"Refugee camp outside Banja Luka. 1997." He leaned against the wall, casual as if we were discussing the weather. "She'd been there about a year. Still young enough to... reshape. The aid workers were overwhelmed with the influx of orphans."
A year.
She'd survived a year waiting for me.
"She talked about you constantly at first. Her brave big brother who would come save her. Who'd protected her from bigger kids. Who'd shared his food even when his own stomach was empty." Each word was placed surgically, designed to cut deepest. "She was so certain you'd find her. Even made the other children call her 'Luka's sister' instead of using her name."
I pressed my palms against the counter hard enough to leave dents, but I couldn't block out the images his words painted. Ana waiting. Ana hoping. Ana's faith dying by degrees as days became months.
"Eventually, she stopped talking about you. The trauma, the loss... a seven-year-old mind can only hold on to hope for so long. By the time I started working with her, she was... pliable." He stepped closer, his reflection joining mine in the mirror. "I saved her, Luka. Gave her new memories. New life. Parents who died in a car accident instead of to Serbian death squads. Boarding school in Switzerland instead of refugee camps. A normal, happy life." He leaned closer, dropping his voice. "I even erased all traces of her Bosniak upbringing. She believes she's ethnically Serbian now. No memory of the prayers your mother taught her. No memory of your father's stories. She identifies completely with the people who executed your parents."
"You stole her memories." My voice came out raw. "You stole her from me. You made her believe she's one of the people who destroyed our village."
"I gave her peace." His tone hardened. "Look what your memories made you. A killer. A weapon. Someone who flinches when touched gently, who can't sleep without checking exits. Would you wish that on her?"
No. The answer was immediate and absolute.
"She's happy, Luka. Genuinely, truly happy."
Happy. The word sat foreign in my mouth.
"Here's what happens now." His voice shifted to business mode, the caring façade dropping. "You'll finish dinner. Break things off with Vincent. Come with me willingly. Submit to re-education. Let me fix what your therapist has broken in my programming."
He stepped closer, invading my space completely, his cologne suffocating me with memories of Milan. "Or perhaps we start with Ana. I wonder how she'd react to learning her charity's DNA database accidentally matched her to a known assassin? Imagine her confusion when I explain that this dangerous man believes he's her long-dead brother." His voice dropped to a whisper. "How traumatizing for her fragile mind. She might need... extensive therapy to recover. Private therapy. With me."
He would use her, break her again, all to punish me for my disobedience.
Something inside me snapped clean in half.
The rage that had been building since the cemetery that morning, since seeing Ana alive and married to this monster, finally broke its chains. Not the calculated violence I'd been trained for, but something primal and uncontrolled that roared up from a place deeper than training, deeper than fear.
I moved purely on instinct, my body launching forward like a released spring. My hands found his throat before conscious thought caught up, slamming him against the bathroom wall. Marble cracked, spider-webbing outward from the impact point. His pulse jumped frantically against my thumbs.
But even as my fingers tightened, pain exploded behind my eyes—not physically, but something worse. Prometheus's failsafes activating in my brain, neural pathways he'd carved through years ofconditioning. Twenty-six years of programming screamed at me to stop, to obey, to submit. My vision fractured, doubled. Sweat poured down my temples as I fought against my own mind.
Ana's face flashed before me—not the polished woman at the dinner table, but my six-year-old sister screaming my name as soldiers dragged her away. Vincent's voice echoed in my ears: "You get to choose who you are now." The memory of him asleep beside me, trusting me despite knowing what I was.
These weren't just memories. They were lifelines. Anchors to who I was beneath the weapon Prometheus had forged.
"You took everything from me," I snarled, fingers digging into the soft flesh beneath his jaw. "My sister. My life. My humanity." Each word punctuated by tightening fingers, each syllable a battle against the invisible chains in my mind. "You remade me into a fucking weapon, used me till I broke, then tossed me aside like spent brass."
He clawed at my hands, face darkening as I cut off his air supply. But even now, even with death closing in, his eyes held that same smug certainty that had defined our entire relationship. He didn't believe I could do it. Didn't believe I could kill him.
And he was right. The psychological barriers he'd built into me, the conditioning that had prevented me from turning against him for twenty-six years, still pulled at my muscles like puppet strings. My hands began to shake, grip loosening despite my rage.
He knew it would happen. Had counted on it.
"Still my good boy," he wheezed as my grip faltered. "Still can't bite the hand that feeds you."
The words hit like a slap. Good boy. The praise he'd used during those six nights in Milan, when I was drugged and confused and desperate for approval.
Something broke free inside me, the last chain snapping. I slammed him against the wall again, harder this time, and his head cracked against marble with a sound like a ripe melon splitting. Blood smeared the white surface, bright red against stark white.
"I'm not yours anymore," I growled, hands tightening again around his throat. "I don't belong to you."
The bathroom door burst open. Two of Prometheus security team filled the doorway, weapons already drawn.
My training kicked in instantly. I released Prometheus, diving to the side as bullets chipped marble where my head had been a split second earlier.
