Zachary Solomon’s Murder in Soganlik Prison is both a family catastrophe and the origin of Inmate 37’s escape into a new identity. In a flashback framed by Mal’akh’s recollection, the killing follows Peter Solomon’s refusal to secure his son’s release through a bribe. That decision, grounded in Peter’s insistence on accountability, leaves Zachary in prison and gives a fellow inmate an opening to turn the family’s fortune into a plan for freedom.

The visit and the refused bargain

At the time of the events, the man who would later take the name Mal’akh is known only as Inmate 37. Held at Soganlik Prison near Istanbul on drug charges, he lies in his cell when a late-night conversation reaches him through a ventilation shaft. The visitor is Peter Solomon, asking whether his son is safe and being treated properly. The prison administrator answers evasively, then suggests that a payment could speed Zachary’s release, clear the charges, and spare him prosecution at home.

Peter refuses. He will not teach his son that money can erase consequences, particularly in a serious matter, and instead demands a chance to speak with him. The administrator denies that request unless Peter agrees to negotiate Zachary’s immediate release. Peter leaves without paying, warning that the State Department will be in contact and expecting his son to return home within a week. For Peter, refusing the bargain is a decision about principle and parental responsibility; for Inmate 37, overhearing it makes the limits of that principle—and Zachary’s separate wealth—part of a possible escape plan.

A scheme built around Zachary’s fortune

Inmate 37 reasons that if money is what separates a prisoner from freedom, Zachary’s money could serve him better than Peter’s. He approaches the administrator privately the next day with a proposal: Zachary must die, but the two conspirators can disappear, and the administrator can retire to the Greek Islands. They reach an agreement. The murder is therefore not presented as a sudden prison altercation but as the intended price of a coordinated escape and financial theft.

The consequences reach the Solomon family two days later, when the State Department reports Zachary’s death. Records show that his large fortune had been moved into a private numbered account and emptied immediately afterward. The administrator is identified as the prime suspect and disappears. To the family, his flight with the money appears to explain both the killing and the loss of Zachary’s assets; the account of the event later reveals that Inmate 37 had helped arrange the scheme and was the one who gained a new life from it.

Death, burial, and the escape

Peter travels to Turkey by private jet and returns with Zachary’s coffin. The family buries Zachary in the Solomon family cemetery, giving the death a formal and deeply personal aftermath even as the perpetrators evade justice. The administrator is never found. Inmate 37 knows he will not be, because the man is dead at the bottom of the Sea of Marmara. The narrative does not describe the killing in detail; it emphasizes instead the stark division between the family’s bereavement and the conspirators’ escape.

With Zachary dead and his fortune transferred to an untraceable account, Inmate 37 is free and immensely wealthy. Money buys him new identities, new passports, and the possibility of beginning again. He chooses the Greek name Andros Dareios, leaves the prison and drug world behind, and settles on Syros Island. There he enters a life shaped by wealth, leisure, reading, and strenuous physical training. His reinvention follows the prison ordeal: he vows never to return, and constructs a self radically different from the incarcerated man who had listened through the ventilation shaft.

Significance and revelation

The flashback reverses the apparent meaning of Peter’s refusal. His choice is intended to uphold accountability rather than let money purchase an exemption, but the scheme exploits that choice and turns Zachary’s fortune into the means of his father’s loss. The event also changes the reader’s understanding of Inmate 37: he is not merely a prisoner who benefits from the administrator’s disappearance, but the planner who proposes Zachary’s death as the condition of their escape. The identity he later builds as Andros Dareios begins in that calculation, linking the family’s bereavement to the emergence of the man who will become Mal’akh.