The Billionaire's Club

24. Stay

When they got home, Demir walked them out to a spot in their shared garden space. Although it was still bright outside, the fairy lights were on, giving the whole atmosphere a magical kind of quality. Selin perched herself on the edge of the outdoor furniture and Demir noticed how frail she looked; she needed food. 

"Wait here, I'll go make some tea." Selin simply nodded, dazing off into a world of her own until Demir came back with tea and snacks. She had been thinking about what course this impending conversation was going to take and was suddenly derailed by the smell of toast. Demir had come back out with breakfast on a tray; his green smoothie in tow. "Please eat something." 

"I'm ... not hungry." Selin hesitated at first but her stomach betrayed her, rumbling so loud it made her blush. Sheepishly, she picked up a piece of bread and chewed at it slowly, her eyes avoiding Demir's. 

"Selin, look." Demir had been wracking his brain for days, trying to find the best way to go about this conversation. He didn't know how to explain it to himself, let alone make her understand it. It was a whirlwind and all he could do was start from the beginning. "Will you let me tell you everything, from the beginning? No interruptions, no nothing - I just need you to listen ... Can you do that?" 

"Yes." With a deep inhale and exhale, Selin prepared herself for a story that she did not know the end too. She was scared and inevitably, her heart began to speed up within her chest. However, she knew this conversation needed to be had - she needed answers and by the panicked look on Demir's face, it seemed he needed to give them. 

"I wasn't lying when I said my relationship with my parents is a mess. Dad didn't care about anything other than work and Mum blamed me for ruining her social life. It was why Vedat and I-" 

Demir saw Selin open her mouth and he confirmed what she was going to ask before she even could. "Yes, my best friend - we were raised by my nanny and we absolutely adored her." 

Demir smiled as he thought of Mother Firuze and Selin made a mental note to ask him more about his nanny in the future. "But as soon as I hit my teenage years, Dad started to show more of an interest in me ... I was old enough to learn about the family business, the stuff below the surface, the stuff no one else sees ..." 

Conventionally that meant starting an internship, sitting in on meetings, studying finance and economics ... what Demir experienced was far, far from that. "Selin, my Dad is not a good man-"

At first, Demir had always thought his Dad was absent because he was building this monumental business empire. He excused the way his Dad was because he was overworked and underappreciated; however, as soon as Demir became a teenager, the blindfolded was lifted off of his eyes. "The things I saw ... the things I've had to experience-"

As Demir closed his eyes, he saw blood and he could hear the screams that had haunted him for years. He remembered it as if it were yesterday - the first day his Dad had exposed him to torture. There had been a deal that had gone wrong and Behram was punishing a man for messing it up. Demir could still smell that dampness from the dungeon, he could hear the slash of the whip, those blood-curdling pleas ... the thought of it all made him choke up. The words got stuck in the back of his throat and Selin leaned forward, taking his hands tenderly into her own. 

"It's okay, Demir." Although they had both agreed to no interruptions, Selin's reassurance was exactly what Demir needed at that moment. Feeling her delicate hands caressing his own was like a surge of courage that had been jolted through him. "You can tell me." 

"Behram Erendil is a cruel man, Selin. The only reason we have so much money is-" Again, Demir's words caught and he had to pause to compose himself. This was the first time he was admitting the truth out loud. "It's because we step on the backs of others - drugs, illegal armaments sales, the prostitution trade - Dad has helped it all."