Standing before the cracked mirror in the bathroom of his rundown house in Eşrefpaşa, Yekta’s face was as white as paper from blood loss and sleep deprivation. On his neck, the primitive, thick stitches he had sewn himself using nylon thread the night before were inflamed, surrounded by an infected, purplish bruise. With every swallow, he felt the flesh on his neck pulling against itself, the piercing pain shooting into his brain and taking his breath away.
But he was the god of aesthetic perfection. And gods did not risk their cloaks of "invisibility" for minor physical pains. He had to go to work. He needed to reinforce the narrative of yesterday's unfortunate "chainsaw accident" and wear the mask of an ordinary, pathetic, and unlucky laborer at the nursery once again. He put on a clean fluorescent vest, scrubbed free of bloodstains, and wrapped his neck with a crude bandage—one that wouldn't entirely hide those hideous stitches but wouldn't draw too much attention to them either.
When he arrived at the İnciraltı Nursery, the morning's dew-scented frost lingered over the greenhouses. The smell of mud, rust, and fertilizer mingled with Izmir’s humid air.
Yekta walked slowly, dragging his feet, toward Cem, who was sitting and shivering with a tea glass in his hand. He was playing his role to perfection.
"Oh, Master Yekta," said Chief Rıza, putting his walkie-talkie on the table and looking at Yekta with concern. "Son, are you crazy? You should have gotten a medical report from the hospital. Look at your neck, it's bruised all over."
Yekta grimaced as if even speaking caused him immense agony. He laced his voice with a thick, rough Aegean accent. "I got overwhelmed staring at the walls at home, Master Rıza. Even if I don't work, I'll just stand in a corner of the greenhouse. I can't lose a day's wage; you know rent is due at the end of the month."
Master Rıza shook his head with pity. "Go sit by the stove, don't strain yourself today."
Right at that moment, a black unmarked police car entered through the nursery's heavy, rusty iron gates and stopped in front of the administrative building, splashing mud. The car door swung open sharply.
The woman who stepped out possessed a razor-sharp aura that completely didn't belong in the shabby, rough-hewn world of the nursery. With her black leather jacket, eyes bruised from lack of sleep yet gleaming with intelligence, and her uncompromising stride, Detective Aylin walked straight toward them like a hawk searching for its prey. Yekta’s eyes narrowed. The hunter inside him instantly recognized the dangerous frequency radiating from this woman.
Aylin stopped in front of Master Rıza, who was looking at her with muddy boots and a bewildered gaze. She pulled her badge from the inner pocket of her jacket and flashed it.
"Homicide, Detective Aylin," she said in a cold voice. "Who is the nursery chief?"
"That's me, officer," Master Rıza said, buttoning his jacket. "What's going on, is there an incident?"
Aylin's gaze swept over the surrounding workers, the massive greenhouses, and the pallets full of agricultural supplies. She felt no need to hide her arrogance. "Those grafting waxes," she said, cutting straight to the chase. "The clear-drying type containing pine resin and antifungal oil. How are they checked out of your logistics warehouse? Who has access to them?"
Master Rıza chuckled in surprise. "Officer, it's just wax. We buy it by the ton and distribute it to the parks by the ton. Everyone has access. The workers take it, subcontracted landscapers take it, pruning crews throw boxes of it into their vehicles. There are no locks for that kind of stuff."
"So anyone can just walk in and take it," Aylin said in frustration. Chief Inspector Selim was right; finding the genius killer she was looking for in this massive, unregulated dump was no different than looking for a needle in a haystack.
"Our killer must have done just that," Aylin muttered to herself. "He either snuck into your warehouse one night or paid off a worker here to smuggle the material out."
Sitting on the plastic chair by the stove, Yekta was biting his lip to keep from bursting into laughter. The woman was incredibly smart; she had followed the right trail and come straight to the killer's heart, the very nursery where he worked. But at the same time, she was so arrogant that she had completely convinced herself the killer was "an outsider elite who paid off workers to smuggle materials."
"You," Aylin said suddenly. She turned her gaze to Yekta by the stove and directed her steps toward him. "Were you in the warehouse last night?"
Yekta stood up slowly, feigning agony. The expensive, sophisticated scent of Aylin’s perfume mingled with the smell of blood and infection filling Yekta’s nose. For the first time, predator and prey were a mere half-meter apart, eye to eye.
Aylin's gaze caught the crude bandage on Yekta's neck and the thick, black, bloodied, and infected stitches seeping from underneath. A fleeting look of disgust and pity crossed her face. Her stomach churned.
"What happened to you?" Aylin asked, wrinkling her nose slightly.
"Work accident, officer," Yekta said. He deliberately made his voice tremble and slumped his shoulders. Hiding the bottomless, dead darkness in his eyes, he replaced it with the dull, helpless, and cowardly look of a laborer. "The chainsaw kicked back while I was pruning yesterday morning. I almost sliced my jugular. They stitched it up in the ER, but the pain just won't stop."
The profile in Aylin's mind—the genius, narcissistic, elite serial killer who committed murders with anatomical perfection—was the complete opposite of this pathetic man standing before her. In her mind, the killer was a master, capable of slicing his victim's neck in a single stroke with a precise surgical curve. This "unlucky grunt" in front of her was just a clumsy wretch who couldn't even hold a chainsaw properly and had ended up butchering himself.
Looking at those crude stitches, Aylin completely erased any suspicions she might have had about Yekta from her mind at that very moment. He was an insignificant pawn. The eye contact had lasted only three seconds, but for Aylin, it was nothing more than a waste of time.
"Get well soon," Aylin said in an icy tone, turning her back. She addressed Master Rıza. "I want the last three months of entry and exit camera footage from your logistics warehouse and a list of subcontracting firms sent to the precinct. And change the lock on the warehouse. This place has turned into a free-for-all."
Sweeping her leather jacket, Aylin stormed out of the nursery as quickly as she had arrived, got into her car, and drove off, splashing mud from her tires. Yet she would never know that the killer she was looking for wasn't in the camera footage or on the subcontractor lists, but right inside that fluorescent vest she had just looked into the eyes of and pitied.
When the car disappeared from sight, Cem let out an awestruck whistle. "Holy hell, Brother Yekta, that woman is like walking trouble. Did you see? Her eyes were shooting fire."
As Yekta sat back down on his plastic chair, he no longer felt the sting of those hideous stitches on his neck. His mind overflowed with the cold, sickly joy of this great victory. The smartest, most stubborn detective in the world had just walked right up to him, looked at his weapon, his wound, and his camouflage, but because of her arrogance, she had seen none of it.
"That she is, Cem," Yekta said softly. As he brought the cold tea glass to his lips, the dark smile of the Izmir police force's greatest nightmare appeared on his face. "Some people fly so high that they can never see the real danger lying down below in the mud."
The hunter was blind, and the prey was hungrier than ever.
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and then Add to home screen.