Chapter 5: Y
The cold in the car was a physical presence, seeping through the soles of their shoes and curling around their ankles. The fog on the windows had turned to a thin film of ice, crystalline and fragile, isolating them in a blurred, gray world. The Serbian folk song from the radio was a tinny, distant lament.
Vanja watched him, her expression unreadable in the gloom. The silence after his statement—I need to call my father—stretched, taut and brittle.
Without a word, she leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out a bulky, black object. She handed it to him. It was cold and heavy in his hands. A satellite phone.
“Use this,” she said, her voice flat. “Cleaner.”
He stared at the device, then at her. The implications were enormous. This wasn’t just a woman with a map. This was a woman with secure, untraceable communications. The mystery of her deepened, growing colder and more dangerous.
He powered it on, the beep and green glow stark in the dimness. He dialed the number for Prekaz from memory, the numbers feeling like a betrayal of this strange, intimate space.
It rang once, twice.
“Po?” His father’s voice was a rasp, guarded.
“It’s me.”
“Luan.” A pause, filled with the hum of the secure line. “Where are you?”
“With a friend,” Luan said, his eyes locked on Vanja’s profile. She was staring straight ahead, through the iced windshield, as if she could see the charred farmhouse beyond. “I’m safe.”
“A friend.” Adem Jashari’s laugh was a short, humorless bark. “Does this friend happen to be Besim Halimi’s daughter?”
Halimi’s. The name hit the air like a gunshot. Luan saw Vanja flinch, a minute contraction of her shoulders, as if physically struck.
“No,” Luan said automatically, the lie instinctive, protective. “She’s not.”
“Are you, or are you not, with Vanja Albijanić?” Adem’s voice lost all pretense of amusement. It was pure, hard command.
Luan swallowed. He could feel the weight of his father’s expectation, of generations of pride and suspicion, pressing down the line. “Yes.”
Another pause, longer this time. He could almost hear the calculations, the weighing of risks and alliances. Then, a sigh that sounded almost like resignation. “Well then, you better be respectful. Unless you want her brother to castrate you and leave you in a ditch.”
“Her brother?” The question was out before he could stop it. He knew her father’s name now, a piece of the puzzle that somehow made the picture more chaotic. A brother was a new, unknown variable.
“Agron Halimi,” Adem said, the name dropped like a stone. “Heard he’s in Italy now. Training. Or hiding. Who knows. But word travels. You are not invisible, son. Remember that.”
The line went dead. Luan held the phone to his ear for another second, the dial tone a faint insect buzz, before lowering it. He powered it off. The silence rushed back in, thicker, heavier.
He turned to her. She was still staring ahead, but a single tear had tracked a gleaming path through the grime on her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. The apology wasn’t for the lie, or for the phone. It was for existing, for being a complication, for being Halimi’s daughter.
“You’re Besim Halimi’s daughter.” He said it not as a question, but as an attempt to solidify a shifting reality.
A hollow, bitter laugh escaped her. She finally turned her head to look at him, her eyes luminous with unshed tears. “Yeah. Does it make you feel better about fucking me? At least one half of me,” she said, tapping her chest, “the good half, is Albanian. Does that balance the books for you, Luan? Make the Serbian part less dirty?”
Her words were meant to wound, to push him away. They had the opposite effect. He reached out, his hand rough against the cold skin of her cheek, wiping the tear away with his thumb.
“There are no halves, Vanja,” he said, his voice low. The Serbian folk song ended, plunging them into static. “Not in this car. Not with me.”
He leaned closer, his breath mingling with hers in a cloud of white. He switched to Albanian, the language of his home, of his heart, making the words a secret for her alone. “I want you whole.”
It was the gentleness that broke her. Not the fucking in the apartment, not the slap in the car. This—this raw, unvarnished acceptance of her fractured, impossible self. A sob ripped from her throat, choked and ugly. Then another. She collapsed forward, her forehead pressing against his shoulder, her body shuddering with the force of a grief she had carried for years, for lifetimes. She cried for the villages that were ashes in her memory, for the father whose name was a curse on one side and a badge on the other, for the brother whose fate she couldn’t change, for the unbearable weight of knowing. She cried because he had seen the most calculated, treacherous parts of her and had not turned away.
He held her. He said nothing. His arms went around her, pulling her across the console, heedless of the gearshift. He tucked her head under his chin, one hand cradling the back of her skull, the other drawing slow, firm circles on her back. He let her cry until the harsh, gasping sobs subsided into quiet, hitched breaths, until the warmth of their bodies began to chase the deep chill from the space between them.
