Chapter 2: Glass Shatters: The Offer
Bahri stared at her, his bloody hand hanging at his side. The silence in the cellar was no longer empty; it was full of the echo of his rage and the quiet, impossible audacity of her request. He let out a short, disbelieving breath that clouded in the cold air.
“You are insane.”
“Probably,” Vanja said, her pulse still hammering in her throat. She nodded toward his injured hand. “You need to clean that.”
He ignored her, turning to look at the stairs, then back at her, as if calculating a complex and distasteful equation. The fight had gone out of him, leaving behind a hollowed-out fatigue. The authority he’d wielded minutes before was fractured, and in the cracks, something more uncertain peered through.
“If I show you,” he said, his voice flat, “you will see it is just a house. An old, empty house. And then you will take your money and go.”
“Show me.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, then gave a single, curt nod. He didn’t wait for her, just turned and started up the stairs. Vanja grabbed the envelope from the cot, shoving it into her coat pocket, and followed, her legs feeling unsteady.
The baker said nothing as they passed back through the kitchen, his eyes wide. The green door to the alley opened, and the grey afternoon light hit Vanja like a physical blow. Bahri’s black Mercedes was parked a few meters down, idling, exhaust pluming in the cold. A young man with a narrow, vigilant face sat in the driver’s seat. He glanced at Bahri’s hand, then at Vanja, his expression hardening.
“Genta, drive,” Bahri said, sliding into the passenger seat. He didn’t open the door for her. Vanja got in the back.
The car moved through Djakovica’s streets, then turned onto the road leading back into the hills. The silence was thicker than the bulletproof glass. Bahri stared straight ahead, cradling his wrecked hand in his lap. Blood dripped steadily onto the dark wool of his trousers. Vanja watched the familiar landscape slide past, the skeletal trees, the patches of dirty snow. The tension in the car was a living thing, coiled and ready to strike.
They didn’t go to the village. Bahri muttered a direction to Genta, who turned off the main track onto an even narrower, paved lane that wound through a stand of dense, dark pines. It ended at a high, iron gate set into a stone wall. Genta got out, opened it, and they drove through onto the grounds of a substantial estate.
It wasn’t a farmhouse. It was a large, two-story stone house with a red-tiled roof, modernist and severe in its lines, surrounded by meticulous, sleeping gardens. A wide veranda looked out over the valley. It spoke of money, but not old money. New, assertive money. The kind that built walls.
Genta stopped at the front door. “Do you want me to—” he began, eyeing Vanja.
“No. Wait here,” Bahri said. He got out and, without looking back, walked to the heavy oak door and pushed it open.
Vanja followed, the enormity of her situation settling on her shoulders. She was walking into the lion’s den, invited by the lion himself, for reasons neither of them fully understood.
The interior was warm, overheated even, and spotlessly clean. The floors were polished dark wood, the furniture sleek and Italian. It was a showpiece, but a cold one. The only signs of life were a pair of muddy boots by the door and, incongruously, a half-finished model of a fighter plane on a side table.
A girl appeared in a doorway off the hall. She was young, maybe twenty, with Bahri’s same dark blond hair pulled into a messy bun and his piercing eyes, though hers were wider, softer. She wore jeans and a thick sweater. Her gaze flew to Bahri’s hand, then to Vanja, and her mouth fell open.
“Bahri, your hand—!”
“It’s nothing, Leona,” he said, his voice still tight. “This is Vanja. She is a guest. Bring us rakia. In the winter garden.”
Leona’s eyes darted between them, brimming with questions and alarm. She gave a quick, nervous nod and disappeared.
Bahri led Vanja through the house to a glass-walled conservatory built onto the back. It was filled with the humid, green smell of dormant citrus trees and earth. The view was a stunning, panoramic sweep of the valley, the light fading to a bruised purple over the hills. In the distance, a thin column of smoke rose.
He pointed, his good hand gesturing vaguely northeast. “There. On that ridge. The one with the two large poplars. That is your… pile of stones.”
Vanja moved to the glass, her breath fogging it. She could just make out the silhouette of a large roof, the two skeletal trees standing like sentinels beside it. A sharp, aching pull twisted in her chest. It was real. It existed. He hadn’t burned it down.
Leona entered, carrying a tray with a bottle of clear rakia and two small glasses. Her hands trembled slightly, making the glasses click. She set it down on a wrought-iron table, poured two shots, and fled without a word, shooting another terrified glance at her brother.
