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As his car approaches the house, İso rolls down the window of the driver’s seat, switching his pistol from his dominant hand to his left with ease. While he doesn’t make it a habit of carrying around a gun, he was raised to feel comfortable handling one, obviously thanks to the situation with his family and the Koçaris.
Sticking his left arm out the now open window, İso fires three consecutive shots into the air, bellowing out, “Koçari!”
Skidding to a stop just a few paces behind Adil’s truck, İso exits his car and switches his gun back to his right hand.
By now, Adil’s men, the ones always loitering outside his house, have started to pay İso mind. Some have guns in their hands, though none seem inclined to fire.
“Give me my dear wife!” he demands to no one in particular as he fires another shot into the sky, taking care to sound as angry as possible.
He didn’t personally have an issue with Fadime spending the day at her family’s mansion, but as İso’s grandmother had reminded him half an hour before, these first few days of his and Fadime’s marriage are the most critical time for them to deceive their families into finding authenticity in the marriage. Thus, he finds himself at the Koçari’s, ready to play the role of possessive and worried husband.
Right as İso sees Adil opening the front door to his house, İso re-schools his face into an appropriate level of renewed fury. He begins to stalk angrily toward Adil, who seems to be striding toward him at a similar pace. İso has to bite back a chuckle at the matching expression of anger on Adil’s face.
Although the whole marriage disaster has certainly brought İso his fair share of suffering—particularly physically, thanks to Adil—he has several times had to keep himself from smiling or laughing when it would be inappropriate to do so. He wouldn’t say that he’s having fun, per se, but it undeniably brings him a certain thrill to play a role, and all the better when that role drives Fadime and her family crazy. He thinks he wouldn’t have minded being an actor, in another life.
İso had cracked many jokes in his life, had even played a few roles in his life; most recently the role of his uncle’s devoted servant. None, however, had been as foreign to his true self as the role of Fadime’s husband is.
İso had never before given serious thought to being anyone’s husband. Oruç is firstborn, so it was always his duty to lead the family, lead the village, bear heirs to the bloodline. As such, İso never felt any special pressure to get married and start a family. Of course, he always vaguely assumed he eventually would, in a loose, general sense, as was customary in their culture. But, there was never any urgency, and İso has so far not been interested in marrying anyone, so married life was not something that crossed his mind very much.
The general sense of being wedded aside, what makes the role doubly foreign for İso is the fact that it’s Fadime Koçari of all people that he’s supposed to pretend he’s in love with. If he ever were to marry for love, it certainly wouldn’t be with Fadime. He couldn’t marry someone who had publicly announced what must have been a million times in a million different ways, that she would rather die than marry him. He couldn’t marry someone who had laughed in his face when his grandmother asked her brother for her hand in marriage.
And yet, he did.
“Where is Fadime?!” Adil demands as soon as they’re within a meter of each other.
İso’s brain short-circuits, his step faltering.
“Huh?” he responds.
“Where is my sister?!” Adil screams, grabbing fistfuls of İso’s sweater, bringing their faces close together.
“I—I don’t know!” İso yells, bewildered, “I came here looking for her, she said she was spending the day with you!”
Adil makes a noise of anger, letting go of İso with a shove.
“Well, clearly she’s not here,” Adil snarls, starting to pace, “Where the hell could she possibly be?!”
“Uh, well, where does she like to hang out in the village, aside from your house?” İso asks.
Adil rounds on him angrily, staring him down as he sarcastically snaps, “Very helpful, İso. Thank you very much, I hadn’t thought to check her usual spots. What a bright idea.”
“Just throwing it out there,” İso mutters, resisting the urge to roll his eyes as he tucks his gun back into his waistband.
When Adil’s words really register with him, the first prickle of worry takes root in İso's chest.
“Wait, you really don’t know where she is, and you’ve already looked and can’t find her? So, you’ve texted and called her, too, and she isn’t responding?” he asks his brother-in-law, his breath speeding up a bit.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Adil answers him impatiently, gesturing around wildly, “I assume she hasn’t been in contact with her dear husband in the past few hours?”
