CHAPTER 53
NERO ZANTHOS
“Nero.”
My mother says my name as she closes the book in her hands, hope softening her expression.
That hope lasts exactly until she really looks at my face.
Lysandra lowers the book onto the seat beside her on the couch.
“What happened?” Her tone is fearful enough to sharpen my suspicion.
It’s almost as if she’s afraid of something—afraid that I know something.
I barely register my father’s presence, seated in the armchair beside the couch. My vision locks onto Lysandra alone, my mind consumed by every possibility coiling around her, turning my chest into the eye of a hurricane.
I step closer until there’s barely any space left between our faces—just enough not to touch—and plant my arms on the couch, boxing her in.
Lysandra’s eyes widen as her body recoils, instinctively trying to put distance between us, startled by the speed of my invasion. From the corner of my eye, I see my father rise from his chair—but I stop him before he can intervene.
“Stay where you are. This is between me and her.”
Konstantino freezes, blinking, then folds his arms. He doesn’t retreat—but he doesn’t advance either.
It’s such a textbook display of his habitual complacency that it barely registers. Lysandra looks to him for help, but that still doesn’t move him.
“You lied to me,” I say slowly, tasting the bitterness spread across my tongue. “Not once, not twice, not three or four times—but for almost five years. I just ran into an old friend of yours. Know who? Oliver Sarris. And do you know what I found out?”
With every word, one of the last fragile threads holding my self-control snaps. My voice carries disgust, bitterness, and a sarcasm I’ve never heard coming out of my own mouth.
“What?” she asks.
“He doesn’t know who Nina is. He doesn’t know who I am. He doesn’t even know you!”
The accusations come out shouted, flecked with spit.
“And what did you expect?” Lysandra has the audacity to challenge me, reclaiming the space she’d retreated from. She stands, trying to match my height, staring at me in disbelief. “That he’d greet you like his best friend just because you both shared a pair of legs? Nero, get a grip.”
“What did you do?”
I’m not buying her pathetic deflection. My hands curl into fists as I step back, then pace in short, tight steps. I turn on her again. “What did you do?”
This time it’s a thunderous shout—not just rage pumping through my veins where blood should be, but the agony of a truth finally tearing its way out.
Lysandra looks at me as if she can’t believe my nerve. Her nostrils flare as she tries—and fails—to rein in her temper, nails digging into her palms.
“I protected you,” she snaps, done pretending. “I saved you from a problem. I did my job as a mother!”
“Your job as a mother?” My voice comes out hollow, desperate—because she didn’t deny it. She didn’t deny it. “If I find the other man you dragged into this—or his parents—they won’t know who I am either, will they? Because it was all staged!”
The last word explodes out of me. I back away, unable to stand her proximity anymore.
I turn my back, pressing my fist to my mouth and biting down hard, desperate for a different pain—anything but the one detonating in my chest.
“She was nothing!”
“She was everything to me!”
I admit it out loud for the first time in years, turning back to Lysandra. Self-loathing floods every pore, matching the fury I feel toward her in size and intensity.
“You’re insane, Nero. Completely insane!”
“Where is she?” I ask, stepping toward her again, hands opening and closing on reflex.
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she, Lysandra?” I shout again, making it clear I’m not going anywhere without the answer I need.
“I don’t know, damn it! I don’t know! If I did, don’t you think I’d have already brought your child home?”
She yells back—and what little was left of me is finally torn away.
Your child, she said.
While I spent all this time rotting with doubt, for Lysandra it was never a question whether the child Nina was carrying was mine. She knew. She always knew—and she destroyed my life on a whim.
The pain is physical, crushing my heart until it feels ready to burst and end my misery—and I wait. I wait and wait. Minutes pass, and I’m still here. Still breathing. More shattered with every second.
“All these years…” I whisper, turning my face away so I don’t do something unforgivable. “All this time…”
It’s unthinkable. Unnameable. Endless—the agony forcing its way up my throat and filling every inch of me. “I can’t believe all these years…” I repeat, barely audible. “How can you hate someone that much? For nothing. Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Nina never did anything to you…”
My voice rises, indignation and rage pushing me beyond restraint. “And me? What did I do to deserve being sentenced to this miserable life?”
“Miserable?” Lysandra scoffs. “I took you into this house!” she snaps, and the days I once felt grateful for that seem to belong to another life.
“I took you in when you were nothing! I didn’t have to!
But I did—because I couldn’t have children.
Still, I should’ve known the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. ”
The comment doesn’t make sense. I don’t know whether rage is clouding my comprehension or if there’s a meaning I can’t yet see.
“Do you understand you didn’t just destroy my family? You destroyed ours? What you so generously reminded me of doing for me—it’s worth nothing now, Lysandra. Nothing.”
I could spit on the floor.
My father steps toward me. I shoot him a look, warning him to stay back—because even if his expression makes it clear he knew nothing until now, it was his job to know. Damn it, it was his job.
“It’s time I tell you something, Nero,” Konstantino says—and for the first time since I walked into this house, Lysandra looks truly desperate. Color drains from her face.
“No! No!” she screams, pointing at him as she lunges forward.
“It’s time, Lysandra.”
“No, no, no!” she repeats, but he ignores her and turns to me.
“I’m your father,” he says. I shake my head slowly, not understanding—until one more word leaves his mouth. “Biologically.”
I don’t respond. Too much is colliding inside my chest and head. I stare at Konstantino, processing, silent. He takes that silence as permission to continue.
“I found out when it was already too late. I was young and reckless, and my family convinced me that what was done was done. For a long time, I thought forgetting was best—but when I looked at you in that orphanage, Nero, I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.”
His voice slows, as if replaying the memory. “You were the spitting image of her…”
“No, no, no!” Lysandra’s hysteria spikes as she shouts and shakes her head. “He looks just like me! Exactly like me!”
“No, he doesn’t, Lysandra,” Konstantino says calmly.
“You, more than anyone, know how long you spent trying to become the woman I loved. But I knew her first. You may share her scent, her gestures, even her features—but you’re not her.
And Nero never looked like you. Not once.
He’s his mother’s image. Nature was kind, sparing him my family’s rotten genetics. ”
Family.
The word tolls through my head like a relentless bell—but it has nothing to do with the two people in front of me. No. It’s about my family. My son. My woman—the one I humiliated in every possible way, trying to make her feel even a fraction of the pain I was convinced she’d caused me.
A son.
I turn and walk out of Lysandra and Konstantino’s house without seeing anything or anyone. My vision narrows into a tunnel aimed at a single destination as I get into the car and drive like a madman through Khione’s streets, seeing nothing but where I need to end up. It’s a miracle I don’t crash.
When I finally stop and pound on the door I’ve been searching for—needing it to open—I feel like I can try to breathe again.
“Nero?” Atlas says, opening the door to the house he shares with Apollo. “What are you doing here?”
“I need help.”