by Liz Crowe
“Back off, brother.” He stepped between them. A strange possessiveness stole over him, made him want to punch his good friend right in the eye. “We’re calling her driver. It’s not what you think.”
Burak raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I’m quite sure that it’s not. My brother has a way with women you know. There’s always one up here, keeping him…company.”
“Shut up, you idiot.” Levent growled. Vivian stared at him then at his friend.
“Brother? I thought….”
“No, no, my beautiful one.” Burak put an arm around Vivian’s shoulders, effectively shutting Levent out. “Brothers in blood. Not name.” Levent shot him a murderous look. “And never fear, he may have his finger in many pies, but his true heart will only belong to one. Ow!” Burak rubbed his head where Levent cuffed him.
Vivian smiled over her shoulder at him, and his heart zinged. Then she turned back to Burak. “What is your name, handsome?”
Burak grinned at her and walked her to the phone. “My name is Burak Ozdemir, and I am ever at your service. Shall I dial? Who are we calling?” Levent watched as his friend flirted and laughed with his heart’s desire. Leave it to that scoundrel to get the number out of her. She spoke softly into the phone as Burak poured himself a glass of tea. He looked at Levent, eyebrows raised. Levent shrugged.
Vivian’s voice broke the quiet. “All right, Lillian’s driver is coming for me. He’s going to send someone to the construction site. My, um, driver is probably still there, waiting for me.”
Levent groaned. “Dear God, Vivian, you left him there? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because, Levent, you grabbed me and yanked me here, remember?”
Burak snorted into his tea glass. “Ever the knight in shining armor, our Levent.” They sat, the silence oozing awkwardly around the room. Levent wished that his friend would disappear. He watched Vivian stare out the window, worrying her lower lip with her teeth—a nervous gesture he’d come to know very well, once upon a time. Every nerve ending in his body twitched at her nearness. He had never in his life wanted anything so badly as he did her right at that moment.
***
Vivian let the tears she’d been holding back trickle down her cheeks and drop onto her hands, clutched tight together in her lap. The Istanbul night whooshed by her window as Lillian’s driver spirited her home and Lillian kept talking. She tried to shut the girl’s infernal yapping out. To concentrate on Levent’s dark, handsome face.
“Wow, that was one good looking guy.” Lillian kept insisting as she twirled her blonde curly hair around one finger. “That wasn’t the guy from the Dungeon though, was it Viv? Viv?” Vivian startled when Lillian snapped her fingers under her nose.
“Huh? Oh, no. He’s a friend of that guy. Of Levent’s.”
“You and your friends.” Lillian sighed and leaned her head back. “I’ll walk with you to the door so we can pretend we’ve been together all this time.”
Vivian sighed. “That’s fine. If you want. But I can handle it.”
“No, dear.” Lillian patted her knee. “I’ve convinced my driver to tell yours that you got confused about where I lived. But you know the servants’ gossip. Goodness knows what they’re saying about us.”
“I don’t care.” Vivian leaned her chin on her hand and watched the large American consulate residence loom on the horizon. “That stupid place. It’s like my prison.”
By the time she reached the door, her whole body shook with anger, tinged with a small lick of terror that she’d never see him again. She knew that was a very real possibility. At that realization—that Levent had been taken from her life yet again thanks to her own stupid behavior—she stopped caring about whatever awaited her behind the large wooden door to the consul’s residence. The sounds of servants shuffling around greeted her. A fire snapped in the large study’s grate. Vivian hesitated for a second. It seemed that once again, no one gave a rip about her. No one waited up to see if she was okay, alive, dead, or otherwise.
“Vivian.” Her father’s voice echoed through the large entry hall. “Please join me in the study.”
She rolled her eyes but obeyed him, staying inside the room’s large doorway, unwilling to commit to going inside. He stood, his tall frame bent slightly as he gazed into the fire. He held a book in one hand. As he turned, Vivian’s heart leapt into her throat when she recognized her journal dangling from his fingers. He flipped it open and gazed at a page. She stood up straighter, determined to stay strong—to get her property back into her hands, her pictures of Levent.
