The animal smelled of fear and infection.
Dilara pressed her stethoscope against the goat's chest, listening to the ragged breath that rattled like stones in an empty well. The animal's leg was swollen twice its normal size, the skin hot to touch, the flesh underneath already dying.
"Since yesterday, she hasn't moved it at all." The farmer's wife stood behind her, voice thin with worry. "The veterinary doctor in the next village said she'd be fine. Gave her an injection. Said the stiffness would go away. But look at her."
Dilara didn't look at the woman. She looked at the goat. At the eyes that watched her with that particular trust animals had—the trust that said you can help me.
She hated that trust.
"The injection site is infected," Dilara said. Her voice came out flat, professional. The voice she'd perfected over years of treating animals whose owners couldn't afford proper care. "And there's nerve damage. I'll need to keep her for observation. Maybe surgery, if the infection spreads."
The woman's face crumpled. "Surgery? How much will that—"
"We'll figure something out." Dilara cut her off, already reaching for antibiotics. "Leave her with me. Come back tomorrow evening."
She didn't watch the woman leave. Didn't want to see the hope or the fear or the desperate gratitude. She focused on the goat, on the syringe in her hand, on the precise amount of medicine the animal needed.
Don't get attached. They're patients, not pets. Not family.
She'd learned that lesson seventeen years ago, when she was six years old and the people who should have loved her tried to bury her alive.
The goat bleated softly. Dilara's hand tightened on the syringe.
"Shh," she murmured. "I'm helping you. Stop making it weird."
---
The clinic was small—just two examination rooms, a cramped office, and a recovery area with four cages. Dilara had built it herself over the past three years, with money saved from working at other clinics and a small loan Aziza had quietly arranged. Ayla Pet Care, she'd called it. Named after no one. Named after nothing.
Just a name that sounded like it meant something.
She finished with the goat and moved to the next patient—a cat with a broken leg, brought in by a teenage boy who couldn't stop crying. The cat would live. The leg would heal. The boy would learn that animals broke and mended and sometimes broke again.
Just like people.
By the time she locked up for the night, the sky had gone dark and the street outside had emptied. Ankara at night was a different city—quieter, older, full of shadows that remembered things. Dilara walked the three blocks to the bus stop, her bag heavy with files she'd take home to review, her mind already elsewhere.
She didn't notice the black car that followed her at a distance. Didn't see the man in the passenger seat watching her through tinted windows. Didn't know that her picture sat open on his phone, with a single message beneath it:
Found her.
---
Aziza was waiting when she got home.
The Liederm mansion rose behind her like a monument to everything Dilara wasn't supposed to be—grand, legitimate, proud. She'd lived here for seventeen years, ever since Aziza pulled her from that grave, and still it felt like someone else's house.
"You're late." Aziza's voice held no accusation. Just observation.
"Goat with an infected leg. Cat with a broken leg. The usual." Dilara dropped her bag by the door. "Is there food?"
"In the kitchen. I'll warm it up."
Dilara followed her through the marble halls, past portraits of Liederm ancestors who stared down at her with cold, painted eyes. None of them looked like her. None of them ever would.
In the kitchen, Aziza moved with practiced efficiency, heating the food, setting out plates. Dilara watched her—this woman who had saved her, raised her, loved her without ever being asked to. Aziza wasn't her mother. Could never be her mother. But she was the closest thing Dilara had.
"A letter came for you today," Aziza said casually. Too casually.
Dilara's fork paused mid-air. "From who?"
"A lawyer. In Bremen."
The name hit her like cold water. Bremen. Where Baran Liederm had spent eighteen years hiding from his family. Where her uncle—the one who'd never come back, never written, never called—had built a life without her.
"What does he want?"
"I didn't open it. It's addressed to you."
Dilara took the envelope from Aziza's outstretched hand. Her name, written in careful script. No return address. Just the postmark: Bremen, Germany.
She didn't open it. Couldn't. Not yet.
"What do you think it says?" she asked, hating the smallness in her voice.
Aziza sat across from her, eyes kind but steady. "I think he's coming home."
The words landed like stones in Dilara's chest. Home. Baran hadn't been home in eighteen years. Hadn't been there when Ibrahim died. Hadn't been there when Dilara was buried. Hadn't been there for any of it.
"Why now?"
"Maybe he's ready to face the truth."
"What truth? That I exist? That his brother had a daughter no one wanted?" Dilara's voice rose despite herself. "That my own grandfather tried to kill me and your family let him?"
Aziza reached for her hand. Dilara let her take it—a small surrender, a tiny crack in the wall she'd spent years building.
"The truth about your mother," Aziza said quietly. "About Ayesha. About why she really died."
Dilara's breath caught. Her mother was a ghost—a story no one would tell fully, a wound no one would let heal. Ayesha Masood, daughter of the Masood family, lover of Ibrahim Liederm, mother of an illegitimate child. Dead before Dilara could know her.
Dead, everyone said, in an accident.
But accidents didn't explain why no one would talk about it. Why the Masoods and Liederms both went silent whenever her name came up.
"What about her?"
Aziza's grip tightened. "Baran knows things. Things he couldn't say before. Things he couldn't prove." She paused. "But now he can."
Dilara pulled her hand away. The envelope sat on the table between them like a bomb waiting to explode.
"I don't need his proof," she said. "I don't need anything from him."
"Maybe not. But you deserve the truth."
The truth. Such a simple word for something so complicated. Dilara had spent seventeen years not knowing who she was, where she came from, why her existence made people want to bury her. And now, in this envelope, maybe the answers waited.
Or maybe just more questions.
She picked up the letter. Weighed it in her hand. Light. Insignificant. Capable of changing everything.
"I'll read it later," she said, and slipped it into her pocket.
Aziza nodded, understanding. They finished their meal in silence, the letter a third presence at the table. When Dilara finally went to her room, she placed it on her nightstand, unopened.
And lay awake all night, staring at it.
---
In the black car parked three blocks away, the man in the passenger seat made a call.
"She's home. Liederm mansion."
"Any sign she knows?"
"Doesn't look like it. But the lawyer's letter arrived today. She hasn't opened it yet."
A pause on the other end. Then: "Watch her. If she opens it, if she starts asking questions—"
"I know what to do."
The line went dead. The car stayed where it was, engine off, waiting.
Waiting for Dilara to learn the truth about her mother.
Waiting for the moment when everything would change.
---