HONOR, DIGNITY, AND PRIDE

Honor, Dignity, and Pride 18

CHAPTER 14: ROOM 6 — THE LOVE METER (The Secret Child)

Following the brutal horror left behind by Marut’s blood splattering onto the mirror and his lifeless body sprawled on the floor, the last two remaining partners—Boss İlkay and his wife, Sevgül—staggered, breathless, toward Room 6. The sound of the massive steel door slamming shut behind them echoed through the bunker’s walls for a long time.

This was a tall, wide vertical gallery located directly above the fertilizer factory’s boiler room. Its ceiling was shrouded in acid vapors, and its walls consisted of bare concrete. In the exact center of the room stood a giant industrial acid vat, boiling rapidly, its depth lost in pitch darkness. The sharp, acrid, blinding smell of ammonia and chemical vapors emanating from the vat tested the limits of the gas mask filters on their faces.

Directly above the vat hung two narrow steel platforms side by side in midair. The moment both set foot on them, mechanical rails moved with a high-pitched hum, securing their ankles and waists to the platforms. Beneath them lay only that lethal, boiling abyss. Suspended from the ceiling right between them was a thick, rusty steel cable with two heavy metal handles attached to either end.

The mechanical, soulless voice thundered once more from the speakers on the ceiling:

“Welcome to Room 6: The Love Meter Room. This is where the masks come off and your honor is weighed. You must hold tightly to both ends of the central steel cable using the handles. This cable is your love meter. You have exactly 10 minutes. If you let go of this cable, the system will decide what happens next. Let’s see if that shallow bunker love you hold for each other is enough to keep you suspended above this vat. The timer starts now.”

A 10:00-minute countdown began on the screen in bright red digital numbers.

Both soaked in the warm blood of the victims, their trembling hands tightly gripped the metal handles at either end of the steel cable. The cable was taut. As the hot acid vapors rising from beneath scorched their faces, tears streaming from Sevgül’s eyes washed away the blood clots on her face, trickling down toward her neck. The glamorous society queen was gone; in her place stood a helpless woman grappling with the ghosts of her past. She began to speak, looking at the bloody, battered face of İlkay, her husband of twenty years, suspended across from her. Her voice quavered through the microphone, coming through as a muffled groan:

“İlkay... Hold onto that cable, please don’t let go. I really loved you, you know that, right? Where did we give up on each other? Where was that first major fracture? Do you remember our university years? Remember those days in Ankara, sitting in that freezing student apartment, in a single room... We had nothing in our pockets but a single pack of pasta. But you used to look into my eyes in such a way that the inside of that room felt warmer to me than the most luxurious palace in the world. Back then, it was just you and me. There was no holding company, no Erman’s arrogance, no Gürkan’s disgusting acts... It was just the two of us.”

İlkay stood listening to his wife with his head bowed. The rush of blood pressure to his brain made the veins at his temples swell to the point of bursting. “I remember, Sevgül,” he muttered, his voice exhausted and faint. “But those days are long in the past.”

“They are in the past because you killed that love!” Sevgül cried out, her voice suddenly turning into an angry wail amidst her sobs. “The first fracture happened the very first day you sat in that holding company’s executive chair using my father’s money, İlkay. Power blinded you. Every time you came home, you began looking at me not as your wife, but as a business partner. You imprisoned me within the cold, fake walls of that plaza, inside the solitude of those lavish galas. While I cried all alone in that house, you were busy showing off your ‘vision’ outside, chasing billion-dollar tenders. You abandoned me! I didn’t run into Marut’s arms for pleasure, İlkay—I was fleeing from your freezing silence, from you treating me like a piece of decoration. But look, I am here... Despite everything, I am not letting go of this cable. I won’t let go of you, İlkay! Because despite everything, that child inside me from Ankara still loves you. I know that if I let go of this cable, you will fall into that vat, so even if I know I’ll die, I can't let go!”

