Chapter 25 Lev
LEV
When the basement door opens, the familiar steps of my Pakhan descend. I count each of the twelve stairs to quell the distaste she wants to talk so soon after finally finding a moment’s peace.
I twist my chair away from my desk when she reaches the twelfth and bottom step after double-checking the servers, ensuring all the familiar beeps and coloured lights are behaving as they should.
Vanessa hovers by the bottom, falling against the stair’s post. “Please tell me my eyes had it wrong when you were glaring at Nero.”
That. He was hugging Serafina with a brotherly familiarity. I didn’t mean to watch, didn’t mean for any of the same sensations felt when saving her from Vitale to colour my reaction.
“Depends on what your eyes were saying. Considering what Vitale nearly did to her, and that I’ve spent a week around her, I’m feeling a bit protective, that’s all.”
Her brows lift into her hair that’s been since pulled back in a braid. “You?” she drawls with contempt. “You don’t get protective over people.”
She’s right. Serafina’s a mission, needing security. A job to be completed without emotions.
“Consider it a first.”
“She needs a friend, not—”
Panic swarms me, my head electrocuted with unwelcome perceptions. It’s too much, and my hand slams down on the desk, feeling a kind of rage once reserved for my papa and prison inmates. “What are you insinuating?”
“You watched her a lot during the flight. You think I didn’t notice?”
I didn’t mean to. She was right there, across from me, and watching her has become a pattern. A near-obsession, if only for the assignment Vanessa suggested.
Her bright eyes lit up even bolder as we neared Moscow, like she was excited about coming here, and it was nice to see. It was finally an emotion to contradict everything since Alessio’s attack.
“We barely talked to one another before the party from hell.”
Vanessa straightens from the post, rubbing her hand along the back of her neck. “Sorry. I know you wouldn’t…do that…with her. That you don’t thi—”
Think like that. Just say it. Everyone here knows something’s wrong with me, but no one will come out and say it.
“Until Zeno breaks the engagement, she’s technically Vitale’s, and the Bratva doesn’t need those kinds of complications. Plus, she’s vulnerable. More so, once this is over, Zeno will probably keep her away from the Cosa Nostra, so the less entangled she gets with this life, the better.”
Because Serafina is meant for things outside mob life. Becoming friendly with anyone here won’t help when she’s sent on her way back to normalcy.
Everyone dictates her life for her, a fact I don’t think I like. She has no control, down to Vanessa ensuring her connections to this place remain unattached.
“I’m aware.” My hand slides from the table to my lap, finger tapping its usual pattern before getting too overwhelmed.
I’ve never fought with Vanessa, and it’s not something to start.
“Beyond her classes, we won’t interact. I’ll be down here most of the time.
I’ll return to work this week, now that Ivan’s captured and I’m home.
Part-time basis, to still attend her classes. ”
Vanessa’s lips spread in her usual pleased and professional smile. After a few final words, she returns upstairs, and I once again count her every step until the door shuts, allowing me to breathe again.
A few minutes later, it opens again. Presumably, it’ll be my sister about to taunt me over whatever subject she’s found most amusing for the day.
Once the person hits the second step, it becomes apparent it’s not Anastasia. Ana’s steps are confident, the steps of someone who comes down here more often than I’d prefer. Someone who doesn’t give two fucks about encroaching on my space.
These steps are cautious and slow, one after the other, before pausing halfway down. Her silent considerations are so loud, I almost hear them. Once she makes the decision we both knew she would, Serafina stops at the base of the stairs, her hand hooked around the post.
After Vanessa’s visit, I won’t handle hers.
“Hi,” she murmurs in a small voice that reminds me of the first night we met.
“Hi.” That’s polite, right? Polite isn’t what I should be, especially when she rocks on her heels, as if about to approach.
Leave. Go away. Go upstairs.
There’s nowhere safe from this woman. She has me caged down here like an animal, and now, she’s smashing the bars.
Seems my bedroom wasn’t enough. The rest of this house will soon smell of her.
Now, she’s insisting on coming here, to my only safe space, where I escape to and recall all the reasons why my curiosity about Serafina Mancini must end.
Down here, I can pretend she doesn’t exist.
But not if she’s encroaching.
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, and it does something to my dick. Enough, my finger taps again and I look away. To the monitors. The servers. Hell, to the lightbulb in my lamp. Anything but her.
“Need something?” Please leave.
“Your sister mentioned you were down here and showed me the way.”
Of course she did. Because Ana enjoys making my life a living hell, and that is precisely what Serafina is becoming.
An unescapable hell. A torment to my senses.
“You disappeared so abruptly, and I was curious what you do down here.”
“This.”
“What’s ‘this’?” Her eyes, dimmed by the lack of windows down here, flick around my server racks, the computer desk, and the futon which often becomes my bed.
And since my sister tormented me worse by placing Serafina’s bedroom beside mine, this futon will be exclusively where I sleep for the duration of her stay.
She paces closer. She wasn’t supposed to take this as an invitation.
Since common sense isn’t something I seem to retain around this woman, I gesture at one tower and explain its functionality, then the second, describing its purpose as a backup.
I briefly go through the other devices—the switches and routers, all enterprise level equipment—in simple terms, and she seems to devour all my explanations eagerly, like she’s truly interested in my rambles.
Which is…interesting. There’s a reason why Vanessa only lingered by the stairs. No one in this house can stand my detailed explanations of what goes on down here.
With Serafina, maybe it’s her reactions, maybe it’s something else, but I nearly go hunt a second computer chair, only so she can sit at the desk and I show her how all the hardware functions, the software required.
She needs to get away from me.
My head buzzes again. This time, nothing she says or does makes the sound go away, because she is the sound.
She wanders from the server racks to my desk, scanning the three monitors, the desktop computer decorated with RGB lighting, the headphone stand where two different kinds hang, ones for working and a gaming headset for the nights insomnia hits harder.
“You game?” She flicks the headset.
“Sometimes.”
“Hm.”
I want to know what she means by that, but it invites further conversation we shouldn’t be having. Still… “What’s ‘hm’?”
“Always wanted to try it out, but my facade during secondary school didn’t allow for it. The girl I thought I was doesn’t skip social events to stay home and play video games.”
“Maybe you need to stop worrying about what others think.” Fuck knows I’ve heard some negativity shot at me, but outside Padre, no one else mattered.
She does. I wonder what she thinks about me.
Does it matter?
She’s come to see me willingly.
Because you’re useful to her. A resource. She’s sticking close in case something comes up.
Her murmured “maybe” pulls me from my thoughts. It seems distant, like she’s paying little attention. She turns away from the desk and wanders through the rest of the room, studying the space. She’s unpeeling my safety net, leaving a trail of perfume everywhere she goes until stopping by my futon.
“Anastasia said you often sleep here.”
“Like I mentioned the other night, the noise from the servers is preferable to silence.”
“They gave me the room beside yours. It’s lovely. Better than the dorm room. Hell, I think that entire dorm could fit in the single bedroom.”
Logically, I understand Ana’s reasoning. Being alone in the guest wing wouldn’t be pleasant. But beside my room… Fuck, Ana.
In the midst of my silence, she ducks her head and slowly goes for the stairs. “Guess I’ll finish unpacking. Vanessa went to make a few arrangements with the school’s dean. She said it’ll be a day or so until I can start.”
I only nod and watch her mutely as she leaves. This time, I don’t count the steps.
When the basement door shuts, my lungs inhale the sweet lingering toxins.
Peaches and motherfucking vanilla.