Worry is clouding İso's mind enough by now that he doesn’t feel a thing at the venomous way Adil had referred to him in Fadime’s life.
“No,” he quickly denies, putting his hands on his head in distress, “No, no, the last time I talked to her was this morning, when she said she would have breakfast at home. I… my uncle was at our mansion when I left, so she’s not with him.”
What he doesn’t say is that any of his uncle’s dozens of men could be with his wife at the very moment. İso takes deep breaths, trying to regulate his panic. When he first arrived here a few minutes prior, swinging around his gun with swagger for show and putting on his best performance, İso never imagined that he would drop the act. He never would have guessed that he wouldn’t need the act anymore, because of the real panic he would feel at not knowing Fadime’s whereabouts and fearing for her safety.
“Cousin!” yells a voice from lower on the road.
İso and Adil turn in sync to see Gezep exiting a car with Dursun, the old guy they call “Chief”, who İso vaguely remembers teasing his mother about marrying.
İso and Adil jog to meet Gezep and Dursun.
“We think we know where Fadime is,” Gezep explains without wasting a second, “Chief Uncle helped me solve it, she’s with Eyüphan.”
İso lets out a relieved breath at this news. Thank god she’s not in danger, thank god she’s not with his uncle’s men. İso can’t fathom living with himself if he had failed to protect her life, after everything they had gone through with this marriage in the past few days.
After relief sets in, he feels a pang of annoyance at the information that his wife was voluntarily hanging around that pathetic loser who so clearly, annoyingly harbored a one-sided love for her.
“Oh, good,” Adil breathes, “Let me call him, they can both come back here.”
“Cousin,” Gezep says, his tone grave, “It’s not… it’s not like that.”
“What?” Adil asks impatiently, taking a step closer to his cousin, cocking his head, “I don’t understand.”
İso glances at Dursun’s face for the first time, a horrible dread entering his body when he reads the shame in the old man’s expression and downcast eyes.
“We found Fadime’s car on the road, the driver’s door open, as if she left unexpectedly. Eyüphan can’t be reached right now, but his wallet was on the ground next to her car,” Gezep elaborates, “Cousin, we think he took her.”
The dread in İso's stomach morphs into a raging, terrified monster with tendrils that constrict his heart.
“What?” Adil utters, panting rapidly, before roaring, “WHAT?!”
Gezep continues, “We knew Eyüphan was going around saying he was in love with Fadime, but we never—”
“Eyüphan, in love with Fadime?” Adil echos in disbelief, interrupting Gezep, his eyes darting between his cousin and Dursun, banked fury and betrayal burning in his eyes, “Why don’t I have any idea about this?!”
“Cousin, I swear I would have said something if I thought it was a problem, but I never thought it was serious, I thought it was a childhood infatuation! I never thought he would harm her, or—or force her…” Gezep trails off, his tone laden with shame.
İso rounds on Dursun, his crazed anger making him lose his filter and focus on thoughts single-mindedly as they come to his head.
“Why are you being so quiet?! Why aren’t you surprised?!” İso demands to know, willing the old man to meet his gaze, “Evidently, your idiot son kidnapped my wife, and you’re not surprised, you’re ashamed!”
In his peripheral vision, İso notices Adil looking at him, the anger in his brother-in-law’s eyes tempering down a sliver. İso feels a tug of solidarity in his gut at the reminder that they both care desperately for Fadime’s life.
Dursun finally looks up then, the shame not leaving his eyes, but shifting to accommodate for a defensive anger as he retorts, “You’re no better, boy! Have you forgotten that you kidnapped Fadime, tormented her, threatened her life?!”
İso’s mouth snaps shut, his own shame manifesting in a violent, abrupt rush of air up his throat. His stomach turns with nausea as the reminder of his greatest sin brings him back to reality. Dursun is right; İso is no better than that goat-brained low-life Eyüphan.
