Chapter 25

As soon as he stopped the car, she burst out of it, practically ran to open the door, climbed the stairs in one breath just to enter her room, closing the door so he could not come in easily.

He followed her with the same speed. Heavily knocked on her door, but obviously she didn't open. He didn't request it twice, just smashed the door. She was waiting for him to do so because she was so calm and unwearied, waiting for his entrance in the middle of the room. 

The shade the sunlight created from her features fell over the sinful bed like a broken angel silhouette. 

Those walls were witnesses of his maltreatment that cursed night, obligating both of them on a journey of Punishment. That nightstand still held inside them the straps he used to tie her up in the other room. 

The wardrobe contained her innocent drops inside a trashy bag she chose to hold her dignity, along with his belt that was carelessly thrown by him unknowingly, had fallen over her innocence once again.

The mirror between the largest window had been a witness to her first slap and continued recording his abuse in silence. The sun, which touched the earth, had been powerless to stop the man from hurting her. Somehow, he felt ashamed of his power when he knew that in reality he wasn't powerful at all. Under his watch, heinous crimes are committed against those who are weak, poor, kids, or simply because they are women.

"Don't you ever dare to close your door again!" He yelled as his feet closed the distance, not tearing his eyes away from her fearless gaze, yet she showed zero emotion. The room felt empty in their presence, no object could hold their attention as the battle of unspoken words had begun.

"What are you gonna do, Sinbad, if I close it again and again and again…" She responded calmly, walking towards him with her arms crossed over her chest, showing a supreme attitude as she was no longer the victim of circumstances.

"You know well what I can do to you!" He smacked the table near the mirror, making her flinch just like the vase on it did.

"Then do it now," she retorted, keeping her gentle voice as she didn't move from her place that was one step away from him. Her right hand rose up, fixing her eyebrows ever so unflappably in response to his behavior.

He grabbed her hand and she immediately changed, removing her hand from his hold and pushing it towards his chest with all the force she could muster at the time. She kept charging her hands on his chest like a defibrillator until he caught them, spinning her around. Her back pressed against the balcony door, her hands above her head being held by him. Sensing her injuries, he softened his grip to avoid hurting her further.

"Why did you do that madness?" His pleading voice betrayed his angry heart, and his eyes gave away the tears he was holding back. She could feel his warmth emanating from his whole being, which only repulsed her further due to his past sins.

"You know why I did it." She wiggled in his arms and chest, searching for the freedom that he was once again forbidding.

"It has been 3 weeks since I did those horrible things to you. Let it go, please. Let me make you happy. Give me that chance." He pleaded, holding her face with his hands. She hated his proximity; he never respected her words or her wishes and now expected her to let go so easily.

Not an ounce of mercy was in her ink eyes for his tears when she grabbed his hands and put them on her throat.

"Your hands look better when they stroke my neck like you used to do." She said, putting pressure on his hands, but he quickly removed them. Her next move shocked him. She tore off the neck bandage and blood poured out. There were circular cuts resembling his fingers. His eyes almost popped with realization that her scars represented his awful touches.

"Or when you put them on my arms, leaving ugly marks for days," She yelled as she removed her arm bandage without flinching. Blood found its way to mark her white skin. She walked towards him as he walked back from her intimidating aura.

"Stop it! You are bleeding!"

He reaches his hand to stop her from hurting herself, but with no results as she had her own mind of doing things now.

"You can tighten again and again my hands or squeeze them until they get broken," 

Another heartbreaking moan comes from her lips as he brutally removes the bandage from her hands, now blood was the second skin of her body.

"I am sorry!" Was all he could manage to say while watching her in that state.

"You can slap me, belt me, rape me again and again but never dare to show care toward me. I have warned you once but it seems you are mentally retired as you keep doing it again and again,” she spoke inches away from his face. Indeed, those darker eyes were lifeless, no more light inhabitants there. She screams danger, but not for others, only for herself.

"I accept that I did everything wrong with you. I ask for forgiveness, but please stop hurting yourself my beautiful dark eyes," his voice came softly as he tried to cover her wounds. However, Sibel pushed him away, keeping her distance as her boiling anger still lingered. Now she was enraged and did not want his soothing words or his care. When she begged for mercy, he showed her hell.

"Do you remember what you said and did that night here against my will?" She questioned him, and he was speechless. That night came back as a flash before their eyes.

"I will make you beg for your death, dear wife!" She quoted and fell to her knees, bleeding before him, clasping her hands in Muslim prayer.

"I beg you to end my life, dear husband. Give your wife the peace she seeks from your hands." She pleaded with her hands raised above her head, covered in a thick scarlet liquid that still trickled, staining the carpet floor.

