15. Katya
Katya
The door swings shut behind us, and we're stumbling out onto the street. Well, I stumble. Somehow, Nico is stoic as he leads me out into the city.
My legs aren't working properly, and I feel like I am back in that room, looking at the bloodstained white sheets, and hearing Artem say I would make a suitable wife.
Nico squeezes my arm, and I realize I'm shaking. I'm not sure if it is because of the chill in the air or if I am simply in shock.
I am frozen, physically outside of the restaurant. I can feel the pavement under my heels. I can see my breath in the air. I cannot make myself take another step.
"Katya." Nico's voice is strange. Stripped of its usual warmth, its easy humor. He sounds like someone performing steadiness they don't feel. "We need to go."
"I know."
"We can't stand here."
"I know." But I don't move. I stand on the pavement and stare at the street and try to locate myself inside my own body.
A couple passes us laughing about something. A cab honks. The city moves in its enormous, indifferent way, completely unbothered by what just happened twenty feet away.
Nico steps in front of me. His face is pale beneath his spray tan, and there's something around his eyes, a tightness, that reminds me that he is also not okay. And why would he be? He was just threatened simply so I'd agree to be a pawn in a game I never wanted to be a part of.
The realization breaks something loose in my chest, and I nearly collapse.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, my nails digging into his forearm.
"Don't." He says it firmly. He takes my arm, steering me toward the curb. "Where do you want to go?"
"Luc's," I say, not even thinking about it.
He gets us a cab.
The drive is fifteen minutes and neither of us talks.
Nico sits with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor of the cab, and I watch the city slide past the window and try to understand that this is my life now.
That I walked into that restaurant as one person and I'm leaving it as someone else entirely.
The tears come somewhere around the third stoplight.
Not dramatic, just a slow leak, the kind that happens when your body gives up trying to hold something in.
I press my fingers to my mouth and breathe slowly, trying to gather myself.
Nico reaches over without looking and puts his hand over mine and leaves it there until we stop.
It doesn't take long to get to the Nero house. The issues come when we get stopped by the guards.
Thankfully, Nico had the sense to call Luc before we arrived, and he comes out, whispers something to the guards, and escorts us inside.
We are all silent as we walk inside.
It's not until we get into the warmth of the foyer that I break.
Luc grabs me, cradling me in his arms, and I breathe in the soft citrus scent of his aftershave, allowing the familiar scent to ground me.
"Hey," he says, low and steady. "Hey, I've got you."
I try to speak. What comes out instead is something inarticulate and wretched, and he just holds me tighter and lets it happen, his chin resting on the top of my head, one hand moving in slow circles on my back.
Behind me, I hear Nico close the door.
It takes me longer than I'd like to get the story out.
I try to start at the beginning — the cocktail party, the coffee shop, the flowers — and immediately lose the thread, because the whole thing feels insane. Artem played me, and he did it beautifully. He did it over weeks.
It's embarrassing. Humiliating in a way I've never experienced before, and I hate how stupid I was.
Luc sits quietly, which I appreciate. Nico holds my hands, squeezing them gently when I stop to take a breath.
When I get to the sheets, my cheeks flaming, Luc goes still, but he doesn't say anything. Not that he needs to. I see the way his jaw ticks, and I know he's pissed.
This is when I start to dissociate. I can't be in my body when I discuss how my virginity was put on display to humiliate and humble me.
"He planned it from the beginning. All of it. He knew who I was before he ever introduced himself, before the flowers, before any of it. He chose me because of my grandfather."
Silence. Luc's jaw is clenched so hard I worry his teeth will shatter.
"Luc."
"Give me a minute." His voice is careful in a way that tells me he's working very hard to keep it together.
"There's more," Nico says. "Let her finish before you lose it."
"Of course there is." He exhales slowly. "Tell me."
So I tell him about the threats to Nico and Lacey, and how my grandfather made it clear he would force my compliance rather than lose face with his men.
By the time I finish, Luc is on his feet. His body language makes it clear he is holding himself back. Tense. Still in a way that is putting me even more on edge.
"I'll marry you."
It comes out simple. Declarative. It takes me a moment to process what he is saying, and when I do, I feel like all the blood in my face has left.
"Luc—"
"Listen to me." He turns, and there's nothing romantic in his expression, nothing of the confession he'd made backstage at the theater.
This is something different. He's protective, fierce.
"A Nero marriage ends this. Orlov can't touch you if you're family.
Viktor can't use you as currency if you're already placed. It solves the problem."
"It doesn't solve anything, it just?—"
"It buys you time. It gives you protection." He stops, takes a breath, and starts again. "He won't be able to touch you. We have a code. No wives. No children."
For a brief moment, I consider it. Luc is offering me an out. A real one. A marriage to someone I might not love romantically, but who I trust completely, and who I know will never hurt me.
And yet I know my grandfather well.
Luc crouches in front of where I'm sitting, bringing himself to my eye level. "Let me fix this."
I look at him for a long moment. Luc Nero, who has been my closest friend for seven years, who showed up to every opening night, who drove me to the emergency room when I sprained my ankle in rehearsal and sat with me for four hours without complaint.
Who loves me in a way I have never been able to love him back, and who is offering to bind his life to mine to save me from all of this.