Her tears were cold and wet against his neck. He could taste salt on his lips.
When her breathing finally steadied, she didn’t pull away. She nuzzled into his throat, her lips brushing his skin. “I’m a mess,” she mumbled, her voice thick.
“You are,” he agreed quietly, and kissed her temple.
She lifted her head then. Her eyes were swollen, her nose red, her face blotchy. She had never looked less like a mysterious prophetess, and more devastatingly real. She searched his face, looking for pity, for judgment. She found only a quiet, exhausted intensity that mirrored her own.
Her mouth found his. This kiss was salt and surrender. It was slow, deep, and profoundly thirsty. It was a thank you and a plea all at once. He met it with a matching hunger, a need to drown in the taste of her, to consume the pain and transform it into something else.
Her hands came up, fumbling with the buttons of his coat, then his shirt. Her fingers were cold, clumsy. “I need to feel you,” she whispered against his mouth, the words raw. “I need you to make me forget all of it. Just for a minute. Please.”
He helped her, shrugging out of his coat, pushing his shirt open. The freezing air pebbled his skin. She was doing the same, tearing at her own layers until the heavy sweater was gone, her blouse undone. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were pale and full in the weak light, her nipples tight and dark. He groaned, lowering his head to take one into his mouth, sucking hard, lapping at the pebbled flesh. She arched against him with a sharp cry, her fingers plunging into his hair.
“Fuck, Luan…”
He switched to the other breast, his hand coming up to knead the first, pinching the nipple gently, then not so gently. She writhed against him, her hips grinding against the hard ridge of his erection still trapped in his jeans. The leather seat squeaked in protest.
“Off,” she gasped, pushing at his waistband. “Get these off.”
It was an awkward, frantic dance in the cramped space. They pushed jeans and underwear down, kicked off boots. The cold was shocking, then irrelevant as their bare skin met. She was lying half across the front seats, her back against the passenger door. He was over her, braced on one arm. He reached between them, his fingers sliding through her curls, finding her wet and swollen already. He stroked her, dipping two fingers inside her, curling them. She moaned, loud and unreserved, her head falling back.
“You’re so wet,” he murmured, working his fingers in and out, feeling her clench around them. “So fucking wet for me.”
“Yes,” she hissed. “Only for you. Always for you.”
The claim, in her desperation, felt truer than anything else she’d ever said. He removed his fingers, slick with her, and guided himself to her entrance. He pushed in slowly, giving her body time to stretch, to accept him. The heat was shocking, a blazing core in the freezing car. She was incredibly tight, her inner muscles fluttering in helpless waves around the head of his cock.
“More,” she begged, her heels digging into his lower back. “Don’t be gentle. I don’t want gentle.”
He obeyed. He slammed the rest of the way into her, burying himself to the hilt in one brutal, perfect stroke.
She screamed, a raw, ragged sound that was pure pleasure-pain. The car windows shook.
He set a punishing pace from the start. This was not about unity or exploration. This was exorcism. Each hard, driving thrust was an attempt to pound the ghosts from her, to shatter the memory of every burning village, every whispered threat, every lonely, knowledge-heavy night. The car rocked on its suspension. The sound of their bodies meeting was a wet, rhythmic slap, punctuated by their ragged grunts and moans.
“Is this what you want?” he growled, pistoning into her, the sweat breaking out on his back despite the cold. “This raw fucking? This is what makes you forget?”
“Yes! God, yes!” she cried, her eyes squeezed shut, her nails scoring his back. “Harder! Don’t stop!”
He fucked her with a single-minded fury, angling his hips to hit the spot that made her see stars. He felt it when he found it—her whole body seized, her cunt clamping down on him like a vise.
“There! Right there! Oh, fuck, right fucking there!” she chanted, a broken litany.
He held that angle, hammering into that exquisite, swollen spot inside her with relentless precision. The coil in his own gut was winding tighter, a spring about to snap. Her cries were becoming shrill, uncontrolled. He could feel the telltale flutter, the rapid, involuntary clenching that signaled her climax was tearing through her.
“Come for me,” he commanded, his voice guttural. “Come all over my cock, Vanja. Let go of everything. Just come.”