“Shut up!” Adil yells, his commanding tone prompting the attention of the other three men, “Just—everyone, shut up! Every second arguing is a second we lose in finding Fadime. Cousin, do you know where they are?”
İso shoves down his shame to burn in later, because his brother-in-law has the right idea: the priority now should be finding Fadime and ensuring her safety.
. . .
For better or for worse, the idiot Eyüphan is a familiar mind to the Koçaris, so it doesn’t take long for the four men to track his car down. From there, signs of a scuffle indicate Fadime’s escape, and Eyüphan presumably chasing after her.
The men quickly decide the adjacent forest to be the most likely place for them to have gone, and they delve inside, guns handy. They split up organically, taking slightly different paths while keeping the same direction.
Noise up ahead tells İso that their collective instincts were right, and he speeds up at the sound of Eyüphan yelling. A downhill turn culminates in a small creek, and İso is abruptly faced with what he was searching for. Across the creek, a few dozen meters away from İso and several meters away from each other, Fadime and Eyüphan face him.
It’s clear that Fadime had been running away from Eyüphan, given the way they’re both panting for breath, but İso’s arrival must have shocked them both to a stop, and they face him now.
The decision for what to do, for who to go for is not even really a decision in İso’s mind. It does not take him any extra thought, nor does he break his run upon spotting Fadime and Eyüphan; he only veers left, where Fadime stands ahead.
Fadime shouts his name, the sound piercing through İso's heart as she starts running toward him. Eyüphan snarls, hot on her heels.
“İso, get to Fadime!” comes a barking order from just behind İso, and without slowing his run, İso looks behind himself to find Adil just arriving at the creek, breaking right in Eyüphan’s direction.
İso turns away from Adil so quickly that he almost misses getting a glimpse of shock and rare approval on his brother-in-law’s face, likely from Adil noticing İso was already going for protecting Fadime over harming Eyüphan, even before Adil had spoken.
A numbing rush of cold shoots through his feet as he stomps through the creek, and İso mentally curses himself for not wearing boots today.
İso wishes he could say that he caught Fadime gracefully in his arms, that he smoothly took a hold of her and then stepped in front of her, courageously protecting her from Eyüphan, but unfortunately, that was not the case.
What happens is that neither he nor Fadime think to slow down as the distance between them shrinks, and as a result, they slam into each other at full force, toppling to the ground as their legs tangle together. İso wraps his arms around her torso as they go down, angling his body to take the brunt of the fall.
He groans as his back slams into the earth, and he lays there for a second, keeping his eyes closed.
İso opens his eyes slowly as he exhales, loosening his hold on Fadime to get a good look at her. She looks unwell, obviously, but unharmed, which is the most important thing.
“Sorry about that,” he mutters, easing her body away from his so they can stand again.
After pushing up from the ground, İso extends a hand to Fadime. She takes his hand to support herself up, and then catches him completely off guard when she flings her arms around his torso and presses her head against his chest. Not missing a beat, İso wraps his arms around her. In the back of his mind, he hopes Fadime isn’t noticing how fast his heart is racing.
It’s a totally foreign feeling, hugging Fadime for the first time, but it’s not an unwelcome feeling. In general, İso likes to think of himself as a relatively warm, physically affectionate person, though he’s never felt quite like this while hugging someone before.
İso glances across the creek, taking in the sight of Adil having immobilized Eyüphan, and then allows himself to fully focus his attention on Fadime.
She’s shaking like a leaf, and it seriously messes up something inside of İso to see her so terrified. Recently, seeing Fadime upset has tended to prompt this awful tightening in İso's chest, an uncomfortable feeling of pent up yearning to do something to make her feel better.
It’s the same feeling as when they were all at the hospital after he, his brother, and Adil had initiated their plan in tricking Şerif. Fadime was crying at the thought of her brother being imprisoned, leaving her alone, and this strange discomfort seized İso from the inside. Seeing her hurt had made him hurt.
