The Price of Pride

Chapter 22

Part III

Istanbul. The place she thought she had escaped from. Yet here she is again. The past few months in Ankara had seemed like a fairy tale. She thought she and Emir were living their happily ever after. She had convinced herself she'd never have to worry about Cavidan Tarhun again. Turns out she was only fooling herself.

Fortunately for Reyhan, "back to Istanbul" did not mean back to the Tarhun estate. They will be spending a considerable amount of time there, due to the nature of Hikmet's illness, but they won't be living there. They will be living with Emine and Murat in their palatial estate. A home so large it makes even Emir's eyes goggle.

"This place is huge," he whispers to Reyhan, laughing at the irony. "My mother would die of envy knowing we're living here."

"Then it's probably best we don't tell her," Reyhan whispers back, trying not to lose track of where they are as they take an impromptu tour around the place. The estate really is huge. It is comprised of six different wings, each wing basically its own home. Emir and Reyhan will have their own wing.

"Feel free to decorate this place anyway you like. Consider it your home," Emine says, giving them huge smiles. "I'm just so happy this house will finally have some life again. You're going to be very busy, Reyhancığım. We can take our time with the nursery. But we can get people in here immediately to work on the room for our Princess. Isn't that right, Princess Ayla?"

Reyhan just shakes her head. She thought the move was going to be hard on Ayla, moving to a whole new city and everything, but she's super excited. The girl is taking the change like a champion. Reyhan is finding that Ayla has an adventurous soul. She seems to thrive under even some of the most challenging circumstances. This move is just another adventure to her.

They take the rest of the day to get settled and decide to go see Hikmet early the next day. Emir and Reyhan are both anxious to see him, but even flying in on Murat bey's private plane made the trip tiring for Reyhan. Her prior illness makes the pregnancy a bit higher risk than normal, so they didn't want to take any chances with her health. It's going to be hard enough to see Hikmet so sick as it is. Not to mention having to face Cavidan. Emir doesn't want Reyhan to face so much stress in one day.

But morning comes and Emir knows he can't delay the visit any longer. Standing outside of his family home, he takes Reyhan by the hand.

"Are you ready?"

She bites her lip and gives a small nod. He knocks on the door.

"Emir? Reyhan? Come in, Çocuklar!" Melike says when she opens the door to them. They decided to keep the visit a secret so no one was expecting them. But this welcome from Melike warms their hearts.

She hugs them both, almost forgetting to close the door. She puts her hands on both their faces in turn to "get a good look at them" before declaring them both too thin and promising them a dinner full of their favorites.

"Slow down," Emir laughs. "We actually came to see Baba. We heard about what happened to him."

"Ah yes," Melike nods, her mood sobering. "Terrible accident. It's still a mystery what happened."

"Why didn't anyone tell us sooner?" Reyhan asks. "We wouldn't have known if Kemal abi didn't call."

"We can save the questions for later," Emir says. "Let me go see him now and we can talk about what happened later."

"Emir," Reyhan protests.

"We talked about this," Emir reminds her. "I go in first. That was always the plan. Amca warned us that it's hard to see him like this. I don't want this to be too stressful for you."