Untamed Love

CHAPTER 14 - The Cezaevi

The Cezaevi was the town's prison. It was a big brown wooden house located behind the city hall. Mahalle was one of the biggest towns in the forest but was a peaceful one, with very few crimes or infractions to the law. That was why their prison was quite small with only twenty to thirty cells. Nevertheless, as with all prisons, people would rather be outside than in, especially since the people of the Orman valued their freedom to come and go, and be in nature as much as they valued their own lives.

Sanem walked silently between the houses, stopping from time to time to make sure she wasn't being followed, or to hide when she heard people approach. Thankfully no one saw her and after a few minutes she found herself behind the City Hall. From her spot, she could see the guard surveying the surroundings. She waited patiently for Bulut to come, and sure enough, after another twenty minutes he finally appeared.

The two men chatted animatedly and joked around from what she could hear. The sound of their laughs increasingly made her more irritated. She tried to calm down since she knew her friend was doing it so as not to raise suspicions but still. She could barely hold herself in. Her only wish was to finally be able to go in and see the innocent man kept inside. She continued to watch as the two men walked down the stairs side by side. They talked about something before their attention and Sanem's were caught by a loud screeching sound on the other side of the building.

The boys.

Sanem smiled when she saw the two men run towards the source of the sound. She waited a bit and finally moved when she saw Bulut's quick nod and hand sign. She quickly and silently ran to the house, opened the wooden door and found herself in the hall. She stopped to take in the place. She had only ever been there once when she was a child as part of the town visit they used to make when they were 7. Other than that she had had no other reason to be there.

As much as she could recall, the cells were somewhere at the back of the house, up the stairs that she could see behind the main counter. She walked there quickly, making sure that nobody was there then practically ran up the stairs. Everything was so quiet compared to outside where the noises of the campfire filled the air. Here, silence reigned, engulfing her, making the pounding of her heart resonate loudly from her chest.

When she got to the first floor, she looked for any indication that he might be there. She went to the security desk and looked for the book that she knew they kept with the name of all the prisoners. She opened one drawer after the next but didn't find it. She quietly closed it before she went to the second floor. She did the same thing on that floor and finally found it. She scanned the lines but his name wasn't written anywhere. It was logical when she came to think of it since everything had happened so suddenly.

Therefore, after making sure to put the book away, she resolved to go look for him in every single cell. She started with the second floor, opening the iron gate carefully and stepping in the hallway. Most of them were empty on that floor, but the couple of ones that weren't made her heart heavy when she saw how lonely the people seemed to be, looking out the window at the night sky or sleeping under a thin duvet. She shook her head: now wasn't the time to think about it. She would have to push this at the back of her mind for later.

She did the same thing for the first floor with the same result. She started to get worried, wondering where they had put him. Then, she remembered something Bulut had told her one day about a special room where they usually put the biggest criminals. She frowned. Surely they couldn't have put him there. Right?

She went up the stairs again but this time she found the ones leading to the third and final floor: the attic. She tried opening the heavy door hiding them but it was locked. After a bit of looking around, she found the keys and hurriedly unlocked it. She unlocked the second door at the top as well and entered the room.