"No," I say quietly.
"Katya—"
"No." I squeeze his hand. "But thank you. Genuinely."
He opens his mouth, probably to argue with me.
The door opens, and Adrian Nero walks in, drawing all of our attention. He's wearing a full suit despite the lateness of the evening, and I straighten.
We've never met. After Luc and I became friends, we decided to keep our friendship away from our families. So as Adrian Nero, the head of the Italian families in New York, walks in, I study him.
He's younger than I expected — early thirties, dark-haired, with the kind of face that was built for authority. His gray eyes assess the room, and I can see the displeasure in his expression.
"Explain," he orders.
Luc does. Efficiently, without editorializing. Adrian listens with his arms crossed and his face giving away nothing, and I have the distinct impression that he already knows most of it, or has guessed, because he doesn't react with surprise.
When Luc finishes, Adrian is quiet for a moment.
"I'll marry her," Luc says again. I close my eyes, frustrated that he's back on this. "It solves?—"
"No." Adrian says it the same way I did. Flat. Final.
Luc turns. "Adrian?—"
"We're not going to war with Artem Orlov over this." He says it without cruelty, which almost makes it worse. "He's Pakhan. He's got Viktor Popov's blessing and the New York outfit behind him. You want to put the family in the middle of that?"
"If she was my wife, he wouldn't be able to?—"
"He would," Adrian says. "And he would have every right to.
Her grandfather has agreed to the union, so it's done.
" His eyes move to me briefly, and something in them shifts — not softness, but a kind of acknowledgment.
"I'm sorry. That's the reality. I am not going to put our family in danger for something we have no business being involved in. "
He's also not wrong. My grandfather would not take it well if I went behind his back. He made it clear he is not willing to lose face, and that he would destroy everything around me to ensure I do what he wants.
I take a shaky breath. "I understand. But it's bigger than that. Artem isn't going to stop using the people around me to control me. You might not be able to help me, but I need your help securing my friends."
Adrian's brow raises slightly. Perhaps he didn't expect me to simply accept what he was saying.
Nico straightens. "I'm fine," he says. "Saint Marini is my cousin."
"Cousin?"
"Third cousin, removed. But blood, which means I know how this works. The Russians make a move on me, they'll be starting a blood war."
Adrian nods slowly. "Talk to Saint. Tell him about Orlov. They've got history."
Nico nods, and something settles in his expression — relief, maybe, or purpose. "The Marinis have been looking for a reason to push back against the Russian expansion anyway. This gives them one."
"Good." Adrian turns back to me. "The other one. The girl with the politician father."
"Lacey," I say. "Her father is?—"
"I know who her father is." A pause. "He's been on our payroll for eleven years.
Which means his problems are our problems, and we don't need a Russian mob boss with leverage over a man who knows things he shouldn't.
" He sets his glass down. "I'll have guards placed.
Quietly. Her father will be told it's a routine precaution. "
I stare at him. "You're doing this for him. Not for her."
"I'm doing it because I don't want Orlov with his hand on one of my assets." His voice is even. "But the result is the same."
He's right. She'll be safe, and it won't cost her anything. The fact that Adrian's motivation has nothing to do with her doesn't change what it means for Lacey.
I should feel grateful. Mostly I feel like a chess piece on a board I never agreed to play on.
"There is something else you should consider," Adrian says, his voice shifting into something almost gentle.
"And I say this kindly. You aren't the first woman to be placed in a marriage to a man she hates.
My wife didn't want me in the beginning, and my sister fought her husband for months.
" He picks up his glass. "Sometimes these things are more complicated than they look from the outside. "
The suggestion lands like a stone in still water.
"That's not—" I start.
"I'm not saying it's the same." He holds up one hand. "I'm saying I've watched two women walk into impossible situations and come out the other side with the love and devotion of a man they thought they hated. Do with that what you will."
The room is very quiet. Luc is frozen, and I can see he's about to blow.
"Fuck you, Adrian," he snaps. "Neither of those situations are the same and you know it."
"Luc." Adrian's voice holds a warning.
"No—" He moves toward him, but I stop him.
"Let it go," I say, suddenly exhausted. "There's nothing you can do."
Luc looks at me. I look back at him and try to tell him with my eyes what I can't say out loud: that I love him, that I'm sorry, that he's my best friend and I should have listened to him.
I don't know if he hears any of it. But after a moment, his jaw tightens, and he nods.
I stand. "Can you walk me out?" I ask. "I want to go home."
Luc walks me out in silence. We stand at the front door and neither of us speaks.
"I could still?—"
"Luc." I turn to face him. "Don't."
His jaw works. "I hate this."
"I know."
"I hate him."
"I know that too."
A car pulls around front, ready to take Nico and me back to my apartment.
"Call me," Luc says. "If anything happens. Anything at all."
"I will."
He stands in the doorway as we pull away. I watch him through the rear window until the car turns the corner and he disappears.
In the backseat, I stare at my hands and try not to think about Adrian saying sometimes these things are more complicated than they look from the outside, or about the music box sitting on my windowsill at home, the tiny ballerina frozen mid-turn.
In three days, that apartment won't be mine anymore.
I tell the driver to take the long way home.