The knowledge was a live wire in Ante's brain, crackling with a terrifying energy. The musty scent of old books still clung to him, but it was the perfume of revelation, of a truth so vast and strange it had reshaped the very contours of his reality. He was no longer just a man in his father's house; he was a guardian standing at the threshold of a myth, and a monster was trying to kick the door down.
He had spent the hours after his research in a state of heightened, almost preternatural awareness. Every sound from the south wing was a siren's call of anxiety. The soft click of Mirna's door, the faint shuffle of her feet—each one was a reminder of the fragile, impossible life trembling in the room down the hall. The weight of what he now believed—what he knew—was a physical burden on his shoulders. It was a secret that isolated him from the entire rational world.
He heard the Land Rover long before it reached the villa, the growl of its engine a jarring intrusion into the tense quiet. The sound was a declaration: the king was returning to his castle. Ante's muscles coiled. The time for observation, for research, was over. The time for confrontation had arrived.
He waited in the living room, standing in the center of the vast, polished space, a gladiator in the arena. He didn't sit. He didn't pour a drink. He simply stood, his hands clenched at his sides, his body thrumming with a volatile mix of scientific disbelief and primal, protective fury.
The front door opened and Jure stepped through. He looked tired, his expensive suit jacket slung over his shoulder, his tie loosened. But the fatigue vanished the moment he saw his son's stance, the unyielding challenge in his eyes. Jure's own gaze, which had been distant and business-weary, sharpened instantly into flinty focus. The air in the room thickened, charged with the static of impending storm.
"The Austrians are settled," Jure said, his tone dismissive, as he dropped his jacket onto the back of a sofa. "For now." He headed for the sideboard and the rakija. It was a ritual, a re-establishment of his dominion.
"This isn't about the Austrians," Ante said, his voice low and clear, cutting through the ritualistic sounds of pouring liquid.
Jure paused, the bottle hovering over the glass. He didn't turn around. "No? Then what is it about? Your little boat trip? I saw the dinghy was out."
"It's about Mirna."
The name hung in the air between them, a dividing line. Jure slowly placed the bottle down. He picked up his glass, turned, and leaned against the sideboard, taking a slow, deliberate sip. His eyes, over the rim of the crystal, were cold and assessing.
"What about her?"
Ante took a step forward. The distance between them was now a no-man's-land. "Who is she, really?" he asked, the question a direct challenge to the foundation of his father's narrative. "A woman with no past? No family? No one who has come looking for her? It's been weeks. Doesn't that strike you as… impossible?"
Jure's face was an impassive mask, but a tiny muscle twitched in his jaw. "The world is full of impossible things. She was lost. I found her. I gave her a home. That is all you need to know."
"It's not all I need to know!" Ante's voice rose, the control he'd been clinging to beginning to fray. "What are you doing to her? I hear her at night. I see the way she looks at you—like you're going to skin her alive. You don't look at a person you saved that way. You look at your jailer that way."
Jure's composure cracked. The mask of the benevolent benefactor shattered, revealing the raw, possessive granite beneath. His eyes darkened, the whiskey colour turning muddy with rage.
"You will lower your voice," he hissed, pushing himself off the sideboard. "You are a guest in this house. You know nothing of the situation."
"I know enough!" Ante shot back, advancing another step. "I know you've taken a vulnerable, terrified young woman and you're holding her here like a… a trophy! You touch her, and she freezes. She cries herself to sleep. What 'situation' justifies that, Father? What business model covers the cost of a soul?"
"SHE IS MINE!"
The roar erupted from Jure with the force of a volcanic blast. It wasn't just loud; it was a physical wave of sound that seemed to shake the glass in the windows. Spittle flew from his lips, his face contorted into a mask of such pure, unadulterated possession that it was monstrous.
"I pulled her from the sea!" he bellowed, stabbing a finger towards the window, towards the cove. "I! She was nothing! A piece of driftwood! I gave her a name! I gave her a life! Every breath she takes is by my grace! Her body is my sanctuary, because I SAVED IT FROM THE DARKNESS!"
The argument was no longer an argument. It was a physical clash, a seismic event where two opposing tectonic plates of morality finally ground against each other.
"You didn't save her, you salvaged her!" Ante yelled back, his own fury meeting his father's head-on. "And you're trying to break her to fit your collection! She's not a painting, she's a person!"
