Looking For His North Star

Chapter nineteen

Later, Nedim told him that he went a little crazy.

The mansion rose up infront of him in the faint evening light. Yaman almost swerved into a ditch before he took a sharp turn. There was no security at the gate.

Please God, don't let anything happen to them.

He darted out of the vehicle, gaping at the horrendous picture that was his home. The front door was blown off and the left wing of the mansion was caved in, like an open wound.

Yaman sagged against the vehicle, swallowing hard.

"He will bring your home, down on your head..."

Sirens echoed from behind him and he glanced back as two police cars and an ambulance turned into the mansion premises. He spied Nedim in one car- in his haste, Yaman had promptly forgotten him at the dockyard.

Not waiting for them to come out, he ventured into the ruined mansion, taking out his gun.

Yaman encountered the first body at the stairs. Shot in the head. Eyes still open, limbs splayed in an awkward angle. Arman- a man who had worked for him for nearly ten years.

He turned away, his stomach turning. A loyal man dead- just like that.

Yaman moved into the living room, which resembled nothing like the place he was used to. Everything was destroyed. There was another body here- a stranger, someone he'd never seen before.

One of Aksak's men, then.

Nedim materialized next to him, his own gun already in his hands. Yaman threw the porch door open, noticing the several bodies littering the backyard.

So much deaths. So many lives, lost for nothing.

There was an insistent voice at the back of his mind, clamouring at him to tear through the mansion and find them. Find Seher. Find the children. But he kept the voice at bay. He couldn't be rash and reckless. He had to scour through every nook, every cranny in the mansion, methodically, bottom to top.

And pray that he wasn't too late.

"Yaman..." Nedim's voice sounded behind him.

Yaman backtracked into the living room. Nedim stood frozen in the middle of the room, turning away, looking at something to his left. Yaman followed his gaze to the dining room.

Rusty patches of dried blood stained the floor. Someone was lying on the ground, face turned away and only a hand was visible, covered with a white sleeve, neatly cuffed at the wrist.

Yaman surged forward on trembling feet. The blood stains seemed to turn brighter and brighter, as he focused on the man lying on the ground.

And he was 25 again, standing in the dusty, crumbling warehouse, staring down at his dead brother's pale face, while a circle of blood dried under his head. The same bottomless void opened up inside of his chest as he fell to his knees.

"Brother!" He shouted. "Brother, open your eyes!"

Çenger was lying motionless on the ground. The front of his white shirt was stained red. Yaman lifted him up to his back, almost breaking to pieces when he felt the fluttering of Çenger's pulse under his hand, as light and fragile as moth wings.

"He's alive," Yaman gasped. "Get the medic, he's alive!"

He stood up and stepped back as the paramedics flooded into the room and heaved the wounded man on to a makeshift stretcher. They hurriedly took him outside.

"I'm going upstairs," he said, turning to Nedim. "You cover the ground with the cops."

Nedim nodded and they spread out- him going towards the pantry and Yaman moving to the stairs.