Page 48 of Ruthless (The Ferrymen #1)

The Serbian flag outside the restaurant rippled in the evening wind. My jaw clenched, molars grinding as I imagined ripping it down with my teeth.

Not just one flag. Three of them, hanging from brass poles like declarations of victory over my dead family. Red, blue, and white—the colors of the people who had executed my parents, who had burned our Bosniak village to ash. The sight of them made something feral claw at the inside of my chest.

"You're hurting me," Vincent murmured, and I realized I'd been crushing his fingers.

I loosened my grip but didn't let go. His pulse fluttered against my palm like a trapped bird, anchoring me to the present instead of the past that lived in my blood.

The restaurant breathed expensive Serbian cuisine into the evening air. The scent of roasted meat and paprika made my stomach twist. The same foods my mother had cooked in our Bosniak village, claimed as Serbian culture after they slaughtered our people .

Ana. The name burned through me now. Ana wasn't dead. Ana was waiting inside with the man who'd stolen her memories and replaced them with lies. Ana was his wife.

"I still can't believe she's alive," Vincent said quietly.

"She's alive, and she doesn't know me." I echoed the words. "Twenty-six years thinking she was dead, and she's been with him the entire time."

Vincent squeezed my hand. "We'll get her back, Luka. I promise."

The promise hung in the air like smoke. How do you get someone back who doesn't know they're lost?

"Mr. Mercer's party?" The hostess appeared, eyes darting nervously around the empty restaurant. "Right this way."

Lo stepped forward, hand already drifting toward his knife. "We go where he goes."

"I'm afraid Mr. Mercer requested a private dinner." A man materialized beside the hostess.

"It's fine." I lied, instincts screaming danger. "Wait at the car. If we're not out in two hours—"

Lo's voice brightened like Christmas morning. "I'll burn this place to the fucking ground."

The hostess led us through the empty restaurant. No other diners. No witnesses. Just us and Prometheus's men, watching from shadows as we approached the private dining room at the end of a narrow hallway.

Prometheus stood as we entered. Every muscle in my body locked tight, fight-or-flight flooding my system.

"Dr. Matthews. Luka. I'm so pleased you could join us."

He extended his hand. I forced myself to take it, his grip exactly as I remembered—firm enough to establish dominance, cold as a corpse .

My skin crawled. Some animal part of my brain screamed to bite, to tear, to do anything except stand there like a good weapon waiting for orders.

"Please, sit. My wife is just freshening up." He smiled like we were old friends, like he hadn't carved me hollow and filled me with violence.

We arranged ourselves around the table. Me with my back to the wall because paranoia had kept me alive this long. Vincent sat beside me, close enough that I could feel his warmth through our suits.

Crystal glasses caught the candlelight as he poured wine. "A Barolo," he announced. "2009. From a small vineyard outside Milan."

Milan.

The word slammed into my gut. The suite. The champagne that tasted like flowers and GHB. The ceiling spinning while he taught me that bodies could betray you in ways that felt like dying.

The crystal stem creaked under my grip, hairline fractures spreading through the glass. One more pound of pressure and it would shatter, and maybe I could use the shards to open his throat.

"Is there a problem?" Prometheus asked, and I could hear the satisfaction underneath his concern. He knew exactly what he was doing. Every detail of this dinner had been choreographed to cut me in places that never quite healed.

"I don't drink Italian wine." The words came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep. "Not anymore."

"Ah. Well, perhaps my wife can recommend something more to your taste." He took a slow sip, eyes never leaving mine.

The door opened.

"Perfect timing, darling," Prometheus said without turning around, voice warm with an affection that made bile rise in my throat. " Come meet our guests formally. We barely had time to speak at the funeral."

She walked in, and the universe cracked down the middle again.

Not with the same shock as at the cemetery—I'd had hours to process that impossibility—but with a different kind of agony. Seeing her in this context, in this intimate setting, made her existence somehow more real. More painful.

The woman in the doorway belonged in a magazine spread about elegant dinner parties.

Black dress that whispered money, pearls at her throat like drops of moonlight, dark hair swept up to reveal the graceful curve of her neck.

She moved carefully, her steps betraying the poise of someone who'd been taught that ladies didn't run, didn't shout, didn't stuff their pockets with stolen candy to share with their twin brother under threadbare blankets.