“So, I see you’ve been drawing.” He licked his finger and turned a page. She stayed silent. She’d had a few years to get used to his hypothetical one-sided conversations. “This animal.” He indicated her drawing of Suleyman the cat. “I’ve disposed of it. We found it on your bed, and its fleas had already spread. I found some on your brother’s bedding.”
“I don’t have a brother.” Vivian attempted to keep her voice even. “What do you mean disposed of?”
“Cats are useless creatures. It’s at the bottom of the Bosporus.”
She stifled the gasp that rose, not willing to give him the satisfaction. He looked up from his perusal of her journal, his eyes sharp with anger. “This. This is that boy, isn’t it? The one you asked me about.” He showed her the pictures she’d drawn. She continued to stare at him. He knew the answer already. Without another look at her, he tossed the entire book onto the flame. She took a step forward, biting her lip, but stopped.
“You have no right to do that.” She kept the tears at bay. Let anger fuel her.
“That is where you are mistaken. I have every right, young lady. And I also have the right to tell you this: next weekend, you will attend the Marine ball with Ronald Harrison. And you will go with him to Ankara next month. I want you out of this house, out of this city. Away from all the bad influences here.”
Her mouth dropped open. Making her go to a fancy dance party was one thing. “You can’t banish me. I’m an adult.”
“You.” He leveled his stare at her. “Are a girl. Unmarried, still living with her father. I can do whatever I like. And you will obey me.” He pointed a long finger at her. She tried very hard to quell the urge to bite it. “As liberated as you like to think you are, Vivian, you miss the real point. In your world, I still call the shots. That is until your husband takes over.” Her fists were so tightly clenched she thought she might have drawn blood with her nails. She summoned Levent’s voice, his face, his smile, anything to calm herself, to ease the screaming in her head that she refused to allow her father to hear.
But then she remembered. Levent didn’t want her. He’d sent her away. Her knees gave out, and she slid to the floor. Her father simply watched her, arms crossed over his chest. “I take care of you, daughter. I put a roof over your head, clothes on your back, place any and all manner of distractions at your disposal. You will not thank me by turning into a common, Turkish peasant whore.”
Vivian let the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding out with a loud bark of laughter. “A whore? Seriously, Father, language. You might blight the baby’s ears.” She stood, fury giving her strength. “For your information, I was with him.” She pointed at her journal that was being slowly consumed by licking flames. “Tonight. But you don’t have anything worry about. It seems the only man in my immediate universe who wants anything to do with me is the chosen one, Ron.” She held back tears.
He sat, and took a sip of his drink. The heavy crystal glass gave a satisfying clunk when he set it on the ornate Ottoman style table at his elbow. “As long as we’re clear who is in charge, then you are dismissed.”
Without a word, she ascended the stairs, her mind whirling with the words and images from the past days. The memory of Levent’s full lips on hers, his strong hands on her back, holding her close, forced her to close her eyes and pause halfway up the steps. By the time she reached her suite on the top floor of the ornate residence, she could no longer
hold back the sobs that choked her. She would never be able to make her own choices. Her father had handily reminded her of that. All the sneaking around, illicit drinking and stolen kisses in the world would never change it. She ripped off her skirt, stockings, prim and proper blouse, the ghost of Levent’s essence permeating her every pore. It was too much. All of it. The screams of agony were shocking, even to her own ears. When she realized they came from her throat, it was too late to stop them.
Standing in her bra and panties, chest heaving from the efforts to yell, cry and pound the marble top of her vanity table, Vivian stared at herself in the large mirror. She ran her hands over the tops of her breasts, down the sides of her waist, spanned her stomach, to her full hips, and down her thighs. Why didn’t he want her? Why did she care so much? Would it ever stop hurting? A yawning, empty ache had sprung up in the middle of her chest that had replaced the hard core of anger she’d carried around with her since returning to live under her father’s roof. It made for an unpleasant trade off.
