"Sir Barinov?" one of the waiters approached, his tone respectful.
Alex inclined his head and drew me closer by the arm. "Table for two, Ivan."
"Yes, sir." The waiter gestured inward, guiding us through the narrow space and toward a table tucked into the corner by the window. The same one, I realized dimly, where we had once sat together. "You're fortunate, sir," he added with a small smile. "Your usual place is empty tonight."
Your usual place.
The words lodged themselves somewhere in my chest.
How often had he come here?
"I'd come here when I miss you the most," Alex said quietly, as if he had heard the question form in my mind.
Then he released my arm only to pull out a chair for me, carefully and deliberately. The same seat. The same angle. As if he had rehearsed this moment, over and over, waiting for the world to bend back into place.
I lowered myself into it, my fingers curling slightly against the edge of the table.
He hadn't missed a single detail.
Not one.
He took his seat across from me with the same unhurried precision, settling in as though this table had been waiting for him all along. The chair barely made a sound against the wooden floor. Everything about him suggested ownership. Not just of the space, but of the moment.
Ivan returned almost immediately, placing two menus on the table. The paper was thick, as usual. The edges slightly worn. English on one side, Croatian on the other.
But before I could even lower my gaze, he turned to Alex with a knowing smile. "The usual, sir?"
Alex didn't hesitate. He only nodded once. "Yes."
Ivan's eyes flicked to me, polite, expectant.
I didn't need to open the menu, but my fingers rested atop it anyway, pretending to read through it quickly. I already knew what I wanted. And sure enough, the words rose unbidden, settling on my tongue like a confession I hadn't meant to make.
"Pašticada," I said quietly, in perfect pronunciation. "With gnocchi."
For the briefest second, something shifted in Alex's expression. Not surprise, but suspicion. Before it disappeared into something softer. Almost reverent.
"And for you, sir?" Ivan asked.
"The same," Alex replied. "As always."
Ivan nodded, satisfied, then disappeared back toward the kitchen.
Silence stretched between us, heavy but not uncomfortable. Outside the window, the lamplit street glowed amber against stone, voices drifting past in soft fragments, cutlery clinking somewhere deeper in the room. It felt untouched by time.
"How often did you come here?" I asked, keeping my gaze fixed on the table, as if the wood might steady the rhythm of my pulse.
This place held too much for me. Too many memories weighted with feeling. Feelings I hadn't yet given myself permission to face.
"Every few weeks," he said. I didn't need to look up to know that he was watching me, with the way he always did when he thought I wasn't paying attention. As if he were trying to carve this version of me into his memory. "Sometimes more. I'd even go as far as visiting your apartment."
My fingers curled slightly against the edge of the table. "Why?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.
Before I could answer, Ivan returned, setting two empty glasses between us. He uncorked the bottle with practiced ease and poured the wine slowly, carefully. Deep red. The same one.
The same vintage we had shared on our first date. I had picked that bottle because I loved wine. I just didn't think Alex would've remembered.
The scent reached me before the glass was full, and with it came the same familiar ache. Quiet and relentless.
I wrapped my fingers around the stem of the glass but didn't lift it.
"Why?" I asked again, softer this time. "Why go that far, for a place, for...me?"
He didn't answer immediately. He watched the wine settle, the surface stilling, as if he were gathering something fragile inside himself.
"Because you were the first good thing that ever happened to me," he said at last.
I looked up then.
"I've thought a lot about it, but maybe it's because you didn't know who I was. And it felt...good. You weren't strategic. You didn't want anything from me except honesty." His mouth curved, faint and bitter. "I bet you know how rare that is, Isla. To be wanted without being used."
My chest tightened.
"I didn't have that growing up," he continued, his voice low, stripped of its usual edge. "Not in my family. Not anywhere. Everything was transactional. Affection came with conditions. In our world, love was a weakness you paid for."
His gaze finally met mine, steady and unflinching. "And then there was you. Unaware of who I was. Unafraid of me. You were the first person who looked at me like I was...human."
The words landed heavier than it should have.
"I've read your file, Barinov," I said, lifting my glass for a measured sip. "You weren't born into power the way I was. You chose this life, when you could've walked away. Started over."
The waiter arrived just then, setting our plates down with practiced ease, murmuring for us to enjoy our food in Croatian before disappearing into the hum of the restaurant. I pretended not to understand the simple phrase. Instead, I nodded then picked up my fork and focused on my food, grounding myself in the mundane act of cutting into the meat.
Alex didn't touch his. He took a slow sip of wine instead, his mouth tightening as if the taste of the vintage carried something bitter.
"That's true," he said quietly. "But the people in your world destroyed my family. I couldn't let them walk free, not when I had the means to dismantle everything they've built." His gaze never left mine. "I've saved lives, Isla. More than you know."
"Not all of us are born evil," I replied, my knife tracing careful lines through the beef. "Some of us are just born without choices. We inherit our father's crowns, or graves."
A pause.
"Either way," he said, finally turning to his own plate, cutting into his steak with deliberate calm, "it's not the life I imagined for us. Not back then." His voice softened, almost imperceptibly. "The morning you disappeared, I was on my way to end it. All of it."
My breath caught.
"I was ready to let everything burn quietly," he continued. "But I was betrayed, just as you were."
I didn't want to ask. That day was still an open wound, raw and festering beneath my skin. But silence would betray me faster than curiosity ever could.
So I lifted my eyes, steady and inquisitive.
And pretended I didn't already know how deeply that betrayal had scarred us both. How it had split us open and shaped everything that followed. Until today.
"Let's not talk about that," I said at last, raising my glass and taking a slow sip, forcing my attention back to the plate in front of me. "Please."
For a moment, he studied me. His brows drew together, suspicion flickering briefly across his features, as if he sensed something shifting beneath the surface. Something just out of reach.
Then he nodded.
"Alright," he said quietly.
But the silence that followed was no longer comfortable.
And I knew, just as surely as I knew my own name, that some truths, once remembered, were already too alive to stay buried for long.