Chapter 7: debut
He broke the kiss, breathing ragged. “You are a trap.”
“You followed me,” she gasped.
He shook his head, a tight, pained movement. In the dim evening light leaking from a nearby window, she saw it then. A dark, wet patch was blooming high on his left shoulder, saturating the brown leather of his jacket. It wasn’t large, but it was growing.
“I didn’t follow you,” he gritted out. The bravado was gone, replaced by a strained focus. “I am in trouble.”
Her journalist’s mind switched off. Some older, more instinctive part took over. She pushed against his chest, and this time he let her, stumbling back a half-step. “Come,” she said, already turning.
“Where?”
“My apartment.”
A short, incredulous laugh escaped him, harsh in the quiet alley. “You are crazy.”
“I’m not.” She spoke fast, low. “Marko and the police are busy again, just like you said. Burim Ramadani passed next to Podujevo. No one is tracking me. Well, other than you.” She met his eyes. “He thinks I’m in my apartment.”
His expression was a conflict of pain and calculation. “We can’t go to your apartment.”
“Then where? You’ll bleed out.” Her voice was flat, serious.
He studied her face, his intense eyes searching. A faint, pained grin touched his lips. “Are you worried?”
“No.” The answer came too fast, defiant.
He grinned fully then, a flash of white in the gloom. “My friend lives not far from here.”
“Friend?”
“Yes. Arben Ramadani. You know of him?”
Vanja shook her head, a deliberate, careful motion. But she did know. Another UÇK. Father, and brother, of Bahri’s future wife, Kosovare. Him and her are to meet in ’98 or ’99. The knowledge was a cold stone in her gut. A piece of history that hadn’t happened yet, a future already written in a photo she shouldn’t know existed.
“Let’s go,” she said, her voice oddly tight. She took his good arm and began to lead him, but she walked in the opposite direction from where he’d indicated.
“Where are you going?” he asked, resisting.
“To create a diversion,” she said, without looking back. She walked him briskly for half a block, then ducked into a different doorway, its recessed entrance shrouded in deep shadow. “Goodbye, Bahri. Take care.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his face unreadable. He just nodded, a sharp dip of his chin. Then he turned and melted into the darkness, moving with surprising speed toward a nondescript building she assumed was Arben’s. She waited, counting to sixty, her heart thudding against her ribs. She then walked the long way home, her senses screaming, expecting a hand on her shoulder at every corner.
None came.
Later, in her apartment, the silence was absolute. She stood in the middle of the room, still wearing her coat. The adrenaline seeped away, leaving a hollow, aching fatigue. And then, without any sound, the tears came. They weren’t sobs, just a hot, silent stream down her cheeks.
She cried because she had forgotten. In the library, in the car, in the alley with his mouth on hers, she had forgotten the most fundamental, brutal rule. The people here had lives after. They had futures that stretched beyond her own catastrophic present. They loved, married, had children, grew old. Or they died.
She remembered. A photo, seen once on a blurry internet archive years from now. A photo of a young, handsome Bahri Nika with Kosovare Ramadani at what might have been a wedding. He was smiling, but it was a formal smile. She was… well, sharp. Not pretty. She had a strong, prominent nose and deep-set dark eyes. Not ugly, but not beautiful. Yet she was a sister of his friend, an Albanian, the right choice. A politically sound, culturally correct, perfectly logical choice.
The kiss in the alley felt like it was still burning her skin, a brand. She brought her fingers to her lips. It had been different from Marko’s consuming fire. Bahri’s was a lightning strike—precise, brilliant, and leaving everything scorched and smoking.
Marko did not come. The night remained empty. His absence was a presence all its own. She thought of the blood on his shirt, the coiled serpent tattoo, the way he slept atop her like a man claiming refuge. Two men. Two kinds of danger. Two kinds of belonging she could never truly have.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand, a sudden, angry motion. This was useless. She was not here to cry over boys and futures. She was here to survive, and to understand. The name ‘Burim Ramadani’ meant something. His passing was an event. And Drenica. The word was a drumbeat in the back of her mind, a place soon to be synonymous with a crackdown, with the spark that lit the tinder.
She decided then. She would go to Pristina again tomorrow. Not to wander, not to hope for a chance meeting in a library. This time, she would search. She would look for clues, whispers, any fragment of information about what was brewing in Drenica. She was a journalist. It was time she started acting like one, instead of a piece being moved between opposing sides.
She walked to the window, pulling the thin curtain aside. Podujevo slept, or pretended to. Somewhere out there, Bahri was having his shoulder stitched by his friend, by the brother of his future wife. Somewhere, Marko was washing another man’s blood from his knuckles. And she was here, in between, a woman out of time with a kiss burning on her mouth and a purpose finally hardening in her chest.
Tomorrow, she would hunt for ghosts in the archives. Tomorrow, she would look for the shape of the war before it broke.