Her hands made their way up to her long thick brown hair that tumbled down her back. As if in a daze, she found the scissors a seamstress had left in her room the prior week. They’d been lying on her desk, amongst the scattered remains of homework and random drawings she’d been working on before she’d laid eyes on him last week. She brought the sharp blades to her face, traced a line down her cheek with the point, just hard enough to form a pink line along their trajectory. Finally, she grasped a hunk of her hair, put the shears to it, and cut.
It took all of ten minutes to make a pile at her feet and leave her staring at the newly revealed large brown eyes and high cheekbones. Her hair barely brushed her jaw line, and it was positively liberating to feel the air on her neck without having to use anything to pull the heavy stuff up. Her tear-streaked face was tight and hot. The scissors joined the pile of hair at her feet, and she stepped away from it, taking her one pair of denim pants out of a bottom drawer. Yanking them on, she found a plain polo-style shirt she used when she went riding. It smelled vaguely of horse, but she didn’t care.
“Allah!”
Vivian whirled around to see the girl, who cleaned her room, with her hand over her mouth. “Missus! What is…?” She pointed to the mess in front of the vanity table. Vivian put a self-conscious hand to her neck. The girl looked up at her, and her eyes widened. “You are.” The girl touched her own long hair piled under a scarf. “So guzel, beautiful.”
Vivian rolled her eyes and sat on the bed. She found her plain white tennis shoes and tied them quickly. Unwilling to engage in conversation with anyone, especially as it related to the fact she was bloody well going back out into the warm Istanbul night, alone, and planned to stay out for a long time, she stood and smiled at the girl.
“It’s okay, really. I, ah, I’ll be back.” She shouldered past the girl who seemed frozen in place at the sight of her mistress’s obvious insanity. Switching to Turkish, she made her reassurances and quickly shut the door on the hair carnage. Vivian knew every squeaky stair to avoid on the back steps and made her silent way down to the kitchen and out, holding a finger to her lips after snagging a couple of bread slices from the fresh basket. The two women still cleaning up after her father’s family’s dinner rolled their eyes. She smiled, grabbed a cap one of the drivers had left in the darkened alcove and eased out the door to the back courtyard of the massive diplomatic residence.
The smoky, oppressive air of the ancient city filled her nose. It was relaxing in an odd way. Brought back memories of times following Levent through dirty streets and along narrow alleys all those years ago, giggling at the very concept of how bad she was being, out without parents or minders or anyone but Levent protecting her on the streets of a dangerous city.
Vivian jammed the cap down on her head, tucking her newly shorn hair up into it. She took a long, deep breath and let her inner compass guide her down the hill, dodging the random men on bicycles and the odd taxi that had any business in this diplomatic section of the city. Ducking inside doorways and running from shadow to shadow, as he’d taught so many years ago, she made her way through the busier avenues along the Bosporus.
She emerged along the outer edge of Topkapi Palace, the historic home to Ottoman Sultans for centuries. It was her absolute favorite place in the entire city. Years before, Levent had shown her a spot in the four foot thick wall surrounding the outer courtyard. It was still there. Turkey was chock full of amazing historical edifices and buildings, but still too poor to maintain them all properly, so it was no wonder this crack in the wall that was wide enough for her to wiggle through hadn’t been found and repaired. She stepped into the completely dark Grand Kiosk area of the large, beautiful prison for the Sultan’s slaves.
Much was made of the “exclusive harem,” but Vivian knew every single woman in it had been a slave, captured from yet another country conquered by the brutal Ottoman Empire. It was against the law for Muslim women to be imprisoned, so the rooms held slaves of all ethnic varieties from Eastern Europe through Africa. All dressed well, fed plenty, given lots to do within four walls, except the ability to leave, ever.
Vivian walked across the cold stones, found the covered bench where she and Levent had sat all those years ago, looking out of the Golden Horn of the Sea of Marmara, making up stories of brave warriors and pirates of all shapes and sizes who would come and attack the ancient fortress of Levent’s ancestors. He usually brought a small sack of food for them, and they’d munch apples or strawberries or strong cheeses and bread as they talked, laughed, and played hide and seek amongst the gazebos and fountains that were the last section of the palace added in the 1800s in a desperate attempt to European-ize the place.