It was the permission she needed. Her orgasm exploded through her, violent and total. She screamed, a wordless, shattered sound, her back bowing off the seat, her cunt gripping and milking his cock in frantic, pulsating waves. The intensity of her contraction pulled his own release from him. With a choked roar, he drove into her one last, deep time and came, spurting jet after hot jet inside her, his vision whiting out at the edges.
He collapsed on her, spent, trembling. They were a slick, sweaty, panting heap in the freezing car. The heat they’d generated was already being swallowed by the cold. He could feel her heart pounding against his, a frantic, fading drumbeat.
Slowly, he softened inside her. He didn’t want to move. Moving would mean facing the cold, the satellite phone on the dash, the name Halimi hanging between them.
Her arms came up, wrapping around him, holding him close. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder, her lips soft and impossibly tender.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice wrecked.
He knew she wasn’t thanking him for the orgasm. She was thanking him for the whole. He finally shifted, pulling out of her gently. He reached for their discarded clothes, pulling his shirt over her shoulders first, then his own. They dressed in silence, shivering, their movements slow and clumsy.
He started the engine, just for the heat. The fan blew cold, then slowly warm air into the cabin. He picked up the satellite phone, handed it back to her. She took it, her fingers brushing his.
“Agron,” Luan said, staring at the glowing dials on the dashboard. “Your brother. In Italy. Training for what?”
Vanja was silent for a long time. She traced a pattern in the condensation on her window. “For the war,” she said finally, her voice empty. “The one that’s coming. The one I can’t stop. Only… redirect.” She looked at him, her eyes ancient and terribly sad. “He will come back. And he will look for anyone who hurt his sister. He won’t care about halves, Luan. He will only see a Jashari.”
The warmth in the car suddenly felt insufficient. The name Halimi had been a complication. Agron Halimi was a threat, a future confrontation waiting in the wings.
Luan put the car in gear. The gravel crunched under the tires as he pulled back onto the dark, empty road. He drove, the headlights carving a path through the endless Balkan night. He reached over, his hand finding hers on the seat. He laced their fingers together, holding on tight.
“Let him look,” Luan said, his voice quiet but clear in the hum of the engine. He was no longer just a boy caught between worlds. He was a man making a choice. The weight of her hand in his felt like the only true thing in a universe of shifting loyalties and predetermined fire.
The weight of her hand in his felt like the only true thing in a universe of shifting loyalties and predetermined fire. He drove them back to Priština through the ink-black night, their silence now a shared shelter. He didn’t ask about Agron again; the threat was a live wire, and touching it would only spark the inevitable.
They moved through the frozen city like ghosts, up to her apartment with its pervasive map and single, dim bulb. The residual heat from the car’s blower fled their bodies, leaving them shuddering on the threadbare rug just inside the door. She pressed her cold face into his neck.
“I’m starving,” she mumbled, her voice muffled against his skin.
He laughed, the sound rusty. “You’re always starving.”
She’d made bean soup, the same cheap, filling stuff everyone ate. They ate it cross-legged on the floor, bowls steaming, her knee touching his. It was bland and hot and perfect. She stole a piece of his bread. He flicked a bean at her. She caught it in her mouth and grinned, a fleeting, unburdened expression that cracked his chest open.
After, they lay on the bed, the empty bowls forgotten on the floor. The streetlight outside cast a sodium-orange glow across her cheek. She traced the scratches her nails had left on his back through his shirt.
“Are we dating?” she asked. The question was casual, airy, but her finger stopped its motion.
He turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were wide, pretending at humor. He saw the fear beneath it. The fear of naming this thing, of making it a target.
“No,” he said, his voice flat.
She blinked, the hurt flashing fast before she could hide it. He reached over, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead.
“I’m just waiting to marry you,” he said.
She stared. Then a laugh burst from her, real and startled, shaking her whole body against him. He smiled, a slow, rare unfolding. He was in love. The realization was quiet and absolute, a stone dropping to the bottom of a still lake. He didn’t care what she was—Serb, Albanian, scholar, prophet, time-traveling ghost. He was in love with who she was here, in this moment: a woman who tasted of bean soup and resilience, whose laughter was a temporary victory over despair.
“You’re insane,” she giggled, wiping her eyes.
“Probably.”
She grew quiet, her fingers now tracing the line of his jaw. “Do you think I should start using my real surname?” she whispered. “Halimi? Instead of Albijanić?”
