Chapter 5
LEV
Only after Vanessa’s SUV pulls away from the mansion, taking with it the two Mancinis, do I move from my place in the kitchen, escape the cloud of vanilla and peaches somehow lingering, and start for the basement to begin the favour Vanessa asked of me.
With Dimitri off to Canada searching for Ivan, I’ll start tracking Ivan’s cell to figure out where he’s popping up.
Anastasia, grin and all, ambushes me in the kitchen doorway, her arms stretching out in an annoying blockade. I push one down to get by, but she shuffles in front of me, irritating me the way she was born to.
“What?” I growl.
“There is no spare room beside yours, which means she would have spent the night in your room.”
“Your point?” Lying to Zeno was necessary, since I doubted he’d appreciate hearing his younger sister slept in a man’s bed, even when sex was the last thing on either of our minds. “The chair isn’t a bed, and the floor is hard. She took one side, I took the other—not a big deal.”
It’s a huge fucking deal.
The look she gives agrees with me. “You don’t like people in your bed.”
“Or near me.” I gesture to the five inches space between us. “Yet, here we are.”
Taking the hint, she lets me by to continue towards the basement. “Careful,” she calls after me. “Your kindness is seeping through. Be sure to patch it up before someone realizes you’re human beneath that thick skin.”
I flip her my middle finger and slam the door shut between us, cutting myself off from the rest of the world.
Already, a night’s worth of tenseness seeps away.
The static in my brain that’s only been silent around Serafina quells until masked by the better buzzing the basement is equipped with—the humming of my operational servers.
I pass my pride, joy, and obsession—the server racks—and lower into my gaming chair.
After I readjust the pillow behind my head and switching on the three monitors, the drag of the mouse beneath my palm is welcoming.
My injured shoulder lightly throbs as the pills the doctor left are slow to kick in, but considering it’s my left side and I’m right-handed, it doesn’t matter.
I start by loading the software used to ping cell towers, but as much as my entire focus should be on helping Dimitri find his traitorous father, I instead open a browser tab, typing in the address for a popular social media site.
In the site’s search bar, I type a name I very well don’t have a right to.
serafina mancini
I need to know what’s so special about her to raise my inquisitiveness. Why she specifically, of all people, managed to suppress the noise in my head, made me sleep better than ever in my own bedroom and not care that she was in it with me.
She had me lying to Zeno and Vanessa when I’ve never before lied to Vanessa. I’ve never had a reason to lie to anyone, besides the assholes we deal with. For both our safety, I did, since it was simpler than the fallout of the truth.
Immediately, Serafina’s enjoyment of the internet spreads across my screen. Profiles from other platforms, posts of her complaining about day-to-day stuff, and the pictures…my fuck, they’re endless.
If I saw these before meeting her, I’d think she was merely beautiful, but reality makes her digital footprint a fraction of her worth.
She’s objectively gorgeous, and waking up beside her struck me with a sense of wonder, because she appeared utterly at peace.
I found myself pondering if she looks like this every morning until recalling who she is and why it shouldn’t matter.
Her personal information makes her eighteen, which is already a known fact. She doesn’t look that young, particularly in newer photos. In many of her and friends, she seems like the older sister. It’s in the way she holds herself, staring into the camera with confidence they lack.
The more I scroll, the deeper I get. The pictures of her at the beach, I pass quickly when noting the amount of bare skin. There are some of her at parties, which I wonder if Zeno knows about. In those, her eyes are glazed, her smile messier.
In almost all of them, friends are beside her. We’re the opposite in every way. Given she’s constantly around other people, she must enjoy it, while I prefer to avoid social situations entirely.
So again, what is it about her? Based on pictures, she seems like someone who’d make my head hurt.
Of course, pictures hide the truth. The Serafina who was present isn’t the one in these photos. When she smiled at me, her eyes lit up, but in the photos, they’re dull. She’s happy, but not happy.
In a particularly clear one, I zoom in on the blue that should remind me of the Volkov woman upstairs but doesn’t. Not only is the shade Serafina’s own colour, but it’s my colour, and I now understand why they captured my attention last night.