Immediately he came down, taking her bleeding hands over his.

"Stop doing this. I am nothing before your tears, your pain, your blood. Please let go of this hate. I will make you happy. I will live for your happiness," his words carried the truth of his heart and took care of her wounds. But she pushed him away once again.

"Kill me! End my life as you made me end my gift, my dreams," she said suddenly, showing her broken fingers that were no longer able to play the piano like before.

"What do you mean?" he said, looking at her as she rose up like a divine creature, leaving him to wallow in his own hell.

"I know everything," she said, as she bandaged her bleeding hands herself, leaving him baffled.

"Who told you?" Sinbad asked, wiping away his tears as he tried to compose himself after learning that she knew the truth he had been hiding.

"You did, that night!

<Her eyes were open! Why were they open?">

"I couldn't do that to you! I can't kill you Sibel!”

His voice trembles as again his tears fall endlessly. He was looking into her cold ink eyes, fearing the truth that could come from her.

"Why can't you do it Sinbad? Huh!

"I love you, Sibel!"

"No, Sinbad, you found out the truth. I had screamed it in your face! What you feel is redemption, regret but not love." She screamed with all her lungs.

"I have loved you since the first day you called me to give me that hat.

I hated you, thinking you hurt me and lied before the judge to live your life as I was rotting in hell. THAT hate mixed with jealousy, rage, obsession, hurt you, but I was dying inside too. I wanted to let go of my hate.

I told you when you made your request, but you refused me. That night I loved your body and you enjoyed it.

I thought it could be a start, but you left me for the dungeon,” he took a pause to breathe and wipe away some tears, as his feet closed the gap between them.

"Sinbad, Sibel died that night here, this is just a soulless body in seek of revenge toward the devil who killed her."

"Don't talk like that," He says in a slow voice, almost kissing her face.

"You have no idea what I have done to my body, I am not talking about the scars that bleed now," She said and moved away.

"What have you done other than these, Sibel?" This question comes like a whisper.

"That morning after your confession I cooked an omelet that tasted horrible but you somehow liked."

"Yes, it was horrible but still edible." He said, smiling remembering how bad it tasted.

"I took the glass and smashed it, making my hand bleed, because YOU ARE A BASTARD!" she screamed the last word but still wasn't over, the rage could be read in her eyes.

"You have no right to be good with me! Not when you hurt me without cause, you need to trust me when I was screaming my truth!" She pushed him and yelled in his face.

"I told you why I hurt you!" It was his turn to yell, but he couldn't match her intensity.

"You hurt me because it's in your nature. You wanted to make me pay for fighting for my dreams, because an Oriental woman can't have big dreams. She needs to have kids and lose herself inside the dungeon of marriage. You wanted to break me!" She yelled at him with hateful eyes as she took hold of his chin.

"WELL DONE SINBAD, GO and BRAG TO YOUR FRIENDS 'I broke Sibel Kara'" With that, she pushed his chin away as if he was worthless.

"Sibel isn't like this. Hear me out. I ended up in jail, I lost everything there..."

"I broke my gift, I smashed my fingers because for me everything was gone. If you had come 5 minutes later this time, I would have finished your work too." She interrupted his words, adding more to his sins.

He just looked at her and yes, there was no more Sibel left. 

He managed to break her, pushing her to the limit.

Having nothing to add, she changed the entire conversation, going back in time.

"If you had lost everything in that prison, how is it possible you are still intact and became the lord of the underworld?"

He approached her again, trapping her body in the corner.

"A chance, and you will be the happiest woman in the world!" He whispered on her lips, trying to soothe her anger.

Poor man, little did he know that her lava would not be so easily quenched. She pushed him again.

"Your smooth talk will not change what you did to my body, to my mind, to my heart, to my dreams! You destroyed everything!"

"Will change, isn't everything over? We are still breathing, and I will make you happy, and hopefully one day you will love me too. I promise love!" His words hold hope, but how far is this to be true, he has no idea.

"Never, because I hate you! Your breath causes me irritation, your touch disgusts me, for your fault I mutilated myself!"

Her screaming words were killing every cell in his body, but what took his concern was her last word.

"What?" He started, confused.

"Ages ago when a woman betrayed her husband, she got mutilated in her genital. I did it to myself because it felt pleasurable from your disgusting touch. I wanted to take this to the grave but you can't stop saying rubbish things. Aren't you?"

He was frozen in his spot, processing what she just said.

"You want a chance??? Well, sorry to say that you blew up your chance, dear rapist/husband. If you had saved me from those who kidnapped me, maybe things would be different now."

