Chapter 5 - THE UNBALANCED SPEECH
Hannah answered Roman in his mother’s language.
She didn't use English. She didn't use broken words or an accent.
She spoke fluently, smoothly, using the ancient, regional Old Gorski dialect that her grandmother had drummed into her memory during childhood afternoons in South Chicago.
The audience sitting in the dining room heard only a sequence of soft, unfamiliar, guttural sounds—a cadence that sounded like water rolling over river stones, rich with soft vowels and sharp, retroflex consonants:
"The soup of the high mountains cannot be boiled in a gold pot, sir. It needs wild plum, roasted garlic, and patience."
The moment those unfamiliar, ancient words left Hannah’s lips and hit the air of Bellanote, the physical environment shattered.
Roman Vale went completely, utterly motionless.
His hands, resting at his sides, froze. His eyes widened—a sudden, electric flash of absolute, unadulterated shock breaking through his cold, impenetrable mask for the very first time in fifteen years.
Behind him, Marcus Greco and the two other lieutenants exchanged sharp, uneasy glances. They didn't understand the words—none of Roman's men spoke the old mountain dialect—but they recognized the sudden, catastrophic transformation in their boss's posture. Greco’s hand instinctively drifted an inch closer to his tailored suit jacket, his eyes darting from Hannah’s face to Roman's frozen profile.
Martin Keller, standing against the wall, looked as though his heart had stopped entirely. He didn't know what language Hannah had just spoken, but he assumed she had just insulted the most dangerous man in Chicago.
Roman didn't move for three long seconds.
His mind was spinning back thirty years—back to a tiny, snow-covered stone cottage in the Southern Balkans, back to a copper pot bubbling over an open hearth, back to his mother’s soft, calloused hands wiping his forehead while she sang to him in the exact same ancient dialect.
He had spent thirty years acquiring power, wealth, and territory. He had bought mansions in Gold Coast, private jets, and commercial fleets. Yet in thirty years, in every high-end restaurant from New York to London, he had never heard a single human soul speak a word of his mother's native tongue.
He was looking at a twenty-eight-year-old waitress in a Chicago restaurant who had just delivered his childhood back to him in a single sentence.
Hannah realized too late the immense, terrifying weight of what she had just done.
She saw the raw, exposed shock in Roman’s pale gray eyes. She saw his lieutenants shifting behind him. A sudden spike of adrenaline shot through her veins, her heart hammering against her ribs as she tightened her grip on her silver serving tray until her knuckles turned white.
Roman took one slow, deliberate step closer to her, closing the remaining distance until he was standing less than two feet away.
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His voice dropped into a low, raspy whisper that trembled with a suppressed, overwhelming emotion:
"Where did you learn that?"
