Page 111 of Ruthless

I followed his lead, clinking my glass against his. The liquid scorched a fiery path down my throat, blooming into warmth that radiated through my chest and settled low in my belly.

"When I was little," Luka said, reaching for the bread basket, "my father would let me dip bread in olive oil on special occasions." His voice carried a soft wonder, as if surprised by the memory surfacing after so long. "My mother would scold him for spoiling dinner, but he'd wink at me behind her back."

This was unprecedented. In all our weeks together, Luka had rarely spoken about his childhood, about the life he'd had before war and Prometheus had shattered it.

"You grew up in Bosnia, right?" I asked, careful to keep my tone casual despite my burning curiosity.

"A small Bosniak village," he replied, breaking off a piece of bread. "In the mountains. The kind of place where traditions mattered."

His eyes took on a faraway look, focusing on something beyond the restaurant walls. His accent thickened, vowels stretching in a way they didn't when he spoke about the present. I'd seen this before in trauma patients—the body remembering what the mind tried to forget.

"We were Muslims," he continued, dipping the bread in olive oil. "Not strict, but observant. Fridays at the mosque. Ramadan. Eid celebrations that lasted for days." He smiled faintly. "My father was the imam for our village. Respected. A learned man."

"I didn't know your father was an imam," I said softly.

"There's a lot you don't know about me," Luka replied, the usual barbed-wire defensiveness absent from his voice. In its place was something fragile and dusty, like pages from a book unopened for years. "A lot I've buried so deep I sometimes forget it exists at all."

Amina appeared with the first course—a parade of small bowls filled with an assortment of colorful spreads and vegetables. The presentation reminded me of cultural immersion exercises I'd studied in graduate school where therapists learn traditional foods to better connect with patients from different backgrounds. But this wasn'tacademic. This was deeply personal, a glimpse into the life Luka had lost.

"Meze," Luka explained, his face softening. "Family-style appetizers. That one's ajvar, a roasted red pepper spread, that's kajmak, a type of clotted cream, and those are dolmas, grape leaves stuffed with rice."

Luka spooned some of the ajvar onto a piece of bread. "Try this first. It's simple—just roasted peppers, eggplant, and garlic. But it was always my favorite."

I took a bite. It was smoky and sweet, undercut by the sharp tang of garlic. "It's delicious."

"Ana used to steal mine," Luka said suddenly, his eyes fixed on the dish. As he spoke his sister's name, a muscle in his jaw twitched. "She'd reach over when my mother wasn't looking and sneak bites from my plate."

A genuine smile spread across his face, though it couldn't entirely mask the pain that tightened the skin around his eyes. "I'd get so mad. But then she'd share her dolmas with me to make up for it, because she knew I liked them better, anyway. We had this whole underground economy at the dinner table."

My heart constricted at the casual mention of his sister. The way he spoke of her now—fond, wistful, without the crushing pain that usually accompanied her name—felt like witnessing a small miracle. But his body told a different story. His left hand had curled into a loose fist against his thigh, knuckles white with tension.

"Tell me more about her," I ventured, knowing I was stepping onto fragile ground. "About Ana."

Rather than shutting down as I half-expected, Luka's expression softened further. "She was small for her age. Fearless, though. Always climbing things she shouldn't, talking to people my mother warnedher about. She had this laugh... When she really got going, she'd snort like a little piglet. Used to drive her crazy when I teased her about it."

As we worked our way through the appetizers, he began sharing more memories, his voice growing more animated with each story. Sometimes his words would flow easily, his gestures relaxed and natural, only to suddenly tighten mid-sentence, muscles coiling as if preparing to flee or fight when a particular detail surfaced.

"Ana was always following me around," he said. "At four years old, she thought her big brother knew everything. She'd trail after me like a little shadow."

He laughed, the sound startlingly free and unguarded, though it caught slightly in his throat. "Once, she wanted to help me collect frog eggs from the pond near our house. She fell in, fully clothed. My mother was so angry at me for not watching her more carefully."

Amina returned with steaming bowls of begova corba—a rich chicken soup with vegetables and thin noodles. The moment the aroma reached him, Luka's reaction tore through his carefully constructed facade. His eyes widened, pupils swallowing the blue until only thin rings remained, and for a split second, his face transformed into that of a child—open, unguarded, stripped of the protective layers he'd accumulated over decades of survival. A single tear formed in the corner of his right eye, though he blinked it away quickly, disguising the motion by reaching for his napkin.

For that brief moment, I wasn't seeing the assassin, the weapon Prometheus had crafted. I was seeing the little boy from Bosnia, before the world shattered around him. That glimpse made my throat constrict painfully, as if someone had wrapped their fingers around my windpipe. I'd fallen in love with the killer, but seeing the child he'd been, the innocence that had been methodically stripped away, that hurt in places I didn't know could ache.

"My grandmother made something like this," I said, surprising myself with the memory. "A different recipe, but that same comforting smell."

"Food is the one thing that crosses borders without passports," Luka replied. "My mother's soup was famous in our village. People would bring her vegetables just for an invitation to dinner."

The main course arrived then. The centerpiece was a large pot of sarma, cabbage leaves stuffed with ground halal lamb and rice. Surrounding it were piles of cevapi, small grilled sausages with somun bread, a dish of djuvec, a vegetable and rice casserole, and a platter of burek, flaky pastry filled with minced meat.

"It's exactly how I remember," Luka whispered, more to himself than to me. His fingers hovered over each dish like he was afraid they might disappear if he touched them. Then his hand spasmed, a tremor running from fingertips to shoulder as his eyes glazed over momentarily. A flashback, maybe—his mind caught between then and now, between the food before him and whatever horrors followed his last taste of these dishes.

He blinked rapidly, throat working as he swallowed whatever emotion had surged up. "She used to make this for Eid al-Fitr when Ramadan ended. The whole family would come."

"Your mother?"

He nodded, serving me a portion of sarma. His hands weren't steady. Twice he had to pause, drawing a deep breath through his nose as his eyes fixed on some invisible horror hovering above the table. "Eid was my favorite holiday. Everyone dressed in their best clothes, the house filled with relatives, food everywhere." He paused, a shadow crossing his face. "The last Eid we celebrated together was three weeks before the soldiers came."

---