İso has no idea why he felt that way in that moment; he and Fadime belong to adversarial families, she drives him crazy, she probably is more than a little bit crazy, and worst of all, she might truly resent him. And yet, despite everything, Fadime’s hurt really did feel like his hurt. He wished that she would stop crying, that she wouldn’t be hurt anymore, and wishing such had made İso face the truth—he cares about her.
Minor acts of protection before, like when he blocked her from his uncle at the factory, or when he led her to stay inside the Furtuna mansion with Eleni, İso was able to brush off in his mind as general courtesies he would extend to any human being. It’s not that he specifically cared about Fadime.
In the hospital, he was no longer able to deceive himself, he had to admit in his head that he had a personal stake in her life and safety.
Now, feeling the same pain in response to her pain, feeling the same desire to make her feel better, İso scrambles to think of the problem’s root. Of course, being kidnapped was sure to be terrifying no matter what happens, but since Fadime seems to be physically unharmed, İso reckons her external distress is all due to emotions.
If he had to guess, he’d say that she’s so upset because she felt like she was put in danger by someone she thought that she could trust to never harm her. Maybe she’s upset about Eyüphan’s betrayal itself, or maybe the impact of it on their friendship, or maybe her own judgment, though İso hopes she isn’t blaming herself for not seeing the danger of that goat-brained idiot sooner. In any case, it’s a lot to think about, and İso doesn’t want to add to her upsetness.
Fadime is still shaking in his embrace, so it doesn’t seem like she’s particularly eager to talk or like waiting for him to say something, but İso still feels compelled to speak. When it comes to his conversations with Fadime, rude quips and comebacks usually come to mind quickly, but he’s slower than usual in this delicate situation, as he considers several openers.
Are you okay? Obviously, she isn’t okay, so he doesn’t ask this.
I’m sorry this happened to you. While true, he gets the sense that she would mistake his empathy for pity, and it would further agitate her.
That idiot Eyüphan is going to be sorry he ever messed with you. Certainly İso wants to personally punish Eyüphan, but perhaps that’s not what Fadime is in the mood to think about right now.
“Hey, you’re safe now,” is the reassurance he settles on, looking down to meet her gaze as she peels her face away from his chest, her eyes watery.
He nods slowly at her when they make eye contact, wanting his words to sink in and feel genuine. She pushes away from his embrace abruptly and a little roughly, as if coming to her senses, and İso tries not to feel sorry that he had opened his mouth.
Fadime aggressively wipes away her tears, and İso's arms fall flat at his sides. She averts her gaze, sniffling, and the tightness in İso's chest takes a new form.
“Uh, is there anything you want—can I do anything for you?” he stumbles through his words, internally cringing at how completely awkward and unlike himself he sounds.
“I want to go home,” she tells him, her voice laden with exhaustion.
. . .
They end up taking two cars back to the Koçaris’ neighborhood, one with İso, Fadime, and Adil, and the other with Gezep, Dursun, and the fool Eyüphan.
Adil drives his truck with İso keeping Fadime company in the back. After hugging her brother and reassuring him that she was physically unharmed, Fadime hadn’t said a word since they’ve started the drive back.
İso wants to say or do something comforting, but he holds back. He thinks Fadime might feel embarrassed—even though İso doesn’t think she should feel that way—that she was overpowered and kidnapped by Eyüphan. İso is still learning to read Fadime in a more intimate way that would inform him how to comfort her without making her feel smaller.
There was a similar instance, the day they got married, where he felt he had to hold back with Fadime. After Şirin had declared that they ought to get married, he and Fadime did their usual dance of parading disgust and trading insults, which was all familiar territory to İso. But then, she stepped away for a second, her hands grasping her head like her thoughts were too overwhelming for her.
Seeing her genuinely upset brought that same heaviness to İso's chest that he felt in the hospital, a feeling he unfortunately thinks he’s getting accustomed to. Though he’d rather die than admit it to anyone, in that moment, he wanted nothing more than to put his arm around her, and a small, hidden part of him wanted to be comforted in the same way. But, he knew better that Fadime would respond to toughness instead of warmth, because if there’s anything his crazy wife hates, it’s being perceived as weak.