When I was five, there was a shirt I obsessively wore, to the point our nanny was washing it every day.
It faded and got worn down, and then I eventually outgrew it entirely, and it was gone.
I scoured my room and the laundry room, cursing the nanny and staff who hid it.
Anastasia tried to calm me down, but nothing eased the meltdown.
Finally, they bought me a brand new one, except it wasn’t the correct shade. Close, but not quite. It sent me into another tailspin until I cut up the shirt and threw it in the trash, never to find another in the precise shade as that first.
I found it. Serafina Mancini’s eyes are the exact shade of blue I’ve spent my life searching for.
It shouldn’t be possible. She’s a person; it’s an article of clothing…but it is.
I don’t know how long I spend internet-stalking her before flipping to one of her other profiles and starting down that path too.
A path that doesn’t have a comfortable ending, and when the time in the corner of my monitor reveals an hour passing since leaving the kitchen, I’m reminded why this is a bad fucking idea.
She’s younger. She’s also Vanessa’s half-sister, and, depending if Vanessa’s still going through with the divorce after the marriage Zeno forced onto her or not, her sister-in-law too.
Serafina is someone I shouldn’t have crossed paths with until Vanessa chose to officially blend our families.
She was a pawn in Ivan’s cruel games, and saving her became my job.
Allowing her in my bed was a kindness to repay, nothing more, so it doesn’t matter if she caused strange reactions in me.
With a quick tap, all the tabs detailing Serafina’s life die. She may hold some strange fascination, but it must remain an intrigue before she turns into an obsession.
There’s something in my brain that, when latching onto an interesting topic, shuts the noise off and turns all my focus inwards. Sometimes, I’ll go days without properly sleeping or eating because of this hyper-fixation.
My interest in servers started after a quick internet search to fix our buffering Wi-Fi one day.
That’s all it was, but next thing I knew, I was deep into the terminology and videos, learning computers inside and out.
How they function, how they’re created, everything about the hardware they’re built with and the software running them.
Then, my interest expanded to how multiple computers can work together on one network.
Computers, networks, and servers got into my head and took over, sometimes so much, I’d forget direct orders from Papa, Ursin, or Ivan, which would end with me in prison as punishment.
The longer I spend wondering why Serafina affects me so, the more learning everything about her may become an accidental and inappropriate obsession. If Vanessa was aware Serafina had the potential to be that, she’d throw me into prison herself and lose the key.
After a few hours of working inside the tracking software and texting Dimitri for information, I head upstairs to find Vanessa and update her before searching out more pain meds the good doc left last night.
My made bed immediately draws my attention—because of course she did. Serafina probably woke up and immediately felt guilty she didn’t break her neck or back by finishing the night in the chair, so she made the bed.
After swallowing two pills, I grab an apple from the kitchen to make my supper.
For sleep, I pass out on the familiar futon beside my computers, far away from my bedroom and the scent of vanilla and peaches.
The next day, Vanessa and I head into Moscow to break the news to the families of the fallen soldiers from the fight Ivan initiated.
Normally, this would be a job Dimitri does either himself or with Vanessa, but since he’s not in the country, she asked me to tag along.
The thought of entering numerous strangers’ homes has my fingers completing their typical rhythmic tapping against the steering wheel, something Anastasia claims is a nervous tick.
Not sure if she’s correct, but it calms my mind and heart.
One tap, two back-to-back, and then a final one before repeating all over again.
When pulling up to the first soldier’s house, a simple two-storey building, Vanessa scans the notes Anastasia compiled earlier. “Blyat, I hate this part. He has a two-year-old. Fuck, Lev.”
The fact she’s doing this at all says enough.
Ursin certainly never did. Serving under Vanessa’s father was so vastly different, and every second was terrible.
But it was the way my life was meant to go, as designed by Papa.
Back then, the Bratva was different. The Elite members were different, my father one of them.
Dimitri was controlled by his own, Vanessa sent away to boarding school, and Anastasia and I were Papa’s personal soldiers—his weapons to wield in whatever manner made him more powerful in Ursin’s reign.
