A Price Above Rubies

Chapter Twenty Seven

Please God, don't let it be Hilal, Leon prays when Colonel Dario tells him that one of the women working with Alcon has been taken hostage. He knows Yakup is praying the exact same thing as he stands next to him, but for Yildiz. In the middle of the madness of freeing the prisoners the world seems to stop and Leon and Yakup don't breathe. It feels like an eternity but is most likely only a second when Dario informs them that the woman who was taken was Yildiz. 

Leon watches Yakup stiffen and tries not to sag in relief himself. Yakup turns to Vecihi.

"You stay here and help Leon with the evacuation of the prisoners and follow them to the other compounds-" 

Vecihi shakes his head and picks up a bag with a cache of weapons. "You're not going after Yildiz by yourself."

"He won't be by himself," Ali Kemal says, grabbing his own weapon. 

Leon opens his mouth to protest when an uneasy thought occurs to him. "You said Colonel Stavros has Yildiz. Where is Hilal?"

Colonel Dario smiles at him, the reassuring smile of someone who doesn't know Leon's wife.

"She's back at headquarters. She came to me with the information she and Yildiz had gathered and when we went to Stavros' apartment and found him gone with your sister I ordered her back to headquarters to wait for-"

Rage and panic grip Leon anew causing a coughing fit. Damn this cold or whatever it was. It had to happen now, when he needed all his strength and wits about him the most.

"Are you alright?" Colonel Dario asks.

"He must have caught something when that son of a bitch beat him and stuck him in the icebox for sticking up for me," Ali Kemal explains, sending Leon a guilty look.

Leon shakes his head. His brother has nothing to apologize for. He knows Ali Kemal would have done the same for him.

"She didn't stay at headquarters," Leon said, when he caught his breath. 

Colonel Dario stares at Leon, incredulous. "Surely she didn't go off and try to find her sister herself?"

Leon scowls and pushes past him towards the driver's side of his truck. There are other trucks being filled with freed prisoners and Colonel Dario's men are being divided by those who will take the prisoners for medical attention and then interrogation at headquarters and those who will go to find the other compounds. They are all well armed to deal with any resistance once word gets out the prisons have been discovered. They have minutes maybe before all out war breaks out. 

"Hang on, hang on!" Colonel Dario insists rushing after him. "Lieutenant Birko I want you to lead the search for the other compounds while I assist these men. Report to headquarters when you're done and I'll oversee the interrogations."

The lieutenant nods and Colonel Dario moves Leon to the passenger's side while Yakup and Ali Kemal climb in the back with Vecihi. 

They find no sign of Yildiz in the apartment. Leon opens the bathroom door and sees a flash of metal come up and his reaction time is a second too slow because of his illness and the tip nicks his neck before he grabs the arm and twists, pressing the small squirming body against the wall. 

It's the smell of her that first stirs recognition, more than the light brown of her hair or the curves of the body he has lost himself in again and again. That sweet scent of her, lemons, spice and light female sweat is ingrained in Leon's brain and triggers instant arousal and blinding rage so that he spins her around slams her back against the wall. "Hilal! What the fuck were you thinking?" He doesn't usually swear at his wife but his fear is manifesting itself in anger and he can't stop himself. Leon doesn't even feel the sting of the nick she's made by accident in his neck until Hilal's eyes widen with shock and she touches his neck, her finger coming away with a little bit of blood. 

He feels something else. Leon feels a swell between them that hasn't been there before, that wasn't there when he left her in Istanbul, that hasn't been there since she was pregnant with their son Yorgo. 

He distantly wonders if their is a name for the feeling of simultaneous horror, joy and anger that slams into him. 

"Oh God...no. Hilal...tell me you're not… Jesus Christ."

He watches stubborn fire light her eyes before she pushes at him. 

"And why are you looking at me as if you had nothing to do with it, hmm? As if it's one of your...oh...what was the word...with that virgin Mary woman…"

"Immaculate conception," Vecihi pipes in.

Leon glares at him.

"Yes, that's it. Thank you, Vecihi. Exactly that, when you know full well you had a part in it," Hilal reminds Leon. 

A flush of shame heats his face. The bath. Yes, this was his fault. He might tell himself he didn't intend to get her pregnant to keep her from following him but the honest, selfish party of him knows full well he did. 

Now here they were. She was pregnant and had followed him anyway. 

Leon Papadopoulos, you are a fucking moron, he thinks to himself. Has all these years being married to this woman taught you nothing?  

Hilal looks at him again, the annoyance fading from her eyes as a look of concern comes over her face and she touches his neck again, with the flat of her palm this time. 

"You have a fever. You look terrible. Are you ill?"

"Just a cold," Leon assures her. 

She reaches for some tissue and dabs at the cut on his neck. "I could have-"

They're interrupted by an unknown male voice behind them which makes all four men draw their guns and whirl around. 

The young man, late teens, likely, lifts his hands and his eyes widen in panic. "Please! Don't shoot. I was just given this for you. The woman." He slowly, with wary eyes at the men, hands Hilal a note and then quickly runs out of the room.  

Leon moves closer to read it over her shoulder and is there for her to fall back against when her knees go weak when she reads the words out loud. 

"I know who you and your sister are. If you want to ever see your sister again, you and your traitor husband will come to me alone or I shall return your sister to you piece by piece." Hilal trembles against him and as angry as he is with her, his instinct is still to comfort her so he tightens his grip around her, making room for the small bulge of her stomach now. God help them. 

"We'll go to the address," Yakup says. "Leon, take your wife back with the colonel and wait for us at the head-"

He feels Hilal shake her head against his chest. "If he sees you instead of us, he'll kill her. If we don't go, he'll kill her. He says come alone. If he sees you with us, he'll kill her," Hilal says, trembling against him. 

"You're not going alone. We'll stay out of sight and we'll wait for the perfect moment to take him out-" Ali Kemal insists.

"Alive," Colonel Dario reminds them. "If you kill him you'll have the whole Greek defence department after you for murdering an officer."

"Even after everything he's done?" Hilal snaps.

The older man looks at her sympathetically. "He'll face justice according to our law. Self defense is one thing, but murder is another. We do what we can to take the son of a bitch alive after saving your sister. You all agree now, or I take you all back to headquarters now and hold you there while we send our officers to try and retrieve your sister. Deal?"

Try. And they would fail. Hilal knows this and the knowledge terrifies her enough to agree. She looks back at Leon who nods, along with the other men. 

"Deal," Hilal says, the word painful as she pushes it past her throat.