## Episode 5: The Bracelet and the Bloodline
**Narrated by Dilara Aslan**
I stared at him.
The hallway felt narrower. The lights dimmer. The floor beneath me no longer solid.
*"Your mother tried to run away with me."*
That sentence played in my head like a broken song.
"What do you mean?" I whispered, stepping back.
Alihan didn't move. His eyes never left mine.
"She came to see me when I was four," he said. "I didn't know who she was then. Just a woman with sad eyes and shaking hands. She held me like I belonged to her."
I couldn't speak. My heart raced, but my thoughts wouldn't form.
"She gave me this," he said.
From his pocket, he pulled out a small silver bracelet. A delicate charm shaped like a crescent moon hung at the center. I recognized it instantly.
"That was... that was my mother's," I gasped.
"I never took it off," he said quietly. "Not because I understood it, but because it felt like a piece of something missing."
Tears stung my eyes, but I blinked them away. "Why didn't she take you with her? Why didn't she take me?"
He finally looked away. "Because someone stopped her."
My father.
He didn't need to say it. We both knew.
---
I locked myself in my room after that. The walls felt like they were closing in — like my whole childhood was one carefully painted lie.
I took the letter from my mother and read it again. The words were faded, but now I understood them.
*"Love is dangerous in a house built on secrets."*
Was this what she meant?
That I was raised in a golden cage while the truth was buried under marble floors?
That my "brother" — the one I was told to hate — might have been the one person who could have saved her?
---
Later that night, I opened the old family photo albums.
Every image, every memory now looked like a puzzle missing pieces.
Then I found it.
A photo I'd never noticed before.
My mother. Sitting on a bench in the garden.
And next to her… a boy with dark eyes and a crescent moon bracelet.
Alihan.
He'd always been there.
Hidden in plain sight.
---
I left my room and walked toward the guest wing. I didn't knock.
Alihan opened the door before I touched it.
"You found the photo," he said softly.
I nodded.
"You were always meant to be part of this family," I said. "But they erased you."
He leaned in the doorway, his voice barely above a whisper. "I don't want revenge, Dilara. I just want answers."
"So do I," I replied.
We stood in silence.
Not strangers anymore.
Not siblings, not yet lovers.
Just two broken pieces of a family that never made sense.
---
The wind blew hard that night. Something in the house creaked like a warning.
Downstairs, Selma was waiting.
She held a box. Wooden. Locked.
"This came from the notary's office," she said. "Your father's private archive."
I opened it slowly, hands shaking.
Inside were documents.
Letters.
And a second will.
This one… unsigned.
Alihan and I read it together.
And what it said made my blood run cold.
---
**To be continued...**