CHAPTER 45
NERO ZANTHOS
“So that’s your plan?” Atlas says as he walks into my bedroom at my parents’ house and finds me sprawled in an armchair, drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. “Do and say things you know you’ll regret, then drink to forget?”
“If you came to talk about what I think you came to talk about, feel free to turn around and walk right back out,” I offer. He doesn’t. He sits in the chair across from me, leans forward, and rests his elbows on his knees.
“I think I’ll stay. And you can tell me what you plan to accomplish with all of this.”
“Yeah? Then I guess it’ll be a quiet night.” I lower the bottle and settle it against my thigh.
“This isn’t you,” he says, pulling a bitter laugh out of me.
“And was it me when I was being played, about to marry a woman who was trying to pull the same scam on three different men at the same time?”
“You can’t say that for sure.”
“You saw the photos.”
“You mean the ones you scattered across the floor for the whole island to see? That’s not okay, Nero. That’s a crime, for fuck’s sake.”
“I tore them up the first time. I never wanted to see those images again. Honestly, I wanted to bleach my brain just to erase them. But when I opened my email this morning, I discovered my mother had kindly sent me the digital files.” I laugh, hollow and sour, because I know perfectly well that kindness was the last thing motivating Lysandra’s actions.
“I printed them out on pure masochistic instinct—bordering on sadistic.”
“I noticed,” he says, accusing.
I throw my head back against the chair and drag it side to side against the leather, shaking my head.
“They were for me. When I opened that damn email, saw the photos again, and felt the hate light up my veins all over, I realized I was already starting to forget. And I can’t allow myself to forget.
I reprinted the photos so that when my stupid heart tries to push me into giving Nina a chance to explain herself, I can remind it that what she did is unforgivable. ”
“That’s st—”
“I knew she’d come back,” I say, cutting him off. He said he came to listen, didn’t he? “The other two she was cheating on me with—or cheating with me, I honestly don’t know what the right semantics are here—they left Greece. I was her last option. I knew she’d come back.”
“Every story has two sides, Nero. You shouldn’t stop yourself from hearing the other one,” Atlas warns.
I take a long pull from the whiskey before straightening in the chair, forcing my spine upright.
“You want her for yourself? Is that it?” I shrug. “Be my guest.” I gesture toward the door. “Honestly, it probably won’t even be hard.”