16. Nero #2
The bet was paid with the highest value. I got more than a dance last night. I experienced the performance Anastasia puts on. I got to mark in her a manner I didn’t realize I craved, and then back away and watch her flounder. Unfortunately, the marks have since faded.
It might have been a sick thrill that drove me, but last night something shifted between us. Something I’ll use.
“The bet’s been paid, but I’d still like us to dance. A dance like we would have at the wedding.”
Her eyes flick between mine, searching. Whatever she finds has her softly mouthing her agreement, inhaling deeply, then resting her palm in my outstretched one.
She’s warm, presumably from her workout.
Her other grips my shoulder as my arm comes around her waist to pull her away from the mirrors and into a wide arc angled at the centre of the room, where I bring her in closer than a waltz requires.
After a moment of silent spinning, she admits, “You’re good at this.”
“I took dancing lessons to fit into the Cosa Nostra.”
Strands of her hair practically go up my nose with the speed she flings her head back to look me in the face. “Your father wasn’t in?”
“Civilian. Padre runs a bakery that’s been in the family for a few generations.
It’s supposed to be mine, but it’s not what I want.
A few years after meeting Zeno, he told me who he really was, and I took an interest in the lifestyle.
When the bakery went through financial struggles, I spoke to Giovanni about joining. ”
She stares at our reflection over my shoulder. Questions couldn’t be more obvious, nor how she twitches every so often, as if needing to ask them. I don’t encourage her to, using today like a fishing line. Giving her enough to keep her curious so she’ll want to return to learn more.
On our next spin, I release her hand. Except instead of returning into my arms, she continues, her feet a blur of motion as they take her three spins before she ends, one leg jutted in front of her, the other bent at a knee as she bows.
When she straightens, the final dredges of a smile before it fades make this entire visit become everything.
A genuine smile. I’ll discover a way to make her smile like that again in the future.
“You must be a quick fighter. Your dancing skills make it easy to maneuver around.”
What I meant as a compliment shuts the smile down faster than when she walked into the mansion yesterday and found me having arrived from Italy. She turns away and not only rebuilds her brick wall, but enforces it with steel, making it impenetrable.
Fuck. Quick steps take me back to her side, reaching for her hand, her arm, her hip—any part of her—to bring her back to me and the moment we were sharing. “I don’t know what I said, but I’m sorry.”
She jerks away. We both stare where our hands are, but she’s the one who releases a long exhale before lifting widened eyes upwards. Not to my face, but onto my chest, as if unable to go higher.
“I-I’m sor—I didn’t mean to. I…” She tucks stray hairs behind her ear and looks nothing like the woman I’ve been coming to know. Not a single fucking part of her remains, but it’s worse than just losing those sides of her. It’s losing after not understanding how I’m at fault.
“What did I say?”
After a few seconds of no response, I tip her chin up. My chest clenches at the vulnerability found within her enforcements. If I were an asshole, I’d use it to get beneath her surface and locate her secrets.
I could. Should. But I don’t want to.
My thumb strokes her bottom lip, seemingly to wake her from her stupor. She moves her head away, and I let her, giving her the control. To the ground, she murmurs, “It wasn’t you.”
When she returns to gathering her things, it feels like a missed opportunity. I run through everything we talked about, trying to pull on even a single thread to end this in a better way—a way that doesn’t have her despising my guts.
“The Nutcracker—is your father coming to watch you?”
In other words, where are you hiding him?
Human behaviour is telling. It’s one of the first things trained into us within Cosa Nostra. How to read another person, to determine if they’re lying and if they’ll attack first or wait to defend.
Anastasia goes on the full defence. Her breaths sound so much louder in the suddenly awkwardly silent studio. Graveyard-level silence.
“Why are you asking?”
So I know where to find him. “I’ll visit mine during the holidays, as usual. Consider me making conversation. It was only a question.”
“As if we know each other so well.” She yanks up her bag, flinging it offensively through the air and showing me a sense of how she’d toss me around if given the chance.
I follow her to the door. “Ana, it was only a question.”
“That’s Anastasia to you, and it’s none of your business.”
“You’re my business. I want to know about your life.”
She whirls around with fire in her eyes, burning away whatever headway towards peace I made today.
“Last night does not make us friends, Amato. What’s about to happen between our families doesn’t either.
Give up.” She throws open the door, the glass shuddering as the November wind takes it farther wide.
“For the record, my father can burn to death in a Christmas fire for all I care.”
She disappears so fast, she doesn’t catch my vindictive smirk. If Anastasia doesn’t care about her father, then making him pay for his crimes against Giovanni Mancini means she won’t hate me worse.