As İlkay listened to his wife’s long, sob-filled, and loving plea, a look of immense hatred and disgust washed over his face. His expression hardened, and his jaw muscles clenched tight. The more he remembered the stock market manipulations she had pulled behind his back with Marut and that filthy, forbidden affair in the basement, the darker his heart became. He didn’t even want to look at this woman’s face anymore.

“Shut up, Sevgül,” İlkay said, his voice instantly adopting a frigid, icy tone. “I don’t want to listen to your fake expressions of love anymore. You bring me nothing but pain. For years, you robbed the holding company behind my back, and while you were signing my execution warrant beneath Marut, you never once thought about that home in Ankara. Don’t cry in front of me now. I don’t want to see you anymore; I don’t want to breathe the same air as you. Let this game end right here.”

“İlkay, what are you saying? Don’t do it, don’t let go of the cable!” Sevgül screamed.

İlkay looked into his wife’s eyes with pure hatred. In his mind, he believed that the moment he released the cable, the trapdoor beneath her would open, and Sevgül—the wife he loathed so deeply—would fall into the acid vat and be erased. He wanted to write her off in this hell with a single gesture. He narrowed his eyes and abruptly released the metal handle in his hand!

However, the system did not work as he anticipated. As the cable went slack toward Sevgül’s side, neither Sevgül’s platform opened, nor İlkay’s... The mechanical rails left İlkay suspended right there in midair, directly over the acid vat.

Kürşad was not going to let him slide away so easily with his treacherous plan. Suddenly, red text flashed on the giant screen on the room’s ceiling: “SELFISHNESS AND TREACHERY DETECTED.”

Beisdes, that mechanical, eye-for-an-eye voice boomed through the room like a sledgehammer:

“You let go of the cable to drop your wife into that vat, İlkay... You sacrificed your wife of twenty years just to save your own skin and slip away from the filth you left behind. But the scales of this court are inverted; the one who lets go of the cable prepares their own demise, not the other party’s. Still, don’t be in such a hurry. I won’t let you leave this room just like that. İlkay... Is there something you haven’t said—something you’ve hidden from everyone in this room, even your wife? Is there one last sin left that I haven’t recorded in my black book? Speak!”

Suspended in midair, İlkay twitched as the electric wires on his temples buzzed. “I have nothing to say!” İlkay shrieked, spitting into his mask. “Erman told you everything, Gürkan told you! I only protected the company’s interests! I have no other secrets! Lower me down from here!”

“You are still resisting, İlkay...” said the mechanical voice in a slightly mocking tone. “You’re still trying to wear your honorable businessman mask. Since you remain silent, then let me open the cover of that file. Years ago... Remember that woman whose path crossed yours behind locked doors in the holding rooms. Her name was Meryem... An orphaned lab technician born in İzmir. Remember her, İlkay!”

Suspended on the opposite platform, Sevgül’s eyes widened in horror. “Meryem? Who is that woman, İlkay?” she shouted.

The moment İlkay heard that woman’s name and her hometown over the speaker, he froze. The executive mask on his face fell away as if sliced by a blade. His pupils dilated wildly with fear, and sweat pouring from his forehead began dripping down his neck, seeping from the edges of his mask. He realized he could not deny it. His body shook violently as he began to sob hysterically, tears and mucus mixing into his bloodied face. He began to confess into the microphone, as if vomiting the words out:

“I did it... Yes, everything is true... I’ll tell you, please don't shock me with that electricity!” İlkay wailed, not a shred of his former arrogance remaining. “Years ago... During the holding company’s initial growth period, I met Meryem. We had a secret affair. Sevgül, I hid this from everyone because I was afraid of you and your father’s power in the holding. Meryem got pregnant... She had a daughter without my knowledge. She named her Zeynep. For years, I sent them money secretly; I rented a small house for them in one of İzmir’s outskirts using shell accounts from the holding budget.”

