk was elegant in the way old money often was, all polished restraint and perfectly measured smiles. At company events, she moved beside her husband like someone born understanding that appearances were more important than emotions. Beautiful. Untouchable. Controlled.

Nothing like me standing barefoot on his marble floor with a split lip and bruises darkening beneath my sleeve.

“You should answer,” I said quietly, mostly because I needed him to step away from me before my thoughts became dangerous.

Adem finally picked up the phone.

“Yes.”

The change in his voice was immediate.

Not colder exactly, but more distant, as if a wall had slid back into place inside him. Whatever had existed between us moments ago vanished beneath the calm authority people at the company feared so instinctively.

I turned away and walked toward the windows while he listened to his wife speak. Rain continued running down the glass in silver streams, blurring the city into gold and shadow below us.

“You left dinner early.”

Enise’s voice carried faintly through the quiet apartment. Smooth, composed, impossible to read.

“I had work,” Adem replied.

A pause followed.

“You always have work.”

There was no accusation in her tone. If anything, that made the conversation feel sadder. Married people were supposed to sound angry when they disappointed each other. These two sounded like strangers discussing weather over expensive wine.

I folded my arms tightly across my chest and tried not to listen, but the silence between their sentences drew attention to itself.

“Zeynep waited for you,” Enise said after a moment.

Something tightened painfully in my chest at the softness of that sentence.

I looked away from the windows and noticed a photograph resting near the kitchen bar. A young girl stood beside Adem smiling brightly at the camera while he looked down at her with an expression I had never seen on his face before.

Not softness exactly.

Protection.

The realization unsettled me.

I had spent three years working under Adem Sahenk and had convinced myself he was emotionally untouchable because that was easier than admitting I found him intimidating in ways I could never fully explain. Men like him were easier to survive when you imagined they lacked ordinary human attachments.

But the man in that photograph loved his daughter enough for it to show in his eyes.

“I’ll see her tomorrow morning,” Adem said.

“If you come home tonight.”

The silence after that lasted long enough to become uncomfortable.

Then Enise sighed softly. “Goodnight, Adem.”

“Goodnight.”

The call ended.

For a few moments neither of us spoke. Rain hit the windows steadily while somewhere below us Istanbul continued moving through the night without caring that my life had tilted completely off balance inside this apartment.

“She looks like you,” I said quietly, glancing again toward the photograph.

Adem followed my gaze.

“No,” he replied after a moment. “She doesn’t.”

There was something unreadable in the way he said it, something that made me wonder if I had stepped unknowingly into territory too personal to touch.

Still, curiosity slipped out before caution could stop it.

“You love her very much.”

His eyes lifted to mine immediately.

“Yes.”

The certainty in his voice caught me off guard because it was the first completely unguarded thing I had heard from him all night.

That single word changed something in my understanding of him.

Adem was not emotionless. He simply kept his feelings locked behind enough control that most people never noticed they existed at all.

Oddly, that frightened me more.

A man without emotions was predictable. A man who buried them carefully was not.

“You should go home,” I murmured, though I was no longer certain whether I meant it for his sake or mine.

“And you should stop pretending leaving is still an option.”

I looked at him sharply. “You really enjoy controlling people.”

Something almost amused flickered across his expression as he loosened the cuffs of his shirt.

“No,” he said calmly. “I enjoy clarity. Most people spend their lives lying about what they want.”

“And what exactly do you think I want?”

His gaze moved over me slowly enough to make heat creep up my neck despite myself.

“Safety,” he answered. “Relief. Someone capable of ending the chaos surrounding your life.”

The accuracy of it irritated me immediately because it felt too intimate, too perceptive.

“You talk as if people are transactions.”

“Everything becomes transactional eventually.”

“That’s a miserable way to live.”

“It’s an honest one.”

I hated how reasonable he sounded saying things like that.

The worst part was that some exhausted corner of me understood him. Debt had taught me quickly how conditional kindness could become once money entered the equation. People stopped seeing you as human when you owed enough. You became risk, inconvenience, liability.

Or opportunity.

Adem walked toward me slowly, and every nerve in my body became painfully aware of the decreasing space between us. He moved with the kind of confidence that came from living too long in a world where nobody denied him anything.

“You asked me earlier what I wanted from you,” he said quietly.

My pulse stumbled. “Yes.”

“You still think this is only about sex.”

The directness of the statement sent heat flooding through me.

“I think you’re a married man asking vulnerable women dangerous questions in the middle of the night.”

A faint smile touched his mouth at that.

“Dangerous questions usually reveal interesting answers.”

Before I could respond, he reached for me again, his fingers settling beneath my jaw with controlled firmness. My breath caught instantly. He was close enough now that I could smell whiskey lingering beneath his cologne, dark and warm and unfairly distracting.

“If this were only physical attraction,” he said softly, “I would have solved the problem already.”

The quiet arrogance of the statement should have offended me.

Instead, something tightened low in my stomach because I believed him.

I stepped back too quickly, breaking his touch before my thoughts spiraled somewhere reckless.

“This is insane,” I whispered.

“Yes,” he agreed without hesitation.

That answer unsettled me more than denial would have.

“You’re talking about risking your marriage over someone you barely know.”

Something changed in his expression then, subtle but immediate.

“Who said anything about risking my marriage?”

A chill moved down my spine at the calmness in his voice.

Before I could ask what he meant, his phone vibrated again against the counter.

This time, the moment he looked at the screen, every trace of warmth disappeared from his face.

My stomach tightened instantly.

“What happened?”

Adem did not answer right away. His eyes lifted slowly toward mine, unreadable enough to make anxiety spread through my chest.

Then he turned the phone around so I could see the screen.

It was a photograph of us leaving the parking garage together less than an hour earlier. The angle was distant, grainy, obviously taken in secret.

Beneath the image was a single message from an unknown number.

Your wife deserves to know what kind of whore you brought home tonight.