The wine glass creaked again in my grip.

"Ana, you remember Dr. Matthews and his partner, Luka," Prometheus said, the emphasis on 'partner' calculated to twist the knife. "From the funeral this morning."

"Of course." She smiled warmly, seating herself beside Prometheus gracefully. "I'm sorry we're meeting under such circumstances. Lincoln mentioned you were close to Michael."

Vincent's hand found my knee under the table, squeezing hard. Grounding me. Reminding me why we were here. To survive until we could find a way to free her.

"Michael was my patient," Vincent said, his voice admirably steady despite the tension radiating from him. "He'd been making tremendous progress."

"Such a tragedy," Ana said, genuine compassion warming her voice. "Lincoln mentioned you specialize in trauma therapy? That must be challenging work. "

"It has its rewards," Vincent replied carefully. "Helping people reclaim their identities."

Prometheus's smile tightened. "Identity is such a fluid concept, isn't it? We're all shaped by the people who... make us who we are."

"Some people need unmaking," I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them.

Vincent's fingers dug into my knee in warning. Too direct.

Ana looked between us, confusion flickering across features so achingly familiar it hurt to breathe. "I'm not sure I follow."

"Just philosophical musings," Prometheus smoothly redirected. "Luka has always been fascinated by the malleability of the human mind. It's part of what drew him to Dr. Matthews' work initially."

"You two seem very close," Ana observed, studying us with that particular tilt of her head that hadn't changed since childhood. "How long have you been together?"

"Not long," Vincent answered before I could. "But sometimes you just know."

"I understand completely," she said, smiling at Prometheus. "Lincoln and I had an unusual courtship as well. He was my guardian first, you know. Raised me after my parents died when I was very young."

The crystal fractured further under my grip, drawing blood I barely noticed.

"Your... guardian?" Vincent echoed, revulsion barely concealed.

"I know it sounds unconventional." Ana continued, oblivious to the horror on Vincent's face. "But we didn't develop romantic feelings until I was much older. Lincoln was always very proper about boundaries. "

Proper about boundaries. I thought of Milan. Of champagne that tasted wrong. Of hotel sheets against bare skin and six nights I couldn't fully remember.

"How admirable." Vincent's voice strained with the effort.

A waiter appeared with appetizers—small plates of traditional Serbian dishes I recognized from my childhood. Ajvar spread on crusty bread. Kajmak cheese. And at the center of the table, a large platter of ?evapi studded with chunks of pork, glistening under the restaurant lights.

"Ah, I took the liberty of ordering," Prometheus said, gesturing to the spread.

"Traditional Serbian cuisine. I thought it might remind you of simpler times.

" His gaze flicked briefly to the pork-filled ?evapi before returning to mine, satisfaction lurking behind his polite smile. "Ana particularly enjoys this version."

The calculated cruelty made my vision blur. This wasn't nostalgia. This was psychological warfare. Making me eat the food of the people who had slaughtered my family, in a restaurant flying their flags, while sitting across from my sister, who now believed she was one of them.

"You're from Serbia originally?" Ana asked, interest lighting her features. "I was born in Bosnia, but Lincoln tells me my heritage is Serbian. That's rare to meet another expatriate."

I stared at my sister, memories flashing behind my eyes—our mother warning us never to tell the Serbian soldiers where we were from, teaching us to hide our Bosniak names, the night we watched from a crawl space as they dragged neighbors from their homes.

And now Ana sat across from me, smiling, proudly claiming the identity of our family's killers.

Vincent's hand tightened on my knee again, but this time it wasn't a warning. It was support. He vibrated beside me, physically restraining himself from exposing the horrific truth of what Prometheus had done.

"Tell me about your charity work," Vincent said, steering the conversation to safer ground. "Lincoln mentioned you work with refugee children?"

Ana's face lit up. "Yes! We help reunite families separated by conflict. Last month, we connected a brother and sister from Syria who'd been searching for each other for eight years."

The cosmic joke burned deep. My sister helped reunite families while sitting across from her twin brother, wearing the ring of the man who'd torn us apart.

"Sometimes families find each other after decades, but they're complete strangers by then," she continued. "Sometimes people are better off not being found. The memory of someone can be kinder than the reality."

Each word carved deeper into my chest. She had no idea she was dissecting her own brother with philosophical musings about lost siblings.