He considered it. The name was a weapon, a shield, a declaration. In her mouth, it was a question of belonging. He shook his head, catching her wandering fingers and bringing them to his lips.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, kissing her knuckles. He met her gaze, a playful glint entering his own. “You’ll be Jashari soon enough.”
He winked. She giggled again, a soft, flustered sound, and buried her blazing face in his shoulder. It was this. This absurd, quiet lightness in a flat smelling of cabbage and gun oil. It was love and light hoarded against the coming winter. As tensions grew in the outside world—as whispers of weapons shipments and police mobilizations slithered through their networks—this was theirs. It was everything.
“My mother wants to meet you,” he said into her hair.
She went very still. Then she pulled back to look at him. “Adile?” she asked, her voice small. “Is she scary?”
“Scarier than my father,” Luan said, a genuine chuckle rumbling in his chest. “But she will love you.”
“You can’t be sure,” Vanja said, seriously now, her scholar’s mind analyzing the risk, the cultural variables, the political disaster of a Serbian daughter-in-law, even a half-one, for the Jashari family.
He framed her face with his hands, forcing her to hold his gaze. The orange light caught the gold in her irises, turning them to liquid fire. “I love you,” he said, the words solid, a foundation. “She will have no choice.”
He kissed her then, a slow, deepening promise. The tenderness morphed into a different hunger. She climbed onto his lap, straddling him, her knees sinking into the mattress on either side of his hips. They kissed until they were breathless, until the only sound was their ragged pull for air.
She pulled her sweater over her head. Her breasts swayed, pale and heavy. He took them in his hands, weighing them, his thumbs sweeping over her nipples until they pebbled into hard, dark points. He bent his head, sucking one deep into his mouth, his tongue lashing the stiff peak. She gasped, her fingers clutching his hair, her hips grinding down against the rigid length of him still confined by his jeans.
“Off,” she panted, tugging at his belt. “I need you inside me. Now.”
They wrestled with denim and cotton, a frantic, clumsy shedding. Naked, she rose over him, her hand guiding his cock. She sank down onto him in one fluid, breathtaking descent. She was so wet, so ready, her inner muscles clasping him in velvet heat. They both groaned, a harmony of sheer relief.
She began to move, setting a slow, rolling rhythm, her head thrown back, eyes closed. He gripped her hips, not to steer, just to feel the play of muscle beneath her skin. This was different from the car, different from the frantic, punishing release of before. This was claiming, and being claimed. Deep, grinding circles that made him see stars.
“Look at me,” he breathed.
Her eyes opened, hazy with pleasure. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest, changing the angle. He slid even deeper. A fractured moan escaped her.
“You feel… you feel like home,” she whispered, the confession more intimate than any touch.
Her words shattered his control. He flipped her onto her back with a growl, never slipping out of her. He drove into her, his thrusts becoming harder, faster, more urgent. The bedframe slammed against the plaster wall in a steady, rhythmic bang. He hooked one of her legs over his shoulder, bending her nearly in half, plunging into a devastating, new depth.
“Is this home?” he grunted, pounding into her. “This? Me inside you, fucking you like this?”
“Yes! God, yes, that’s it, that’s it, Luan!” she screamed, her body arching off the mattress, meeting him thrust for brutal thrust.
The wet, slapping sounds of their coupling filled the room, obscene and beautiful. He could smell her, them, sex and sweat and her specific scent of vanilla and iron. Her cries unraveled into a sobbing chant. “Please, please, please…”
He felt her cunt begin to clench, a frantic, fluttering pulse around his cock. “Come,” he commanded, his voice raw. “Come on my cock. Show me.”
Her orgasm ripped through her with a silent, open-mouthed scream. Her body locked, every muscle taut, her channel gripping him in exquisite, rhythmic spasms. It milked his own release from him. With a final, deep drive, he came, spilling into her, a hot, endless pulse that seemed to drain the world of all its tension, all its sound.
He collapsed, carefully pulling her leg from his shoulder, rolling to his side and pulling her with him. They were slick, spent, breathing in ragged unison. The banging of the bedframe echoed in the sudden quiet.
Long minutes later, nestled in the crook of his arm, her hair tickling his chin, she spoke.
“When?” she asked softly.
“When what?”
“When does your mother want to meet me?”
He tightened his arm around her. The outside world, with its mothers and brothers and impending war, rushed back in. But it felt different now. It felt like a front they would face together.
“Soon,” he said. The word was both a promise and a warning. Next Friday