So far, he has been conservative in his approach to comforting her, and he supposes only time will tell if that ever changes.
İso doesn’t want to seem like he’s staring at Fadime, so he glances in the rearview mirror, where he sees Adil stonily facing the road ahead. Thinking back to the moment Adil arrived at the creek earlier, İso realizes that this might be the first time Adil has really trusted him or his feelings toward Fadime. And maybe, this is the first time İso was acting and feeling completely honest.
Today, he felt that he would do anything to safely find Fadime, and when he did find her, he ran as fast as he could to reach her. In his bones, he has known for some time now that he would lay down his life for her, and today was the first time he was seriously able to demonstrate this to his brother-in-law. He almost feels as if he deserves Adil’s scorn over their marriage from the last few days, since he wasn’t being completely honest then, even if his lies were for a good cause.
“I never want to see him again,” Fadime interrupts İso’s thoughts, her voice cold and measured; a tone he’s used to being on the receiving end of from her.
“You won’t have to,” İso and Adil reply in unison.
İso meets Adil’s gaze in the rearview mirror, mildly caught off guard by their synchronous thoughts. He swears there’s something light in the way his brother-in-law looks at him through the mirror.
İso mentally knocks on wood now, thinking that maybe Adil won’t hate him or his marriage to Fadime forever.
He almost instantly corrects his mental mistake—he realizes that he was thinking of his and Fadime’s marriage in terms of ‘forever,’ which of course she isn’t likely to want.
. . .
İso watches over Fadime's silhouette, just barely illuminated by the last sliver of sunset. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he wonders if she is asleep. She had gone straight to bed after returning from the forest, and İso had remained at the Koçari house in the hours since, alternating between pacing in the living room and poking his head past the threshold of Fadime’s room to check on her. Logically, he knows she is safe now, but emotionally, that inexplicable desire to protect her had not yet left İso's chest.
Luckily, Adil had let him stay without making too much of a fuss. İso and his brother-in-law are due to leave the house to deal with Eyüphan soon, though İso figures a few minutes of watching Fadime motionless wouldn’t hurt.
Fadime huffs out a loud, exasperated breath then, making İso jump in place, and she says, “Oh, just come in, Furtunacuk. You’re thinking so loud, it’s keeping me awake.”
She finally turns over in her bed to face him, and İso clears his throat awkwardly, striding into her room. He stops short of her bed, hovering uncertainly.
“Well, aren’t you going to sit?” Fadime asks impatiently, rolling her eyes.
İso stares at her blankly for a few seconds, his mind empty.
Fadime raises her eyebrows, and he clears his throat again.
“Sit… on the floor?” he asks.
“On the foot of my bed,” Fadime responds, as if it were obvious.
“Uh, am I supposed to do that?” he asks, vaguely aware of how stupid he sounds.
Fadime laughs, telling him, “We are married, in case you’ve forgotten. What’s the worst that could come of you sitting down on my bed?”
“I didn’t mean ‘Am I allowed?’,” İso clarifies, his tone slipping into his usual brand of annoyance with Fadime as he regains his nerves, “I meant ‘Are you sure you aren’t going to slap me if I sit there?’ I never know with you, since you’re a maniac.”
Rather than giving a verbal response, Fadime simply makes a noise of impatience, tugging İso's sleeve hard enough to make him fall forward. He grunts in surprise, his hands tangling in her bedsheets as he works to upright himself, settling into a sitting position on the edge of her bed.
“All right, Kılçık, spit it out. What has you working that tiny brain of yours overtime?” Fadime asks.
Normally, Fadime’s provocations and insulting nicknames might spark annoyance in İso, but today, it’s relieving, as it shows that she’s returning to her normal self.
Not feeling ready to share his worry over her today, İso blurts out the first thing he can think of, something that has been on his mind for a while, “At the hospital last week and then at the mosque a few days ago, why were you so sure that I couldn’t believably play Şerif’s right hand?”
