Page 55 of Ruthless (The Ferrymen #1)
I opened my eyes to find Luka watching me, his blue eyes intense in the growing light.
"Hey," I murmured, voice still rough with sleep. “How long was I asleep?”
“Not long.” His fingers traced my jawline, the touch whisper-soft. "I have dinner reservations."
"Dinner?"
A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "Seven o'clock. There's a place in the East Quarter I want to show you." His thumb brushed my lower lip. "Wear something nice. I’ll leave directions."
“You’re not coming?”
“I’ll meet you there,” he promised and kissed my forehead.
Before I could ask more questions, he slipped from the bed, muscles rippling beneath scarred skin as he headed for the shower. I watched him go, unable to shake the feeling that something significant was happening, something beyond a simple dinner invitation .
An hour later, I stood in front of our bedroom mirror, adjusting the dark blue suit Lo had insisted I needed.
I'd paired it with a crisp white shirt. No tie.
The Acropolis favored a more relaxed Mediterranean aesthetic.
As I straightened my collar, I caught sight of my reflection and paused, struck by the changes.
Physically, I looked much the same, if perhaps a bit leaner. But there was something different in my eyes, a new awareness that hadn't been there before. I'd seen things now. Death. Violence. The underground world that existed parallel to ordinary life. I'd fallen in love.
I wasn't just Dr. Vincent Matthews anymore. I wasn't sure who I was becoming.
At precisely 6:50, I left our sanctuary and headed toward the East Quarter, following the winding paths through sections of the Acropolis I'd rarely explored.
The address led me to a narrow side street tucked between two larger thoroughfares, easily missed if you weren't specifically looking for it.
There, at the end of the street, stood a small building with a simple wooden sign hanging above the door: SARAJEVO.
I pushed the door open and stepped into a warm, softly lit space that couldn't have been more different from the sleek, modern aesthetic that dominated most of the Acropolis.
The room held only five or six tables, each covered with embroidered cloths in vibrant red and white patterns.
The walls displayed hand-painted plates, dried herbs hanging in bundles, and faded photographs of rural landscapes.
The air was thick with the smell of slow-cooked food, herbs, and woodsmoke.
A woman in her sixties with steel-gray hair pulled into a neat bun looked up from behind a small wooden counter. Her weathered face broke into a broad smile when she saw me .
"Ah, you must be the doctor," she said, her accent thick but her English precise. "Luka's Vincent. I am Amina." She studied me openly, her sharp eyes missing nothing. "Yes, I see why he looks at you that way. Come, come. He waits."
She gestured toward the back of the restaurant, where a curtained alcove created a private dining area.
As I followed her through the restaurant, I noticed that while every other table sat empty, each bore a small "Reserved" sign.
It seemed Luka had arranged for us to have the entire place to ourselves.
Amina pulled back the curtain with a flourish, revealing Luka standing by a table set for two. He wore a charcoal gray suit I'd never seen before, perfectly tailored to his lean frame. Against the rustic backdrop, he looked like something from a Renaissance painting—beautiful and dangerous.
He smiled when he saw me, making my pulse flutter. "Vincent," he said, my name a caress on his lips.
"What is this place?" I asked as Luka pulled out my chair.
"A piece of home." His voice carried an emotion I rarely heard from him, something like wistfulness mixed with pride. "Or what might have been home, if things had been different."
Amina reappeared with two small glasses of a clear liquid, placing them beside us before nodding to Luka knowingly.
"I leave you now," she said. "Food comes when it comes. You know what to do."
Once she had disappeared behind the curtain, Luka reached for his glass. "A toast," he said, raising it slightly. "To memories. The ones we've lost, and the ones we're making."
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't academic. 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 warned her 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 ?orba—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.