"YOU KNOW NOTHING!" Jure slammed his glass down on the sideboard. The crystal, impossibly, did not break, but the sound was a gunshot in the room. He strode forward until he was inches from his son, his larger frame looming, his breath hot and smelling of rakija and rage. "You with your soft life, your little fish, your… your morals! This is the real world! You see something of value, you take it! You make it yours! That is the only law that matters!"
"The law says she's a person with rights!" Ante stood his ground, his chest heaving. "The law says what you're doing is kidnapping! It's abuse!"
"THE LAW?" Jure laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "I am the law here! This is my land! My house! My… MIRNA!"
The violence escalated from verbal to physical. Jure shoved Ante, a hard, open-handed push to the chest. It was not a fight-ending blow, but a punctuation of his absolute authority, a physical manifestation of his words: I am the law here.
Ante stumbled back a step, more from shock than force. The touch, the aggression, broke the last vestige of his restraint. The image of Mirna's terrified face, the memory of her silent sobs, the weight of the legends—it all coalesced into a white-hot point of action.
He shoved his father back.
It was a harder shove, fueled by a younger man's strength and a righteous fury. Jure, caught off guard, staggered back, his heel catching on the edge of the rug. He didn't fall, but the indignity of it, the challenge to his physical dominance, ignited an inferno in his eyes.
With a guttural roar, Jure lunged. He wasn't a brawler, but he was a powerful man used to getting his way through intimidation. He grabbed Ante by the front of his shirt, his fists twisting the fabric, and drove him back against the massive, slate coffee table. The impact was jarring, the hard, raw edge digging into Ante's back.
"You… will… NOT… INTERFERE!" Jure snarled, his face inches from Ante's, his eyes wild with a possessive madness Ante had never seen before. It was the look of a dragon guarding its hoard.
They struggled, a graceless, desperate tangle of limbs. It was not a fight of technique, but a raw explosion of generational conflict—the old world of brutal acquisition against the new world of empathy and ethics. A vase of fresh flowers was knocked from a side table, shattering on the marble floor, water and petals spreading like a bloodstain. A chair was kicked over.
In the south guest room, Mirna was curled on the floor, her arms wrapped around her head, trembling so violently her teeth chattered.
The argument had started as a low, menacing rumble, a distant thunderstorm. But it had quickly escalated into a cataclysm. She heard the raised voices, the distorted, angry tones she couldn't make out, but the intent was clear: they were fighting. Over her.
Jure's voice was a familiar terror, a sound that could freeze her blood. The violence in it tonight was a new peak, a raw, shredding fury that promised annihilation. Each roar, each shouted word—"MINE!" "SAVED HER!"—was a hammer blow against her fragile spirit, reminding her of her absolute powerlessness, of the fact that she was a bone being fought over by two dogs.
But then, cutting through the paralyzing fear, was Ante's voice.
It was different. It wasn't the low, possessive growl of his father. It was higher, sharper, laced with a desperate, defiant anger. She couldn't make out the words, but she could hear the tone—a shield being raised, a sword being drawn. He was fighting back. He was yelling at the monster, not cowering before it.
The sound of the shattering glass made her cry out, a small, muffled sound into the rug. Then came the grunts, the heavy thuds of bodies hitting furniture, the scuffling of feet. The violence was no longer just verbal; it was physical. The villa itself seemed to be groaning under the strain of the conflict.
A fresh, suffocating terror gripped her. What if Jure hurt him? What if Ante, the only person who had looked at her without hunger or ownership, was broken? The thought was a new kind of despair, one that went beyond her own safety. For the first time, her fear was not entirely for herself.
And within that new fear, something else sparked. A fragile, impossible, terrifying little flame of hope.
He was defending her. He was standing up to the man who owned the very air she breathed. He was risking his own safety, his place in this family, for her. No one had ever done that. No one had ever even seen her as worth defending.
The hope was as painful as the fear. It was a sharp, bright shard in the dark, hollow cavern of her being. It was dangerous. To hope was to open herself up to a new, more profound kind of shattering if that hope was crushed.
But she couldn't extinguish it. As the sounds of the struggle continued from the living room—the primal, guttural sounds of two men tearing at each other over the ghost of who she was—Mirna, the sea-creature, the captive, the blank slate, clung to the sound of Ante's defiant voice. It was a lifeline thrown into the abyss. And in the trembling darkness of her room, her fingers, metaphorically, began to curl around it. The war was no longer just outside her door. It was now inside her heart, a battle between the terror that had defined her and the fragile, terrifying, beautiful ember of hope.