Maybe this Time

Chapter 3

Sometime after settling in Ankara, Ceylin had signed up for a yoga class in her limited free time. Unsurprisingly, she quickly made friends with the people who attended the same studio. It had been at one of the group's social events that she had met Mert, a young executive who immediately became smitten with her.

Even though she didn't reciprocate his feelings or expectations, Ceylin sympathized with the guy when Mert shared with her his suspicions that his company might be falling victim to a dirty corruption scheme.

Mert was the owner of small business that competed in a public tender to provide industrial laundry services to a hospital. Even though he supposedly had the best offer, one of his competitors had been awarded the contract. Upon his suspicions that someone had tampered with the process, Ceylin had agreed to legally represent him. However, doing so became unfeasible when she discovered that Crux, the winning company suspected of corruption, already did business with Tigris, which created a clear conflict of interest.

Despite the controversy, after referring Mert to another law firm, Ceylin had privately started investigating Crux on her own. Mert's business was small, so costly legal fees could limit his ability to fight back against the damage he believed he was suffering.

Ceylin knew that she could not legally use anything she might discover about Crux in court, as that would constitute a crime. But if she could be sure that Mert's suspicion was correct, it would assure her friend that he was spending his company's limited resources on an expensive lawsuit that he at least had the chance to win.

However, shortly after stumbling upon evidence of a dirty scheme between Crux and some government representatives, Ceylin was kidnapped. She had woken up just in time to see Mert's lifeless body beside her before she lost consciousness again.

After that, Professor Sinan advised her to leave Ankara and return to Istanbul. Despite being professionally hurt by the loss of one of his best employees, he had put Ceylin's well-being above his own interests and instructed her to be very careful with what she got into.

Professor Sinan was aware of Ceylin's suspicions that Crux's directors might have ordered her kidnapping. But neither Ceylin nor her teacher could understand why they hadn't gotten rid of her in the process.

"As you can see in these documents," Ceylin pointed the computer camera to the stack of papers she'd printed out earlier that day, "a huge number of companies have competed for public contracts over the last few years. After studying each tender process individually, I noticed a similarity between the companies that have won the bids for hospital services," Ceylin raised one of the dossiers. "Crux, industrial laundry... Lyra, hospital waste collection... Corona, suppliers of disposable products... and the list goes on. Circinus, Draco, Leo... can you see the pattern?" the lawyer reasoned. "They're all named after constellations. This caught my attention," Ceylin knew the moment she'd noticed the trend that the names were too similar for it all to be a mere coincidence. "So I dug deeper and discovered that Tigris not only represents all of these companies, but I was also able to trace these contracts back to just one name," Ceylin knew that what she revealed next would have a profound impact, "Deputy Cahill."

The shock was evident on Professor Sinan's face.

"You've completely lost your mind, Ceylin," the professor shook his head in denial when he heard the name of one of the parliament representative of the Ankara district. "You can't seriously insist on digging more into this. These people are too powerful. You're playing with fire, and it won't be long before you get burned."

"I don't plan to do anything now," Ceylin rushed to say. "I'm just saying there's something here, and I intend to find out what it is. How can I defend myself if I don't know what I'm up against?"