Chapter 7

Deniz was very afraid of Alia's brother; Akin was an eight-year-old child, but he was fiercely protective of his sister from Deniz, pushing him away immediately whenever he saw him close to her and sometimes threatening him.

Ethan smiled at his son's grumbling and pouting lips; he knew Akin too, and fully realized that he couldn't stand Deniz, yet he noticed his fake behavior and politeness toward him whenever his father was nearby.

"You, Meral, say something too. Can't Alia come live with us? Don't married people live in the same house? Or Dad, take Alia with us as a sister, I enjoy playing with her so much," Deniz said, appealing to Meral for rescue.

"I am exercising my right to remain silent, my dear Deniz."

"Son, let's discuss this topic later."

Deniz furrowed his brows in anger as Ethan evaded him; for he knew his son wouldn't keep quiet if he opened this door with him.

"But you took Meral, Dad! It doesn't matter, I want Alia too. I don't want to play with Meral, but with Alia." Deniz said, crossing his arms in silence and a pout. And because he didn't grasp the concept of marriage, he viewed Meral as his father's friend, and since Alia was his friend too, there was no harm in the two of them living in the same house according to his way of thinking.

Time and time again, despite the enjoyable times he spent with Meral, he still wanted to be around his peers; apart from school, he didn't have many friends, and Alia would come to visit her grandmother sometimes, while otherwise he was alone the whole time, and his loneliness was amplified by the lack of siblings.

Ethan understood his son's feeling of loneliness, but he had nothing to do about it; children didn't go out much given that they lived in gated residential compounds, and due to everyone being busy with screen devices in this era, children seemed to have vanished from the streets.

And because Meral considered technology unhealthy, she didn't leave the tablet or phone in Deniz's hands for long, and Ethan didn't object to her stance since he agreed with it. However, their daily hour-long outing with Meral began to become insufficient for the child.

Because of this situation, Meral brought up the topic of having a child with Ethan once more, but the latter showed a reaction harsher than usual; he definitely did not want another child, Deniz was enough for him, and the idea of having children with Meral did not appeal to him; his child from the woman he loved was enough for him and more than enough.

---

When Ethan glanced sideways at Meral, he found her simmering in her place with instability; the extent of the tension the young woman was experiencing was completely clear. He said nothing to her so as not to increase her anxiety and cause her to embarrass herself further. All he wanted was to get through this night without problems and resume their lives from where they left off.

As for Meral, she was growing insanely tense; she hadn't gone out properly except to go to the store for a long time, and stomach cramps kept assaulting her, pouring cold sweat over her.

As soon as they arrived at the venue, Meral hurried to throw herself outside; she felt a sense of relief whenever the cool breeze hit her, so she constantly began reciting calming phrases to herself—after all, it was just a dinner in the end, and there was nothing to warrant fear or tension.

"Come on, let's go inside." Prompted by Ethan's warning, they all entered an elegant establishment.

Ever since Meral entered the place, she hadn't raised her head upward; she didn't want to see mocking gazes at the moment, but rather wanted this dinner to end as quickly as possible so she could catch her breath comfortably at home.

"Meral, you're hurting me."

Until that moment, Meral hadn't realized she was squeezing Deniz's hand out of intense tension; she had lost control of her actions and didn't mean to hurt him, and her conscience felt a pang of guilt for her involuntary movement.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it." She said this as she relaxed her grip. Her tension was not a good omen, and she was sure some disaster was about to happen; apparently, every time she grew tense, she lost control of her limbs and started committing blunders.

Whispers began rising from the entrance door; Meral wanted to close her ears so she wouldn't hear them, but she couldn't. She turned to Deniz because of the heavy pressure on his hand; he looked at her with sincerity and affection, and she smiled with a heart overflowing with warmth at the child's gesture, as her tears nearly spilled in support of him.

As for Ethan, he had been intensely annoyed by the looks directed at Meral ever since they entered; the people whispering to each other and laughing were laughing at Meral as if something were extremely funny. When they sat at the table reserved for the manager, he gave a brief greeting.

"Hello, Ethan."

Ethan replied to Merv with a cold greeting and turned his face away from her; he was not ready to tolerate her now.

Merv was astonished when she saw the woman beside Ethan, expecting his real wife to attend.

