Prologue
A couple of years from now
He is walking toward his own death, and he is happy.
That is the thing that will haunt the woman who loves him most. The way he must have felt the cold rain on his face and thought of her. The way he would have rehearsed what he was going to say to his best friend in the alley behind the Grand Bazaar, the words coming easily because he trusted that man the way he trusted gravity, without argument, without proof.
His name is Arda Yilmaz. He is a lawyer. He is a husband. He is a father, and in this moment, walking through the wet, amber-lit streets of Istanbul with a manila envelope tucked under his arm and the night rain softening the edges of the world, he believes that justice is in the end prevails. He believes it is something that can be held in the hands, carried through the dark, and delivered to those who need it most.
He believes this because a man named Altan Demir taught him to believe it.
He is wrong about that. But he doesn’t know it yet. And in not knowing it, walking through the rain with a full heart, he is briefly, perfectly, luminously alive.
The alley is dark. A single streetlamp flickers at its dead end. A silhouette waits beneath it, hands in pockets, the collar of a dark leather coat turned against the weather.
Arda raises a hand in greeting.
The silhouette does not wave back.
This is the story of how they got there.
