"Istanbul? I'd love to, but I can't, Adonis. My schedule is really packed these days."
"Look at you, like you're some company CEO, you idiot! If unemployment were a color, you'd be the whole damn rainbow. What schedule are you even talking about? Just say it straight—you're afraid of getting on a plane."
"Me? Afraid of flying? Absolutely not! Outright lie! That's not a thing! Where did you hear that? Who said it? Did they say anything else? What did they say? And if they said something about my fear of penguins, don't you dare believe it! That's a lie too!"
When Demir shut his eyes in exhaustion and pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering, "You're so stupid that even I can't find anything left to say," Bora kept poking him stubbornly to get answers, while Rüzgar and I laughed at the two of them.
Just then, my phone started ringing. Demir was hurriedly pouring himself a drink, like he was trying to raise his patience threshold. Grinning, I stood up, took the phone out of the jacket pocket on the chair, and when I saw it was an unknown number, I frowned. I signaled the guys to be quiet before answering. Once all three of them fell silent, I picked up the call.
"Hello?"
"Kerem, are you alone?" The moment I heard the voice of the man I'd been trying to meet for months, my whole body tensed.
"I'm alone. You can talk."
"Since you couldn't make it to our last meeting, I'm assuming they found you." He took my silence as a yes and continued with a sigh. "For your sake, I was hoping it wouldn't happen this fast, but it is what it is. I'll be leaving the country soon. Before I go, we have one last chance to meet—but the decision is yours. You've seen for yourself what kind of dangerous people you're dealing with. Still, do you want to learn the truth about what happened that night?"
I answered in a confident tone.
"Yes."
"Then I'll call you again to let you know the time and place of the next meeting."
"I have one question before you hang up."
"What is it?"
"Do you know anyone who goes by the nickname 'The Teacher'?" He waited for a moment, then finally answered.
"No. Wait to hear from me."
After the sound indicating the call had ended, I sighed and went back to my friends, who were waiting to find out what we'd talked about. As I sat down, I placed my phone on the coffee table and leaned back.
"He wants to meet again, but this is our last chance. He's leaving the country." Demir frowned and spoke first.
"I don't trust this guy. Risking his life just to meet you with no clear motivation, purely for the truth to come out, doesn't sit right with me. What, after all these years he suddenly decided to be a guardian of justice?"
"I don't trust him either, but he's our only source. We don't have the luxury of turning down his offer."
"I agree with Kerem. No matter how unreliable he is, we need to hear what he has to say to find ourselves a starting point. Otherwise, no matter how hard we try, we'll keep spinning our wheels with nothing but these suspicious assumptions."
"I don't know, guys. Teddy has a point. What if this guy is bait, and you're walking straight into a trap they set to get rid of you? Before making any decision, we need to be sure we'll get what we want without anyone getting hurt. If things spiral out of control, it won't just put us at risk, it'll put the girls in the open too. We've already seen that these guys don't joke around, and if what happened last time was just a warning, God knows what they'll do next."
"What happened last time was my fault, Curly. I was alone and unprepared. Most importantly, I had no idea those guys were already right under our noses. Now that the conditions have changed, we'll make a new plan to keep ourselves safe—but before that, there are other things we need to talk about."
The next two hours passed with Rüzgar and me discussing our theories about The Teacher and the plan we were setting up for the meeting. When we finally reached a common decision on what to do, I reached for my phone to order food, but Demir's angry string of curses made the three of us turn to him.
"What the hell happened? Who are you cursing at like that?" Rüzgar asked. Without answering, Demir turned seriously to Bora.
"Do you know the guy you saw with Ece this morning?"
"I didn't see his face, man. He dropped her off at the building entrance without even getting out of the car and left. Why?"
As Demir kept cursing, the three of us exchanged questioning looks and turned back to him. He angrily tossed his phone onto the coffee table and started pacing around the living room. Without saying anything, I reached out and picked up the phone. Seeing photos on all of Ece's social media accounts where she was getting pretty cozy with some guy, I sighed and handed the phone to Rüzgar.
"When did you two break up?" The moment he heard my question, he turned to me with a face darkened by anger.
"Break up? We didn't break up! Just two days ago we celebrated that stupid anniversary crap!" He punched the wall and kept ranting through clenched teeth.
"Let me get my hands on that bastard. Forget messing around with someone else's girlfriend—he won't even be able to look at another girl ever again!"
Rüzgar handed the phone to Bora and rolled his eyes at Demir, who looked like a bull seeing red.
"Don't even think about going after that kid, Demir. I'm serious. His father is a member of parliament. You'll get yourself into huge trouble. I don't think your father'd enjoy being exiled to the other end of the country just because you got cheated on, especially he is only two years away from retirement."
Instead of calming him down, Rüzgar's words made Demir kick a chair, so I spoke again.
"Anyone watching you would think you're madly in love with the girl. You've cheated on her plenty of times yourself. What kind of drama is this now?"
He turned back, filled what used to be my glass, downed it in one go, and answered.