"What have you done?!" He wondered what she had said before, but Sibel wanted his attention, so once again she held his chin.

"20 years of living and no one dared to touch me or even look at me with bad eyes until you, Devil, came into my life. I am brave, but not that much. Where were you when they tortured me, slapped me, accused me of fucking another woman? If you had rescued me, maybe you would have had a chance, but you left me in their hands, where unfortunately everything could have been worse..."

She took a deep breath, as what she was thinking was horrible.

"Being raped by one man who is, after all, your husband, the woman's body can easily accept because I am not the first or the last to be raped by her husband, but being raped by others…” Her disgusting glare told everything about the repulsion she felt imagining the worst scenario, yet she continued to pour salt on his open wound. "What would you have done if those men had raped me? They were ten times bigger than you, they would have..."

She didn't end it as the horror of that possible event flashed before her eyes, raising the disgusting feeling for herself.

Sibel’s nails were peeling the skin of her forearms, entering a state of shock.

He stared at her broken form and his heart was again shattered.

Sinbad opened her arms, breaking her self-harming habit, hugged her but she did not respond.

"I was blind. You asked me how I became so powerful. Let me tell you.” He made her sit on the chair and knelt down, keeping her hands away from her skin. "I owe her and her grandfather all that I have. If I survived jail, it was thanks to her grandfather. I believed in her. She was my woman before I went to jail, before I even met you. When I married you, she accepted to be my lover. I had refused her two times for you. But that night, she practically did everything. I surrendered because what I was to you anyway, a rapist, a violent, a demon, a devil. You didn't want me at all, and knowing your family would come for you.

Although I was fighting in my mind, I truly believed that you lied shamelessly before the judge," his head rested on her lap, letting endless tears mix with the crimson of her blood, turning that simple blue dress into a purple one.

"I never lied!" her shallow voice echoes as he raises his head to be able to see her. She slightly moved away from his grip as he let her in the first tentative.

"Sibel Kara never lies;

Sibel Kara is the only one who declared against her father; Sibel Kara is fearless and the most trusted human being. If you wanted to know about me, you just needed to search, but you didn't want to do so because it was easier to destroy me. Right, Sinbad?" Her words hold the truth but so do his. He was manipulated, brainwashed, trained as a perfect weapon to end Emperor Ahmed Kara, but he ended up destroying her. He couldn't confess that Esra drugged him, because when he searched inside himself, he found the ugly truth. 

He could have abandoned her to her fate just to not go against Esra, but still, that was a slim possibility that he wouldn't do if he wasn't drugged. And yet, he was guilty for what happened between the first and last night.

Sibel Kara was broken beyond repair, and everyone who can see knows that now.

"If the ones that kidnapped you would have done what you said, believe me when I say the Devil himself would bow before my punishment against them, my love," he rose enough to look her in the eyes. His lips were dry, and her lips were the water he desperately needed.

"Would you kill me then?" She asked.

"I would have killed you and then myself because I swear Sinbad Melekoglu will not live in a world where Sibel Kara isn't breathing," he cupped her face, pulling her near his.

She holds his hands.

"What am I, Sinbad?"

"My love, my life, my everything karagozlerım!" He answered, breathing a smile as tears had become a waterfall from his eyelashes. She chuckled and removed his hands slowly. Left the chair and walked a few steps, waiting for him to come to his feet, then calmly spoke to him.

"I am a woman, Sinbad. Even if I did what you thought, did I deserve to be slapped, to be raped, to be belted, to be humiliated, to be thrown into a dungeon, to be left in the hands of a criminal that could very well not be like Hakan. Did I deserve to be treated like this? Would you like it if Melissa had my fate? If you had a sister, would this be normal for you? If you become the father of a girl, what would you like for her?" His answer was just looking at her and moving his head side to side.

"I am just a woman, a girl, someone's daughter, someone's sister, someone's mother in the future if I will be able to see it..."

"You will see it, Sibel! I promise I will fix everything! I swear time will be my testimony that one day, I am gonna make you love me!" He interrupted her words of nonsense, cupping her face again, pulling her near.

He whispered those words as his lips rested over hers, but soon enough she slid from his hands losing her senses.

Once again, he sent her to the hospital.

"Doctor, how is she?"

"Is something bad?" he asked, worried to death.

"She is pregnant, about 3 weeks now," the doctor declared, making a smile appear over Sinbad's face that faded rapidly as soon as he remembered how the baby was conceived.

Will Sibel accept a child from a rapist like him?

This was the question haunting his mind as his feet stopped before her door.

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