Bahri didn’t touch his drink. He was watching Vanja watch the house. “Satisfied?”
“No.” She turned from the window. “Why did you bring me here? To your home.”
He was silent for a long time, staring at his ruined knuckles. “I don’t know,” he finally said, and it sounded like the most honest thing he’d uttered. “Perhaps to show you the difference between a symbol and a home. That,” he nodded toward the distant ridge, “is a symbol. A dead dream. This is a home. It has a roof that doesn’t leak. It has heat. It is defensible.”
“Defensible,” Vanja repeated, the word hanging in the humid air. Her eyes scanned the winter garden. In the far corner, partially hidden by a large fiddle-leaf fig, she saw it. Not hidden well. Crates. Two of them, olive green, military issue. The distinct shape of a rifle stock protruded from one where the lid wasn’t fully closed. Next to them were cardboard boxes labelled with Cyrillic script she could just read: Medical Supplies.
Leona’s terrified glances made sense now.
“So that’s the real purpose,” Vanja said softly, walking toward the crates. “This isn’t just a family home. It’s a… a depot. A safe house.”
Bahri moved swiftly, placing himself between her and the crates. “It is my home. What I choose to keep in it is my business.”
“Your business is war.”
“My business is survival!” he snapped, his composure cracking again. “You think this is a game? A theoretical discussion in a warm lecture hall? While you were writing essays on geopolitics, they were closing our schools. Our hospitals. They were beating old men in the street for speaking their language. What do you propose, Master’s degree? A strongly worded letter to the United Nations?”
“I propose not stockpiling rifles next to the lemon trees!” she shot back, gesturing around the elegant room. “I propose not becoming the monster you’re afraid of!”
“You don’t get to propose anything!” he roared. “You don’t live here! You visit! You observe! You have the luxury of principles because you have a Swiss passport in your pocket! We have this!” He kicked the side of the weapons crate with his boot, a dull, threatening thud. “This is our principle. This is our last, shitty option.”
They stood inches apart, breathing heavily, the attraction and hatred swirling together in the space between them, indistinguishable and electric. He was tall, lithe, his serious face flushed with anger. She could see the intelligence in his eyes, warped now by fanaticism and fear.
“You’re wrong,” she said, her voice low. “I don’t have the luxury. That house out there is my last option, too. It’s all I have that proves I’m from somewhere. Without it, I’m just… a tourist with good languages.”
He studied her face, searching for a lie. He seemed to find none. Some of the fury drained from his posture, replaced by a bewildered frustration. He looked from her to the distant house on the ridge, then down at his own bleeding hand, as if only just remembering it.
“Leona!” he called out, his voice rough.
His sister appeared instantly, as if she’d been hovering just outside the door. “Bring the kit. And show our guest to the blue room. She is staying tonight.”
Leona’s eyes went even wider. “Staying? Here?”
“Just do it.” He finally picked up the glass of rakia and threw it back in one swift, violent motion.
Vanja didn’t argue. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a deep, cold exhaustion. The thought of going back to that damp cellar or the watched hotel was impossible.
Leona returned with a first aid kit. She led Vanja in silence through the house, up a wide staircase, to a door at the end of a hallway. The room was, unsurprisingly, nice. Too nice. A large bed with a white duvet, a dark wood armoire, an en-suite bathroom. It was a guest room, impersonal and perfect. A gilded cage.
“This is your room,” Leona said softly, her German accent crisp and clear. She placed a folded towel on the bed. “If you need anything, ask me. Not… the others.”
Vanja turned, surprised. “You speak German?”
“I studied in Tirana for a year. Before.” Before hung in the air, meaning everything. Leona managed a small, tentative smile. It transformed her face, making her look even younger. “Your coat is… very beautiful. The red.”
It was such a normal, girlish thing to say amidst the madness that Vanja almost laughed. “Thank you. Your home is… very…” She trailed off, unable to find a word that fit.
“I know,” Leona said quietly, her smile fading. She glanced toward the hallway, then back, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He is not always like this. The anger. It is the times. It is… heavy.” She bit her lip, then added even softer, “I can teach you some Albanian. If you want. The useful words.”
Before Vanja could answer, heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. Leona’s face shut down, becoming politely neutral. Bahri appeared in the doorway, his hand crudely bandaged in white gauze already spotting with blood. He looked at Vanja, his expression unreadable, the serious mask firmly back in place.
“We will talk tomorrow,” he said. It wasn’t a suggestion.