Meanwhile, from the beginning of the dinner, Meral remained detached from any conversation and focused entirely on Deniz, carefully removing fish bones and feeding them to him since he couldn't eat them on his own, and Deniz ate with relish because he liked it a lot. The woman smiled at this scene; Deniz had recently become the source of her happiness, and despite hearing some biting remarks from him occasionally, she also felt his love for her.

"Pardon me, exactly what relation are you to Mr. Ethan?"

At Merv's question, Meral stopped feeding Deniz and gave the woman a quick look despite her embarrassment. She looked at her with dignity, wearing a navy blue dress. She admired the woman's beauty and compared it to herself; her mother had always told her she was beautiful, but she used to think she was lying, and today she wished she had been telling the truth for once.

Her hair was chestnut brown and her eyes were light brown, and she was a woman of medium height with fair skin that she didn't always like; her face, which turned red the moment she felt shy, never helped her hide her feelings, exactly as it was right now.

Merv was deeply saddened that Ethan's wife hadn't attended this dinner, having shopped out of curiosity to find out what kind of woman Ethan had married a long time ago. She had hoped to see her today, but Ethan had come to the dinner accompanied by his child's nanny! She only asked about the woman's identity to open a conversation.

Meral stared blankly at the dark-haired woman in front of her with a strange dullness, even though the question appeared simple on the surface.

"I'm h-his wife."

And why on earth did her voice tremble like that? Meral cursed herself.

As soon as the woman in front of her heard that Meral was Ethan's wife, she unintentionally spat out the water in her mouth, spraying it onto Meral. Meral's face took on an expression of disgust from the water that hit her, and she stood up from her seat, feeling repulsed.

---

If only she hadn't stood up! A waiter carrying a tray of dessert spilled a cake mold directly onto Meral, not expecting the woman's sudden rise.

While everyone glared at Meral with mocking laughter, Meral no longer knew what she was doing out of sheer embarrassment. Her clumsiness had come back to haunt her, and what she had officially feared had happened.

As for Ethan, he wanted to sink into the floor out of intense embarrassment at Meral's clumsiness; everyone was laughing at her while she groveled in apology despite not being at fault, which drove him even more crazy. She had merely dropped the dessert and was acting submissively as if she had committed murder.

"I'm really sorry, I think I need to go to the restroom." With that, she said her piece and ran away from the spot; had she stayed there any longer, fainting from the shame of the scandal would have finished her off.

Merv hurried after Meral, feigning a desire to help.

"Dad, what happened?" Deniz asked with eyes filled with confusion.

Ethan did not answer Deniz's question; he was breathing heavily with fury. True, he had laughed at first when Meral dropped the dessert out of amusement, but he stopped laughing the moment he saw the tears on her face. When his gaze shifted to his father, he found him with a red face, clenching his fists in intense fury and breathing deeply.

"My boy, I understand very well now why you didn't want to bring your wife."

Ethan turned angrily toward Serkan in response to his sarcastic remark; Serkan was a colleague of his working in the company's accounting department and he couldn't stand him at all.

"Shut up!"

"Alright, my friend, I didn't say anything much."

When Serkan saw Ethan's anger, he chose not to push the provocation further and turned to talk to the manager.

As for Meral, she didn't know whether to cry over being stained with dessert or over the scandal she had been subjected to; she had unintentionally disgraced herself and disgraced Ethan along with her. Her clothes were clinging to her and smelling of chocolate from every direction.

She began trying to remove traces of chocolate and cream from her hair, and when she saw a tissue extended before her eyes, she raised her gaze to find the owner of the tissue.

It was the very same woman who had asked her the question at the table. She took the tissue with a word of thanks and began cleaning her clothes.

"I'm truly surprised, actually."

Because Meral didn't understand the woman's intent, she felt the need to ask, so she turned her body toward her and looked at her with incomprehension.

"I didn't understand?"

"I mean Ethan, how could he possibly marry you?"

Meral smiled with the blissful dullness of a lover at Merv's question, looking at her with a flushed face, failing to catch the sarcastic tone in the woman's voice due to the tension of the moment.

"Everything happened very fast, but we love each other very much." She said it without being able to stop her smile, or at least that was how she felt, recalling the day of their first wedding and how happy she was on that day.

Merv couldn't help but laugh mockingly at Meral's behavior.

Meanwhile, Meral thought she hadn't said anything funny, and wondered why the woman in front of her was laughing like that.