Though Fadime can likely tell that wasn’t what was originally occupying İso’s mind, she accepts the conversation topic without protest.
“Isn’t it obvious?” she chuckles softly.
“No,” İso answers honestly, “Do you think that I’m a bad actor, or something? Because I’m actually very good at playing a role, in case you hadn’t noticed with this marriage nonsense.”
“It’s not that at all,” Fadime snorts, giving him this particular look through her eyelashes that makes İso's stomach flip over, “You’re too soft, İso. You don’t have the stomach for Şerif’s specific brand of violence.”
İso digests her explanation, an unpleasant and unavoidable counterpoint coming to the forefront of his mind, though really, this is something that never leaves his mind, a horrible truth about himself that he feels he can never escape.
“Except, I did have the stomach for kidnapping and terrorizing you,” İso reminds her, unable to keep bitter self-loathing from seeping into his voice.
“Yeah, and look where that got you,” Fadime retorts, raising her brows and inclining her head toward him, as if to make a point about his general state.
He doesn’t really understand what she’s getting at.
Kidnapping Fadime was the nadir of his life, and İso knows it will forever be his biggest, heaviest regret. He never forgets what he did to her, the fact of his evilness always looms in the back of his mind. He can try his best to shove it down, to ignore it, but the guilt always comes crawling back, suffocating him in an instant if he slips and thinks for even a second about what he did to her. Her screams of terror still haunt him, echoing in his mind as clear as the day it all happened, leaving him absolutely gutted each time his brain forces him to relive the nightmare of a memory.
“I’m no better than Şerif when it comes down to it,” he continues, his voice dropping a decibel, because once he starts with this awful topic, it’s hard for him to control himself, “I’m no better than that psycho who shot İlve and killed Ballı in cold blood. Hell, I’m going to punish that idiot Eyüphan tonight, but I’m no better than him, either. We’ve committed the same evil against you. I—I don’t even know what I was thinking. I’m so horrified and disgusted with myself, I don’t know how I woke up one day and became someone that I don’t recognize, someone that I’m ashamed of.”
His fists are gripping Fadime’s bedsheets tightly, and his breaths are coming out in inexplicably short pants. His heart feels as if it had suspended itself in his chest, precarious and raw with his extremely uncharacteristic display of vulnerability.
Fadime is quiet for a few seconds, her lips pursed tight and her brows knitted together as her eyes slowly roam across his face.
“Self-pity doesn’t suit you, Furtunacuk,” she says disapprovingly.
Her response is so unexpected that his breathing starts to slow, and he blinks rapidly as he struggles to comprehend what she means.
“What?” he asks.
Fadime clucks her tongue, telling him, “Come on, İso. You’re smarter than that. I’m the last person to defend you, as you well know, but you can’t seriously compare your situation to Eyüphan’s. Eyüphan kidnapped me because he couldn’t take no for an answer. He betrayed me, I thought he was a friend and it turns out he was a creep. You kidnapped me for your family’s land because you couldn’t deny your mother’s command. What you did was cruel, wrong, and cowardly, and I would never minimize that, but I think you’ve paid more than the price of it. This is going to be the only time I remind you of this, so listen up: you saved my life and my brother’s life from Şerif’s men. If you want to speak about this in terms of debt, you’ve already repaid your debt for kidnapping me. That’s not even including my brother letting the herd nearly trample you to death. Oh, and there was the time at the factory when you protected me from Şerif. Sure, I teased you, but I knew you were being genuine. I can’t believe you’re dumb enough to equate yourself to Şerif’s character, either.”
Somewhere during Fadime’s speech, İso’s hands had loosened from the ironclad grip he had on her bedsheets. His vision is blurring, and aggressively squeezes his eyes shut for a few seconds, willing his tears back. God forbid he lets his wife see him cry, she would never let him live it down.
