Chapter 198: Loose Ends Don’t Stay Buried
"Dad, I was so nervous yesterday," Emma’s voice bounced back in his memory. She was sitting in the passenger seat, her eyes sparkling with excitement, even after their hospital visit.
Alexander glanced over at her. "It’s totally normal to feel nervous about your first day in grad school."
"Right, but then I met Ayla," Emma went on, her face lighting up just like it always did when she talked about something exciting. "She was sitting all by herself in the lecture hall. She looked a bit lost, you know? So I decided to sit next to her."
Alexander remembered keeping his face neutral, showing some interest but not too much. "That was really nice of you."
"She’s super friendly, Dad. And quiet, but not in a weird way, just in a chill way. Peaceful. And innocent, you know what I mean?" Emma laughed. "We just hit it off right away. We started chatting even before the orientation kicked off."
"And then?" Alexander asked, though he kind of didn’t want to know what came next.
Emma’s face turned serious. "After orientation, she just... collapsed. Right there on the floor. I thought she just fainted or something. They took her to the hospital, and I was really worried, Dad. I barely know her, and I was scared something was seriously wrong."
"But she’s okay now?" Alexander inquired, trying to sound casual.
"Yeah, thank goodness. Seeing her sleeping peacefully in that hospital bed today... I was just so relieved." Emma paused, then added almost as an afterthought, "Oh, and Dad? She’s Turkish. She was born there and came to Turkey for the program."
Alexander’s grip on the steering wheel tensed a bit. He had to consciously tell himself to relax.
Turkey.
"Turkish," he repeated, his tone flat.
"Yeah! Isn’t that cool? I told her I lived in Turkey too, remember? When I was younger?"
That’s when the tension kicked up. Alexander turned to look at Emma, unable to hide the sharpness in his eyes. "You told her that we lived in Turkey?"
Emma blinked, confused by his tone. "Um, yeah? I said I was born in the U.S., but we moved to Turkey for your job. Is that a bad thing?"
Alexander forced himself to take a breath, smoothing his expression back into the concerned dad look Emma expected. "Emma, sweetheart, didn’t I tell you not to trust strangers? You just met her, and you’re already sharing so much about yourself?"
"No, Dad, she’s a good person," Emma jumped in right away. "She told me about herself first, about her life in Turkey, her family, and why she came here to study. Then I shared my stuff. It wasn’t like I just dumped everything on her."
But Alexander’s mind was racing. Turkish. From Turkey. Around the same age as Emma, give or take. Starting a master’s program in computer science.
There was one Ayla he knew who fit that description.
One Ayla who could turn his world upside down if she ended up being Emma’s new friend.
"What’s her full name?" he asked, trying to sound casually curious instead of urgently desperate.
Emma laughed. "Oh, Dad, I didn’t ask! I didn’t even catch her last name when the professor called attendance. I’ll ask when she comes back. Why do you want to run a background check on my friend?"
She was joking. If only she knew.
"Just curious," Alexander replied with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "You know me. I like to know who my daughter is hanging out with."
Now, sitting in his study almost a day later, Alexander couldn’t stop thinking about everything.
Turkey.
Ayla.
Computer science.
The coincidences just kept piling up, making his gut feel uneasy.
He abruptly got up and moved to the window that looked out over his nicely kept garden.
The sun was setting, painting the sky in orange and red hues that uncomfortably reminded him of fire, burnt bridges, and missions that had gone sideways.
Marcus Alston had two daughters. He had known that for ages, along with their names, ages, and all the details about Marcus’s carefully shielded family life.
Fourteen years ago, he had killed Marcus’s wife, Sibel. The official story said she died from a heart attack
, natural causes.
But Alexander knew better. He had spiked her water with a heavy dose of drugs that caused cardiac arrest, clean, efficient, and untraceable.
Then, five years later, Marcus had died too. The official records said it was a car accident.
Alexander clenched his jaw at the memory.
Some accidents came in handy, and sometimes the timing was just too perfect to be a coincidence.
But he didn’t dwell on it. Dead was dead, and the past was buried along with Marcus’s secrets.
As for the daughters, Aylin and Ayla, Aylin was the older one.
Marcus was proud of her interest in computers, getting her into a fancy program, and sending her to Germany for school.
Alexander had never actually met Aylin; she was away at boarding school while he was working with the team, and by the time she got back to Turkey, just two days before Marcus’s death, he had been... preoccupied. He missed the chance to say hello.
After Marcus’s death, Alexander left Turkey immediately. He packed up Emma, returned to the U.S., and never looked back. He didn’t check on what happened to Marcus’s daughters.
They weren’t his problem; just loose ends that didn’t need tying up, two grieving girls who had no clue about their father’s real life, nothing about the team, and nothing that could mess up Alexander’s carefully crafted new life.
And then there was Ayla, the younger daughter. He thought she was the same age as Emma.
Alexander didn’t know much about her, just that she was around and had stayed in Turkey, with her sister, after their parents died. Quiet and ordinary, she was just another kid trying to build a new life after everything fell apart.
He had never thought that either of them might come back into play. Why would they?
