Chapter 23 Lev
LEV
This room smells like peaches and vanilla. Like her.
All packed up, I remain in my bedroom longer than intended, taking it all in while also avoiding Serafina for as long as possible. Sitting on the mattress she recently slept on isn’t my wisest decision.
Coming here is turning into the most unwise decision I’ve ever made.
Even everything I dreaded at the beginning, I’ll soon be missing. In Moscow, there won’t be any more late nights watching her damn shows, no more monitoring while she studies. A week ago, freedom would have been ideal, but now…
It’s concerning how much I’m already grieving the change, even if it’s for the best. For her safety and my mental well-being, we’ll be split up.
The mansion will keep us apart. She’ll be studying and hanging around my sister and Vanessa when not in class, while I’ll be my regular basement dweller self.
I’ll have to hide from her. There is no choice.
Here, it’s different. Here, she’s a job.
At home, her sweet fragrance will taint every corner.
She’ll brand the mansion to be unlivable.
She’ll destroy my safety net—destroy me.
There will be no avoiding it, because she’ll be everywhere for an undetermined length of time.
There will never be a chance for her perfume to fade when it’s constantly being refreshed.
Why did I agree to continue attending her classes?
A new school means new patterns, places, and noises.
After a week, I’d been getting used to this campus and her routine.
I knew what to expect. A different school means re-learning everything.
New routes, new classrooms, new everything.
New people and noises I won’t account for right away.
It's all worth it if it makes her happy.
Throughout the week, I’ve yet to determine what makes Serafina have such a strange hold on me. But, apparently, not every mystery will get solved.
I can’t deny her when she gives me that look, the one with the eyes I’ve known my entire life reflecting a much different kind of pain and hope. One that fucking destroys me. One that wraps me up in whatever bubble she’s constructed.
That, and because no other man will protect her the way she needs to be.
Last night was a grave mistake, and I’ll own up to that.
I can berate myself by taking out anyone else who makes her cry.
I’ll continue the job until she’s good to return and attend this place without protection.
Then, my interest in this strange addiction—that’s precisely what’s she’s become; an unhealthy, curious fixation—will be sated.
I must. If Vanessa assigned another soldier to guard her, and she was harmed under their watch, there would be no salvaging their soul after I finished with them.
With a sigh, I exit the bedroom carrying my two duffle bags. There’s only one way this all ends, and that’s leaving this dorm. I toss my bags by the front door and gravitate towards her room, biting down a chuckle at the sight.
She’s standing on her bed, using the bed frame to reach higher and unhook the string lights she lined the window with. She nearly topples off twice, grunts, and does this little bouncy thing that in no way helps her. It only causes her hair to flounce, still damp from her shower.
“Need help?” I ask after a moment, before she brings bodily harm to herself.
She yelps, spinning and nearly falling over again. “Yes! How long were you watching this pathetic attempt?”
“Long enough to see you weren’t going to manage by yourself. However did you get them up in the first place?”
“Dragged the bed closer. But I’m too tired to be lugging furniture back and forth.”
So, for all her claims of being okay, she’s really not.
She goes to hop from the bed but lands unsteadily, tripping on air. She’s truly a danger to herself. I catch her, steadying her by her waist. Fingers skate along the patch of skin between her shirt and jeans before jerking away.
“Careful, before you land on your face. It’d be a shame to break something so pretty.”
We both realize what I said—what I’ve admitted—at the same time.
Of course, she’s pretty. Beauty is defined by society as having certain appealing qualities, and by a textbook definition, Serafina is it. It’s the shape of her face, the symmetry of her features, her unique colouring and bright eyes and perfect mouth and shade of hair.
How I regard her doesn’t matter. What I see as attractive in a woman.
All this forms the noise in my head. I’m stuck when she tilts her head, despite realizing how close we are. I really need to back the fuck up.
Right now.
“You think I’m pretty?”
I think you’re gorgeous. But highly forbidden and on a path much different than the one I’m walking.
She’ll never see the inside of a prison, while I’ve been numerous times.
She’ll never know what it’s like to take a life, while I’ve taken many.
She’ll never need to use a weapon, while I use multiple.