A breeze stirred, bringing the strong scent of the sea with its combination of rotting fish, moldy wood and salt. It made her smile. It made her think of him. Levent. The man she wanted but couldn’t have. Because she was a woman and didn’t get to make her own choices. Trapped, like the women in this very building had been.
She sighed and braced her hands against the cold marble. Her eyes adjusted to the dark. The many boats provided a light show across the darkened sea. Night birds twittered in the trees that had sheltered this area for nearly a thousand years. Her chest unclenched for the first time in days. When the tears formed, Vivian let them spill down her cheeks. She cried for the many women who were brought here against their will, kept to be used as vessels for future Sultans at the whim of the current Sultan Valide—the Sultan’s mother—or left to rot, in their expensive silks and satins. And for herself, destined for a life as a diplomat’s wife. Mrs. Ron Harrison, bored, likely drunk, and ignoring whatever children they might spawn, perpetuating the mystery that was modern marriage.
“No!” She yelped into the dark and stood. “I won’t! I won’t!” She ran fast, up to the edge of what was essentially a cliff that opened over the teeming merchant’s area below her, at the edge of the sea. She clambered up onto the stone fence, stood, and let the night caress her skin like a lover. It was dangerous up there. Dizziness hovered on the edge of her consciousness at the height. The buzz of terror mixed with the forbidden had always tempted her, made her feel more alive.
She leaned over, keeping her feet planted, letting the wind hold her up. She closed her eyes, let the breeze lash the ends of her hair that had escaped the cap, dry the tears that still dotted her cheeks. At one point she stepped forward, her brain acknowledging it was a colossally bad idea to do so, wondering how many of the harem women had been exactly where she was right now. How easy. Just to let go.
“Vivian!”
Hands gripped her legs. Her eyes flew open and she gasped, stumbling forward, ending up in a crouch on top of the wide stone fence, sucking in deep breaths of polluted Istanbul air. Once she’d calmed and realized she was not going over the side to a certain death, she turned and came face to face with the one man she had hoped never to see again. Because to see him meant agony beyond anything she could define. She looked awa
y, unwilling to accept he was here, in their space, the place he’d brought her to all those years ago.
“Dear God, please guzelim, come down from there.” His low, gravelly voice teased her ears. The accent a comforting lullaby to her rattled psyche. But she remained staring out onto the sea, bracketed by the thousands of humans still working their lives, unaware of the drama unfolding above them.
Determined to ignore the sheer chemistry that swirled between them, she swallowed hard, pushed herself up off the barrier, and stood a few feet from him. How did he know to come here anyway? The raw animal compulsion to go to him, to wrap herself around his tall frame, was primal and urgent. But she resisted it at the cost of physical pain. When she finally looked into his impossibly dark eyes, the agony there matched her mood perfectly.
***
It took Levent nearly five minutes to calm his pounding heart. The first glimpse of her, leaning out over the precipice had terrified him so much he’d been frozen in place after his eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the courtyard. When her foot shifted closer to the edge, he’d moved fast. Now he stood, fists clenched against the urge to hold her, to soothe whatever had rattled her so badly, made her escape her home and hide here, in their old forbidden playground.
The consulate’s driver had called him, after being alerted by the kitchen staff the young missus had snuck out again and had been gone over an hour. It was obvious the man didn’t approve of him. Word had gotten around the backstairs that the young woman of the house had left angry, and it was likely because of him. They all realized something about him already. That somehow he’d know immediately where she’d gone. The driver had huffed and puffed and made lot of noise about “bad influences” and “knowing one’s place” as they drove to the Tokapi area. But Levent leapt from the back when he spotted the crevice they’d discovered all those years ago and made his way through. It was a challenge to fit his man-sized body into the slender opening but once in he dashed across the close-clipped grass, praying she was here, hoping she hadn’t done anything truly stupid in her fury.