"I never expected to laugh like this at all, you're truly naive! Until today, I thought the reason Ethan didn't bring you to the business dinner was because he wanted to protect you even from people's gazes, but I see it's not like that."

"What on earth are you hinting at?!"

Meral tried to control her tone of voice but failed, so her voice came out higher than usual, but that no longer mattered; she had to know what this woman's problem was. She cast a dark, uncomprehending look, for the woman was looking at her as if she were an insect beneath her feet.

"What I'm saying is completely clear, actually, but it seems your comprehension capacity is very low; the real reason Ethan didn't want to bring you along is that he feels ashamed of you—you don't suit him at all!"

"But I'm with him now! And if he didn't want me by his side, he wouldn't have brought me today, right? Which means he sees me as suitable for him!"

Meral smiled joyfully, believing she had silenced the woman; she didn't want to allow this woman to humiliate her, and she had indeed cornered her, or so Meral thought.

"Let me tell you why he brought you along: the manager made it very clear that spouses must attend too, and if he hadn't brought you, he would have disobeyed the manager's order."

Merv looked with amusement at Meral's shattered face. So what then? Did she really think Ethan had invited her to this dinner of his own free will? What a pathetic woman!

Meral didn't want to cry; she didn't want to cry or appear weak in front of this woman, but she couldn't restrain herself, and her tears betrayed her, falling one after another in silence down her cheeks.

Realizing she could no longer remain here, Meral rushed out of the restroom, feeling as though she couldn't breathe from crying so much. She had taken many harsh words throughout her life, but she had never heard anything quite this cruel. She felt like the ugliest creature on the face of the earth, and whenever she remembered the woman's insulting words and the mocking gazes of the people at the dinner, she sank into fits of sobbing.

As for Ethan, he had begun to feel anxious because Meral still hadn't returned; perhaps she had gotten into a new trouble, and this anxiety was heightened by the fact that Merv hadn't returned either—he never trusted Merv, and her behavior was unpredictable.

Deniz was nowhere to be seen either, and Ethan was so angry that he hadn't noticed his son leaving the table; he had likely gotten absorbed in playing with the children.

He couldn't focus on the conversations going on at the table; his mind was entirely fixed on Meral.

Ethan noticed his child when he came running, pushing his sweat-matted hair back, and Deniz looked somewhat worried, which made Ethan certain that something was amiss.

"What is it, Deniz?" he asked in a calm voice, not wanting to show his anger to his son, even though his hurried state frightened him.

"Daddy, Meral is crying," Deniz said in a sad voice, and the young man nearly understood what had transpired.

"Deniz, you go to Meral and I'll follow you."

Deniz nodded in agreement with his father and ran toward Meral, who was huddled near the wall, pulling her legs to her chest and sobbing. What she had experienced today was too heavy for her to bear, and Deniz stood confused, not knowing what to do in front of this sight, so he sat beside her and began patting her back since there was nothing else he could do.

"Don't cry, Meral, I promise I won't call you a panda again."

---

As for Merv, she looked mockingly at the girl who had run away crying, believing the truths were too heavy for her to bear, and whispered to herself, "Poor thing." Not wanting to occupy her mind with these absurdities any longer, she pulled out her makeup bag and began freshening up her cosmetics. When she noticed the complete absence of any makeup on Meral's face except for the lipstick, she smiled mockingly once more; a woman cares about such a night, even if just a little, but it seemed her stupid brain didn't help her think of that. She couldn't deny that her skin looked beautiful and pure despite wearing no makeup, but what was the effort after she ended up with such massive cheeks...

After carefully applying the matte red lipstick to her lips, she snapped the cap on the pen and tossed it into her bag, tossed her hair however it fell to inspect herself in the mirror with admiration, and after gathering her cosmetic tools and throwing them into the bag, she walked out of the restroom.

As soon as she stepped out of the bathroom, her wrist was grabbed tightly and she was pulled violently. She tried to free her wrist but couldn't at all due to her lack of strength, and the moment her back slammed harshly against the wall, she looked in astonishment at the person who had pushed her this way, as Ethan's voice erupted in anger and fury:

"What is wrong with you, idiot... what on earth did you say to her?!!"

Merv trembled and her eyes widened in terror at his appearance, and she stammered:

"E-.. Ethan..."