Then he was gone, his footsteps retreating down the hall. Leona gave Vanja one last, hurried glance—a mix of sympathy and warning—and followed her brother, closing the door behind her.
Vanja stood alone in the silent, beautiful room. She walked to the window. From here, she could not see her grandfather’s house. She could only see the darkening pine forest that surrounded Bahri Nika’s stronghold, and the single, unwavering line of smoke still rising in the distance. She placed her hand against the cold glass.
The lock on the bedroom door clicked, soft but definitive.
She didn’t test it. She just stood there, listening to the quiet sounds of the house settling, and the much louder silence of the woods outside, wondering what, exactly, she had just traded her freedom for.
The lock’s click echoed in the spacious room. Vanja waited a full five minutes, listening, before trying the handle. It didn’t budge. She was a guest, and she was a prisoner. The duality was perfect. She unpacked nothing, just hung her red coat in the empty armoire where it looked like a wound.
Sleep was a fractured thing. Every creak of the floorboard, every distant murmur of a voice, jerked her awake. Dawn came as a pale, grey seepage around the heavy curtains. At precisely eight, the lock turned. Leona entered carrying a tray with coffee, bread, and a small jar of apricot jam.
“Guten Morgen,” Leona said, setting the tray on a desk. She looked tired. “I brought you this. Bahri is already gone. For the day.”
“Gone where?” Vanja asked, voice rough from disuse.
Leona just shrugged, a gesture that conveyed everything and nothing. “Out. Business. He said you can use the garden. But not to leave the wall.” She hesitated, twisting her hands. “The man, Genta, he is outside. In the car. Watching.”
“Of course he is.” Vanja sipped the coffee. It was strong and bitter, better than the hotel’s. “Thank you for this. And for last night. The offer.”
A genuine smile flickered on Leona’s face. “Kein Problem. It is… nice to speak it. To remember.” She leaned against the doorframe, lowering her voice. “So. First lesson. ‘Si je?’ It means ‘How are you?’”
Vanja repeated it, the sounds foreign on her tongue. “Si je?”
“Good! Now, ‘Jam mirë.’ I am good. Say it.”
They spent twenty minutes like that, the absurd normalcy of a language lesson cutting through the tension of Vanja’s confinement. Leona was a patient teacher, her eyes brightening with each correct phrase. It felt like a small, quiet rebellion.
“Why are you helping me?” Vanja finally asked, finishing the last of the bread.
Leona’s smile faded. She looked down at her hands. “You are not what I expected. From what he said. A Serb, coming to take a house. I expected… a witch. Or a bureaucrat. You are just a girl. In a very red coat.” She met Vanja’s eyes. “And he brought you here. He never brings anyone here. Especially not now.”
The day stretched, long and hollow. Vanja walked the winter garden, feeling Genta’s eyes on her back through the glass. She avoided the corner with the crates. The view of the valley was magnificent and infuriating. Her house was a faint, grey smudge on the opposite ridge, taunting her.
She found a small library. The books were a mix of engineering manuals, dense political theory in Albanian, and a few well-worn German novels. She pulled one out, recognizing the title. It was a first edition of something that had no business being in a Kosovar paramilitary’s house.
Bahri returned as the early winter dark began to fall. She heard the Mercedes, the heavy front door, the low murmur of his voice with Genta. She was in the library, pretending to read, when he appeared.
He had changed. The dark coat was gone, replaced with a grey sweater that made him look younger, less like a monument. The bandage on his hand was fresh. He stood in the doorway, observing her.
“Leona says you are learning.”
“She’s a good teacher,” Vanja said, not looking up from the page.
“It’s a waste of time. You will be gone in a few days.”
“Am I?” She closed the book and finally looked at him. “You haven’t told me your decision. The final one. Is it the car to the border, or the hole in the hills?”
His jaw tightened. “You are still here. That should tell you something.”
“It tells me you’re indecisive.”
He stepped into the room, his presence immediately shrinking it. “It tells you the situation is complex. That house. Your claim. It is a problem I do not need. My neighbors talk. They see a Serbian car, a Serbian girl, at my gate. They ask questions.”
“So it’s about optics,” Vanja said, standing. “About how it looks to your… comrades.”
“It is about trust!” he snapped, running his good hand through his hair. “In times like these, perception is everything. You are a static in my signal. A question mark where I need exclamation points.”
“And what do you need exclamation points for, Bahri? To rally men? To move those guns from the winter garden?” She moved toward him, the frustration of the long, watched day boiling over. “You’re preparing for a war you think is noble. I’m trying to salvage one thing from a war that already happened. We’re both digging in the same bloody dirt.”