She’s a Cosa Nostra printessa, and I’m a Bratva Elite, a device meant to be used and discarded. Never protected. Never alleviated for someone like her.
“You know you are,” I reply gruffly, hoping to shift the attention from me to her. “Isn’t the saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder or something?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
You asked me the impossible.
My head thumps faster—harder. As does my heart.
Something about her not only affects my senses, but me as a whole. My obsessions are far and few: computers, networks, anything with technology. I’m never drawn by things I don’t want. Things I don’t know how to want.
Things I also can’t want.
Ignoring her, I climb onto her bed and easily unhook the lights before passing them down. The sun falls at an angle that catches on the lighter strands of her hair, making her glow.
Ignoring the jolt that has on my stomach, I jump from her bed and stride for the door. “Let me know if you need any more help.”
A few minutes later, Vanessa enters with a large smile and an announcement to match.
We head to Ostia first so Serafina can say goodbye to her mother and grab anything else from her room she’ll want, being that she’ll no longer be a short trip away.
When we pull up, Zeno twists around. “Give me a few to break the news to her. That way, when she worries—which she will—she’ll have the space to get it out. She’s particular about appearances and won’t want you to witness.”
“He’s not wrong,” Serafina comments from beside me once he’s gone.
“I’ll stay in the car. It’s probably a bad idea for me to go in.” Vanessa worries her bottom lip, casting me a look.
As the daughter of the man who once raped Gabriella Mancini, Zeno and Serafina’s mother, in this, even I’m not so numb to not understand her apprehension.
Serafina leans forward, nestling herself between the two front seats. “Madre will want to meet the woman who convinced Zeno to take the stick out of his ass. Trust me, she’ll be okay.”
In the side mirror’s reflection, I watch my Pakhan, someone who puts on such an infallible front, glare at the small house in trepidation. “I don’t want to cause her nightmares.”
“You’re the woman giving her son sweet dreams. She’ll love you for that.
You don’t know what Z was like before you came along, Vanessa.
I’d hear her talking to herself sometimes, and she worried he’d end up like his father and so many Cosa Nostra men before them—cold-hearted and unloved by the woman they end up wed to. ”
Vanessa isn’t given a chance to reply, because Zeno returns, opening her door. “As suspected, she isn’t thrilled about Serafina leaving Italy, but she is happy she’ll be staying with you in Moscow.”
“Seriously?” both Vanessa and Serafina chime, their surprise too high-pitched for my ears.
“She understands it’ll be safer.”
He gestures for us to all climb out, practically pulling Vanessa out of the vehicle.
Serafina skips ahead with Zeno while Vanessa falls back beside me.
Her shoulder brushes mine when she leans close enough to hiss in my ear.
“Invent some security break on our networks to get me the hell out of this. That’s an order from your Pakhan. ”
“You’ll be fine. You’ll have to meet her at some point if you and Zeno stay together.”
“Da. At some point.”
By the time we catch up, Serafina’s already inside, but Zeno lingers by the door. I slow so she’s forced to talk to him, but all he does is kiss her.
“You’ll be alright, I promise. When have I ever let anything bad happen to you?”
He leads us inside and down a skinny hallway, enveloping us into the warmth of the cozy house. I’m less concerned about my Pakhan now that we’re inside, instead curious about where Serafina spent her life.
The hallway opens to a large space, an open kitchen to our right, living room to our left. It’s quant, comfortable, and in many ways, reminds me of my basement—secluded. Unlike the place Anastasia and I grew up, which was sterile enough to be a hospital.
There’s life here. It’s in the knitted blanket tossed into a messy ball at one end of the couch, the same couch with the mismatched cushions askew.
The glass coffee table is home to a mug half-filled with tea and a puzzle nearing completion.
The attached kitchen has dishes drying on the counter rather than hidden away in glass cupboards.
It’s orderly and tidy, but not like a museum.
My next scan is to search for signs of Serafina.
A few framed pictures hang on a nearby wall—one of a child at a beach, another from only months ago, her graduation gown dating the image.
Lots of her and Zeno together, or her and their mother.
Another from her pre-teen years in front of a cake that has a 1 and a 2 candle jammed into it.
She’s smiling in all of them, genuine and free. There were no pictures of Anastasia and me smiling on our house’s walls.