Yasmin let out a weak laugh. “It wouldn’t have worked. The ship wasn’t close enough to pull me under and its propellers were too slow once it got here. Your timing was off and now you’ll have to answer to your brother and the authorities.”

Yasmin could swear Defne paled, though it was hard to tell under the shadowed dock.

“It’s your fault,” Defne said bitterly. “If you’d just went over to the edge when I told you to, I would have led you closer to the ship. It would have worked perfectly.”

Yasmin shook her head. The girl was delusional.

A faint noise caught her attention and she lifted her head from the wooden piling and squinted in its direction. It looked like a boat and two or three people.

“Volkan!” she screamed, not daring to let go of the piling to swim closer to him. She would to wait for him to come to her. “Volkan, I’m over here!”

It took a few minutes for them to get close enough to hear her and Defne didn’t help. She’d turned her face against her wooden post and went silent.

Finally, Volkan’s strong hands gripped her and she was pulled from the water. She collapsed into the bottom of the boat, her arms wrapped around her middle. She looked up at Volkan, her lips quivering in fear. “The baby,” she whispered.

“There’s an ambulance on the way,” he said, his voice grim as he ran his hands over her, his thumb lingering against a scrape on her chin from the barnacles. “It’ll be here by the time we get you topside.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, then added, “Make sure you get Defne too.”

“No,” he said firmly. “She can find her own way out.”

Yasmin shook her head and narrowed her eyes at him. “You pull your sister out right now. You can be mad at her later, but we’re not letting her die.”

Volkan jerked his chin at Henry and a moment later a wet and shivering Defne was sitting on the bottom on the other side of the boat. Her gaze clung desperately to Volkan’s back where he was crouched next to Yasmin, his big hand curved over the back of her head, his desperate stare clinging to her face.

“Volkan…” Defne whined.

Volkan refused to look at her, watching Yasmin as he said, “If you speak to me again, one single word, I will crush the life from you. Nod if you understand me, Defne.”

Yasmin could see Defne nod, though Volkan couldn’t.

At the same moment, Yasmin gasped loudly as a tiny foot kicked her from the inside. Tears filled her eyes and she dropped a hand to her belly, where she caressed the foot that was pressed against her.

She gave Volkan a tearful smile. “I can feel the baby. I think it’s going to be okay.”

Chapter Forty-Nine