“Do not compare your sentimental tourism to what we are doing!” He was close now, the heat of his anger radiating toward her. “You have a choice. We have none. Your war is a memory. Ours is in the next room, in those crates!”
“And what’s in the crates, Bahri? Freedom? Or just more ghosts, like mine?” Her voice rose, matching his. “You blow up a bridge, they send in more tanks. You shoot a policeman, they round up ten cousins. You think your violence is pure because your cause is just? It’s just violence. It begets more of itself. I’ve read the books on your shelf. You have too!”
“Theory!” he roared, grabbing her arm, not hard, but firmly. “Your world is made of paper! My world is made of stone, and blood, and those trees out there! I am not fighting for a thesis, I am fighting so Leona can finish her degree without being raped in a ditch! So my mother can buy bread without being spat on! You look at my guns and see barbarism. I look at them and see the only thing standing between my family and the dark!”
They were breathing heavily, chests almost touching. The air crackled with a furious, desperate energy. His grip on her arm was like iron, his eyes blazing. She could see the faint scar by his eyebrow, the faint stubble on his jaw, the furious conviction etched into every line of him.
“And what does the dark look like, exactly?” she whispered, not pulling away. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re building your own version of it right here. With locks on doors, and watches on cars, and crates of guns in the conservatory. You’re so afraid of being erased, you’re erasing everyone else first. Starting with me.”
His expression flickered. Something raw and unguarded flashed in his eyes—doubt, recognition, a deep, exhausted loneliness. He searched her face as if looking for a answer he’d lost.
He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. Instead, his gaze dropped to her lips, then back to her eyes. The anger was still there, but it had morphed, transformed into something more dangerous and undeniable.
The moment hung, suspended, fragile.
Then, from the hallway, Leona’s voice called out, tight with alarm. “Bahri! Genta needs you. Now. On the radio.”
The spell shattered. He dropped her arm as if scalded, stepping back, the mask of the commander slamming back down. He didn’t look at her again. He just turned and strode from the room, his footsteps urgent on the polished floor.
Vanja stood alone, the ghost of his touch burning on her skin, the echo of their shouts still ringing in the quiet library. Outside, the engine of the Mercedes growled to life. Headlights swept across the frozen garden as the car sped away toward the darkening hills, toward the thin, persistent column of smoke that had finally, sometime that afternoon, stopped rising.
The headlights vanished, swallowed by the pines. The silence they left behind in the house was different. It was waiting. Vanja stood in the library, the imprint of his fingers still warm on her forearm. She heard Leona moving downstairs, the clatter of a pan, then the rush of water in the pipes. Normal sounds that did nothing to mask the abnormality of it all.
She did not go to her room. She wandered back to the winter garden, now a vault of shadows. The weapons crates were a darker shape in the dark. She stared at the spot where the smoke had been. Its absence felt more ominous than its presence.
Dinner was a quiet, strained affair at the long dining table. Just the two of them. Leona had made a stew. “It’s not much,” she said in German, pushing the bowl toward Vanja.
“It’s fine. Thank you.” Vanja ate without tasting. “Where did he go?”
Leona shook her head, twirling her spoon. “He doesn’t tell me. It’s better I don’t know. Really.” She looked up, her eyes earnest. “The language lesson… we can continue tomorrow. If you want.”
“I want.” Vanja managed a smile. “It’s the only thing here that makes sense.”
They cleared the plates in a companionable quiet. The night deepened outside, absolute and starless. Leona turned on the television to a blurry Italian game show, the canned laughter a jarring ghost in the serious house. Vanja pretended to watch, but every sense was tuned to the driveway.
He returned just after midnight.
The sound wasn’t the Mercedes. It was the groan of the iron gate, then careful footsteps on the gravel, too light for Bahri’s usual stride. Vanja, who had been pacing in her room, froze. She heard the front door open and close, then Leona’s quick, alarmed footsteps in the hall below.
Vanja slipped out of her room. The hallway was dark. She moved to the top of the stairs and peered down.
In the slice of light from the kitchen doorway, she saw him. He was leaning against the wall in the foyer, shrugging off his jacket with stiff, careful movements. His grey sweater was untucked, and on its left side, just above the hip, a dark, wet stain was spreading. It wasn’t large, but it was vivid against the pale wool.
“It’s nothing,” she heard him say, his voice tight. “A scratch. It caught on some wire.”