“They’ll appreciate you coming. They knew what their partners agreed to when swearing themselves to you.”
“Still.” She chews on her bottom lip before folding the list with a sigh and tucking it into her back pocket.
She scans the house’s front yard, pausing on a toy bucket resting abandoned.
“How many will hate they stuck by me? How many of these men should have been home with their families, but bad luck had them on shift that night?”
“Chance.” I slip out of the car, knowing when her job consists of emotional tasks, she’ll only follow when being led. “It’s exactly what you said. Bad luck they were with us.”
With a grim look, she takes over, leading me towards the door. After a quick knock, it swings open to a man, a small child propped on his hip.
“Hello?”
“Vanessa Volkov.” She points to herself before gesturing to me. “Lev Petrov. Can we come in? We have some news about your husband.”
Ten houses later, Vanessa has become more and more distant, reminding me of Ursin. Not that I’d ever tell her that; she’d have me slaughtered on the spot.
The facade breaks when delivering the news, her sympathy for the family coming out at the appropriate times, which is good, because I certainly don’t understand how to be that. When we’ve returned to the car, another layer of her mask goes up.
When we’ve finally finished at the final house, a tear slips down her cheek.
“You’re allowed to be sad.”
“We lost good men. So did Papa during his time, and he never cried over any of them.”
“Your papa was a zasranets. Don’t compare yourself to him.”
“In his journal,” she starts, wiping her face again, “he wrote in one of his entries that no Pakhan’s soul is ever intact. Nothing else stuck with me quite the same way as that line. Since then, I’ve been questioning whether I still have mine, and if I don’t, when did I lose it?”
“What’d you come up with?”
“That mine is still intact, or else I’d have allowed the Mancinis be murdered by Ivan. No matter what it took, we were getting them out. I realized then, having my soul isn’t a weakness.”
“Don’t allow Ursin to dictate your feelings.”
She considers that for a moment before humming low. “Sometimes, I forget you had years in the Bratva before I even looked at a gun. For a man who claims not to understand emotions, you’re pretty good at explaining them.”
Emotions make me uncomfortable, confused. They make my head vibrate, and no amount of tapping or counting helps.
“The Bratva was different then, but the minute you walked into the meeting room after your father’s death and stood up to Ivan, the flame was lit.
Every day since then, your fire’s grown bigger, burning away what was.
Da, today sucked. You feeling sympathy says everything about you.
Ivan and Ursin never once visited families of their fallen. ”
She casts me a look from the side. “Seriously?”
“Ironically, my father’s job was to do that.” Sometimes, he dragged me along, and I despised it even more than today. “You’re a much better Pakhan than Ursin. You ending the feud with the Cosa Nostra is just another example.”
We drive down the road to the mansion, nearing home, and she chuckles. “Does dating the enemy count as ending a feud?”
“Do you see us launching an attack on them, or them on us?”
She laughs again, except I was being serious. “You win.”
Didn’t realize it was a fight.
“Zeno believes staying together, travelling back and forth, will be fine. Long term…” Her expression scrunches. “We’ll have to see. Might need a different plan.”
“Did he make it back home?” Is Serafina home?
“Da. I wanted him to come right back, and I’ll be honest, I’m a day away from hopping on the plane to him.”
I stare at her for a moment before returning my attention to the road. This isn’t the Vanessa I’ve known, to be so attached to a man like this.
Something about these Mancinis…
“He’s planning on getting security for Serafina, so he’ll probably stick to Italy until that’s taken care of.”
The idea behind his plan has me exhaling. “After the kidnapping, it makes sense.”
“I agree.” We stop in front of the mansion, and I unlock the doors so she can slip out before I return the vehicle to one of the few multi-car garages in the back. “Thanks for coming with me. Has Dimitri been in contact yet? He’s quiet.”
“He’s hunting.”
“You find anything yet?”
“No, but I’m headed to the basement shortly.”
“Thanks.” She jerks two fingers in a salute before slipping out and heading through the front doors.