Chapter 27 Lev
LEV
When sleep isn’t happening and gaming doesn’t help, I end up at the gym. Working out helps tire my body. Something I didn’t have in Italy.
It’s where I go after supper; not because of sleep issues, but to escape.
To work off every emotion tangling me up from the past week.
To get far away from an eighteen-year-old complication who sets my blood aflame for reasons I can’t and will not acknowledge.
To be in a place that eases the static in my mind while allowing me to just be.
My absence wasn’t announced to the soldiers, but it was obviously noticed when multiple greetings come at me. I wave most of them off, telling the few there to be on the lookout for a callout later this week.
After an hour on the treadmill, Vanessa requests me home, so I skip a much-desired shower to follow her command. Fresh anxiety trails me from the gym to the mansion that her demand has something to do with our new housemate.
When reaching her office, she’s behind her desk. Ana claims one of the free chairs while I settle into the second one. Vanessa taps on her phone, and the room fills with the sounds of an outgoing call. A masculine voice replies—Zeno.
“We’re all here. How was the meeting?”
Zeno grumbles something unintelligible in Italian before saying in English, “Alessandro Vitale is dead. Alessio is the head of the Vitale clan now.”
Silence falls across the room, my sister breaking it first. “This is good, right? For the deal? It’d void the contract.”
“Papa’s dead, but this is still a concern.” Vanessa frowns. “Either way, the Commission ended it?”
Zeno’s silent for three seconds. He curses in Italian, and then the sound of breaking glass comes through the other side.
Another male voice murmurs in the background—Nero’s, presumably—and then Zeno’s back on the phone.
“I have no fucking idea what the Vitales have over the Commission for them to deny me this.”
Fuck. My gaze goes for the door, imagining the woman somewhere in this house who’ll be expected to walk down an aisle.
The thought does more than make my blood boil. It makes my head ache worse than ever. Everything about this conversation is overwhelming, despite being around two trusted allies and one through a phone.
My hand spreads across my knee. One. Two. One.
“Why?” Vanessa demands. “Thought you said they broke the rules.”
“Rules are a loose term here—apparently. With the deal in place, they’re formalities.
” His tone implies he’s reciting what they told him.
“This is fucked. Every single one of the five—even the Mancini rep, some fucking old relative of mine—is against breaking this up. They claim a marriage is a show of strength while the Vitales are going through this change.”
I shuffle to the edge of my seat and raise my voice, disturbed by the coincidence. “Was Alessandro ill?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Then Alessio killed him. He knew the Commission would take your side. He tried to rob her virginity, to force your hand, and now, he’s taken out his father to make himself Capo.”
“I hate your organization,” Anastasia calls out, huffing. “It’s wrong how they’re willing to reward this asshole after assaulting Serafina.”
Fuck that. “He’s probably covered his tracks, but I’ll do what I can to see if he left evidence.” Who could help me, I don’t fucking know, but we have to have some set of eyes who can while keeping Zeno out of it.
After a moment of silence, everyone gathering thoughts, Vanessa asks what we’re all thinking. “What now?”
“Vitale’s funeral is this week, and all Cosa Nostra Capos and their seconds are expected, so Nero and I will attend. For now, I’ll keep working my end and wait for Alessio to make his move so I can end the fucker. She’s not going to him; I don’t care how many wars it’ll start.”
In that, he and I are in agreement.
“I love you, Vanessa, but my trips to Moscow will be limited for the time being, so they don’t track me there. I’d prefer not to tip him off as to where she’s hiding.”
Vanessa pouts but replies, “Makes sense.”
“As for Sera,” he continues, his voice weighted, “we’ll stick to the plan. Lev, be on the lookout. If Alessio figures out she’s there, I’m uncertain if he’ll encroach on Bratva territory.”
“He seems stupid enough to try,” Ana mumbles.
If only I went back to the party after settling her in my bed. If only I ended his life in that room. Then, none of this would be happening.
I should have. For her.
“Maybe we lure him here,” I suggest, staring at my Pakhan, who’s already shaking her head. “In our territory, we have reasons to attack, end his life before he goes near her.”
“Don’t tell her anything,” Zeno continues. “I’d rather not stress her out.” He says a few more things, more to Vanessa than the rest of us, before hanging up.
“Fuck.” Vanessa echoes all our thoughts.
I leave them to finally shower, trying not to consider what this all means. If I do, I’ll never rest. And if Zeno wants to keep Serafina in the dark, then I can’t be thinking about it.
More lies. I hate lying, especially to her.
At the top of the stairs, she’s lingering outside her door, eyes wide. It makes the bold blue of her irises darker. That’s when I notice the tear sliding down her cheek.
With it goes my control, the very little I was clinging to, to prevent me from making a huge fucking mistake. I can’t keep walking, no matter how much I want to. How much I should.
“What is it?”
She waves me into her room and shuts the door, but I linger beside it, not daring to venture into the area. Already, her perfume permeates this place, making it the four walls I’ll never ever step inside again. Not during her stay, and maybe not even afterwards.
“I went downstairs looking for…well, it doesn’t matter. I heard you all in Vanessa’s office. I didn’t mean to listen, but then you said my name and—” Her hands snap to the bed’s footboard, bracing herself. “Zeno couldn’t break the engagement. I’m fucked, aren’t I?”
“No.” This isn’t a lie, no matter how much it isn’t a guarantee. “You will not marry him. No one here will let you go.” Myself included.
“Zeno might not have a choice. If he prevents this, it’ll spark a war, which I refuse be the cause of. My freedom isn’t worth the death it’d bring to his soldiers—to him.”
“Not worth it?” I all but growl, wanting to shake her.
But getting close, especially now, won’t end well.
Not for me, for her, or for my sanity. The familiar static kicks off in my head, grounding me.
“Your happiness, your freedom, is worth it, and don’t think otherwise.
You’re trying to not be burdensome, but that’s the furthest from anyone’s minds.
I should have killed him. If it comes down to it, I swear, I will. ”
Her curtain of hair slips to the side as she twists. “You mean that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She turns fully, resting on the footboard. It makes the shorts she’s changed into since supper ride up higher on her thigh, revealing soft skin my hands retain the memory of touching when undressing her. “What now?”
“Nothing’s changed.” She’ll return to school, Vitale be damned.
“Everything’s changed.”
“Nothing you need to worry about. He won’t dare enter Bratva territory. It’d be his death.”
“Is Zeno planning on telling me any of this?”
“He doesn’t want to stress you out, so keep this between us.”
She nods, chewing on her bottom lip but seeming calmer than earlier. She’s stopped crying, at the very least, and that alone eases my head. I shove off the doorframe and open her door, breathing in the hallway air that isn’t tainted by peach and vanilla.
“Night, Fina.”
In my room, I shower and change before slipping into bed rather than go downstairs. The room is quiet. Too quiet. There’s no noise to quell the noise in my head.
Yet, with thoughts of the woman next door, its silent enough that my body slips into a half-decent sleep.
The best in my own bed since the night she was in it.