Leona was in front of him, her hands fluttering. “Wire doesn’t bleed like that, Bahri. Let me see. Sit.”
“It’s fine, Leo.”
“Sit!”
He complied, lowering himself onto the bottom stair with a faint grunt. Leona vanished into the kitchen and returned with the first aid kit, scissors, and a bowl of water. Her movements were practiced, efficient, but her lips were pressed into a thin, bloodless line. Vanja watched, hidden in the shadows, as Leona cut away the sweater.
It was a graze. A furrow torn through skin and shallow muscle, about four inches long. Clean, but angry and seeping. Not from wire.
Leona cleaned it with methodical focus, her hands steady now. The antiseptic scent drifted up the stairs. Bahri stared straight ahead at the wall, jaw clenched, accepting the sting without a sound. His face was pale under its usual severity, and there was a smear of dirt on his temple.
“They’re going to do it tomorrow,” Leona whispered, not looking up from her work. She dabbed with gauze. “The patrol on the Mitrovica road. The one that stops at the café every morning at ten. The others, from Llausha. They told Genta.”
Bahri’s head turned slowly toward her. “You were not meant to hear that.”
“I hear everything in this house. You know that.” She placed a fresh pad over the wound and began to tape it. “I’m afraid, Bahri. They’re not… precise. It will be a mess.”
“It needs to be done,” he said, but his voice lacked its usual ferocity. It sounded rehearsed.
“Does it? Or does Jashari just need to see blood? He’s getting antsy. He says we are all talk in Djakovica. That we wait while they fight in Prekaz.”
At the name, Vanja’s breath caught. Jashari. Adem Jashari. It wasn’t just a name from whispered reports; it was a living man, pressuring boys like Bahri to prove their worth in blood.
Leona finished taping. She gathered the bloody gauze, her eyes finally meeting her brother’s. “He wants a war.”
“He already has one,” Bahri said softly. He touched her hand. “Go to bed, Leo.”
Vanja retreated silently to her room. She lay in the dark, seeing the wet stain on the wool, the clinical fear in Leona’s eyes. The abstract "preparations" had a target now: a patrol, a café, tomorrow at ten. The war was no longer in crates. It had a schedule.
The next morning, Bahri was gone again before dawn. The mood in the house was brittle. Leona served coffee with a distracted air, jumping at the sound of a log settling in the fireplace.
“You heard last night,” Vanja said, not a question.
Leona nodded, sinking into the chair opposite her. “They’re going to attack the police patrol. Today.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m afraid,” Leona blurted, her German laced with a tremor. “And it’s not my brother’s plan. It’s the others. And he feels he must agree. To prove… something. Jashari is getting antsy. He thinks we are too comfortable here.”
Vanja nodded slowly, the pieces locking into a terrible picture. “Of course. Adem Jashari.”
The mythical figure made real, a man whose impatience could spark a massacre on a roadside.
“Can I meet him?” Vanja asked.
Leona blinked, her coffee cup halting halfway to her mouth. “That’s a horrible idea.”
“Is it?” Vanja leaned forward. “Or is it just unusual?”
“If my brother finds out, he will kill both of us. If Jashari doesn’t already.” Leona set the cup down hard. “You are not part of this, Vanja. You will go back to Switzerland. To Germany. Whatever. This is not your fight.”
Vanja studied her. The fear was genuine, but beneath it was something else—a homesickness that had nothing to do with these cold, fortified hills.
“Come on,” Vanja said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “Your accent is Frankfurt, not Tirana. ‘Kaffe,’ not ‘kafe.’ I know you and he grew up there. But I understand why you lied.”
Leona went very still. All the color drained from her face. She looked, for a moment, like a child caught in a lie.
“Our parents are there,” she whispered, the confession leaving her in a rush. “Our older brother, too. He runs my father’s business. Autoteile. Car parts. we have 12 stores. Bahri has a business too.”
“Then why are you here?” Vanja asked, gently.
Leona’s eyes welled. She looked out at the frost-rimmed garden, at the wall that kept the world out, and kept her in. “Why are you here?” she asked back, a challenge and a plea.
Vanja thought of the distant roof, the lost smoke, the envelope of money that felt like ashes now. “Same as you, I think. To prove I belong to a story that doesn’t want me.”
They sat in silence for a long moment, a thread of understanding pulled taut between them.
“Now,” Vanja said, her voice firm and low. “Tell me how I find Adem Jashari and talk to him.”