She’s right, what he did was cowardly. He certainly felt like the biggest coward in the world after kidnapping her, even when he was being trampled by the herd of the Koçaris’ goats. Sure, he was afraid for his life, but even as he was being assaulted with the most unbelievably excruciating pain of his life, his last thought before blacking out was that he was disgustingly cowardly for having listened to his mom in kidnapping Fadime.
It’s also funny that she’s bringing up the time he tried to protect her from Şerif in the factory. Looking back logically, he sees that Fadime wasn’t in any real danger then; İso doubts his uncle would have hurt her at that time because he would lack a specific benefit from doing so. Still, in the moment, he wasn’t thinking hard, he was only feeling instinctive fear at the prospect of Fadime being hurt again. The only clear thought in his mind was that he couldn’t allow himself to be a coward anymore.
“So… so, what are you saying?” he asks, his voice coming out in an ugly, raspy tone.
“I’m saying that you’re the bane of my existence, that you’re a maniac, that you’re always going to be a kılçık in my eyes, but I forgive you, İso,” Fadime tells him, reaching out to cover his hand with hers, for once her tone deadly serious, “I forgive you and I think it’s absurd that you can’t see what a good man you are.”
Her touch is like a beam of sunshine straight into his soul.
“You think I’m a good person?” he croaks out, his chest filling with a crushing, overwhelming sense of relief.
He may never forgive himself, but Fadime’s forgiveness lightens the load on his heart considerably.
“You heard me the first time,” Fadime retorts, rolling her eyes and taking her hand back, “I’m not going to admit it again, so just use your imagination.”
İso opens his mouth to reply, but Adil steps into the room then.
“Little Furtuna, it’s time to head out,” he gruffly addresses İso, and then both his expression and tone soften as he looks to Fadime, “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” Fadime shrugs, though İso can still hear a clear tiredness in her voice, and he’s sure her brother can hear it, too.
“Good,” Adil nods, “we can talk later tonight, if you’re up for it.”
Fadime nods, and Adil disappears. İso turns his attention back to her, and he can’t place the expression on her face.
“You and my brother are going to Eyüphan now, aren’t you?” Fadime asks.
“Yes,” İso answers honestly, “And we have business with my uncle afterwards.”
If she wanted to hear what they were going to do to Eyüphan, he would tell her the truth. But, since she doesn’t ask, he doesn’t elaborate.
Fadime chews on her lip, as if trying to restrain herself from saying something, and İso watches her curiously.
“Be careful,” she finally says, and then immediately breaks eye contact, her cheeks pinkening.
Endeared, İso can’t help the smile that stretches across his face. On an instinctive whim, he unfastens his necklace, the one he always wears, and extends it toward Fadime.
“Here,” he says, “you can give this back to me when I come back tonight. Keep it safe, because it’s very important to me. This is how you’ll know I’ll be careful.”
Fadime slowly takes the necklace from him, and İso represses a shiver as her fingertips graze his knuckles.
He departs without waiting for her response, feeling that if he spent even another second in that room, he would start to say things that neither of them are ready to hear.
. . .
İso and Adil return to the mansion very late, and İso has no real reason to be here, except for the fact that he told Fadime he would return tonight.
The light in Fadime’s room is still on, and İso heads straight there with only an eyeroll from Adil.
She’s sitting up in her bed with a book when he opens the door, and she puts the book down when he enters. He spreads his arms out and does a little spin in place, showing her how perfectly unharmed he is.
“We can both see how careful I was,” İso explains, grinning at his wife, “So, there, I meant what I said about the necklace.”
He holds his palm face up toward her, waiting for her to deposit the necklace back into his hand.
Fadime reaches into her neckline, pulling out the pendant of his necklace, and İso's heart skips a beat at the realization that not only did she keep his necklace, she wore it.
“You know, I don’t think I should give it back just yet,” she tells him, her lips curving upwards in a shy smile, “I’d better hold on to it for now, because if I give it back, then what’s stopping you from being careful tomorrow, and the day after that?
İso smiles warmly at her, and then shrugs as he tucks his hand into his pocket.
“That works with me,” he agrees.
His necklace suits her better than him, anyway.