İlkay shook with sobs, his shirt clinging to his skin with sweat as he groaned in agony:

“But years passed... Meryem fell ill with an incurable disease. She had cancer. One day she came to the door of the holding building with my little daughter, Zeynep, in her arms... She slipped past security and snuck into my office. She fell at my feet and sobbed, ‘İlkay, I am dying, my lungs are failing, give me money for treatment, don’t abandon our daughter.’ But I... In that moment, I only thought about my own career. If this scandal got out, if it hit the tabloids, your father would pull his secret shares from the holding company, and I would be ousted from that chairman seat I loved so much. Purely out of fear of losing that chair, that power, and that money, I threw a stack of cash in front of Meryem. Shouting, ‘You will never set foot in this building again,’ I had the guards throw her out into the rain on the street!”

The tension in the room turned into an ice-cold tragedy alongside İlkay’s sobs. Sevgül looked at her husband with pure disgust.

“I left her to die...” İlkay continued, the sheer regret in his voice reverberating off every piece of steel in the room. “Meryem died in agony, groaning as her lungs rotted away because she had no money in those hospital corners and in her dingy basement apartment! My daughter Zeynep was found crying all alone beside her mother’s corpse. I took her... But I couldn't bring her near me either. To keep my reputation untarnished, I exiled her under a fake name to a dark orphanage in a remote village in Konya. That child grew up all alone in the forest for twelve years! Not once did I go to stroke her hair; not once did I hug her and say, ‘I am your father’! I buried my own child alive just for the executive chair, for my glass castle! When Can’t father tried to blow the whistle on this incident, those accounting discrepancies, and the procurement fraud, my sole aim was to prevent this secret daughter of mine from coming to light! I ruined everyone’s life because of this secret! I am a monster! I deserve the harshest punishment!”

Sobbing and crying out, İlkay admitted in full detail how he had left his own daughter and that woman to die using the power of money, laying bare the true, deep corruption behind the plot against Can. Wretched and broken, with the inside of his mask filled with tears, he beat his head against the iron rail of the platform. Deep remorse had claimed his soul. The holding boss was gone; all that remained was a pathetic scoundrel drowning in his own filth.

On the opposite platform, Sevgül hissed, looking at her husband with disgust: “I hate you, İlkay... You are a creature even more disgusting than Erman or Gürkan. A man who sells out his own child can never be a husband.”

Down in that dark control room beneath the earth, Kürşad placed his calloused finger on the red execution button. The cold, harsh light of seven years of built-up rage gleamed in his eyes. He turned on the microphone and whispered one last time: “The court has reached its verdict, İlkay. Those who sell their honor and dignity for the life of their own child shall dissolve in that acid.”

With a colossal mechanical failure, the steel platform under İlkay’s feet swung open to both sides. With a final cry full of agony, torment, and regret, İlkay plunged headfirst into that giant, boiling acid vat.

Within seconds, the sharp, sour smell of melting flesh rising from the vat filled the entire gallery. The muffled, suffocating sounds coming from İlkay’s masked microphone caused the pitch-black sludge inside the vat to pop violently. When the steel chain-rail system was pulled up a few seconds later, the only things remaining suspended in midair were the acid-shredded pieces of İlkay’s tuxedo and his bare bones, completely stripped of flesh. Nothing was left of the holding boss.

The victim of Room 6 was Boss İlkay, crushed under the weight of his own secret sins.

Sevgül’s handcuffs unlocked with a loud noise, and the platform leveled out, dropping her to the ground. Wiping away the final acidic red droplets that had splashed onto her face and her torn emerald dress from the vat where her husband had dissolved, she stood there—painted head to toe in the color of crimson sin—as the sole survivor of the entire holding executive team in the bunker.

The grand final door, the door to Room 7, opened with a heavy metallic roar. From the end of the hallway, the footsteps of Kürşad—the true executioner whose hands smelled of dirt and earthworms—began to echo. Painted in the very color of her sins, Sevgül had no choice but to walk toward that foggy light.