19. Anastasia
ANASTASIA
December
Vanessa groans as she regards the four of us during our monthly meeting. “Can’t we elope instead?” she asks in response to Dimitri’s earlier question about her engagement. “There’s a reason those parties stopped.”
“Because you got tired of the stares and questions. You wanted to secure your rule before dealing with public displays. It’s been two years, and it’s time those in the upper circles see you prospering. An engagement party announcing your union with Mancini will be an ideal time.”
Bratva parties used to be the “grand” event everyone from the upper circles was thrilled to be included in.
They used them to kiss Ursin’s ass and get in nice with him, while he peacocked around and benefitted from new deals.
Usually illegal, but sometimes partnering with those who ran reputable businesses to use as fronts.
He also often invited those he wanted dealt with.
That’s when Papa would assign my newest task, which meant I attended more of these than Vanessa did—forced into the guise of Papa’s innocent daughter.
Lev and Dimitri attended almost all of them, both being sons to Elite members.
They were dragged around to meet daughters of business partners, presented as possible future wives.
After Ursin’s death, Vanessa stopped hosting them. She didn’t want the displays while risking an assassination attempt on her life, nor to deal with all the men who once preened over her, begging Ursin for her hand in marriage.
Vanessa groans again, rubbing her hands over her face before peeking through her fingers at me and Lev sitting to her left. “You two will back me on this being unnecessary.”
My brother immediately chimes, “Da,” which is a testament to his entire personality and inner issues with the world, but I reply, “Nope. Dimitri’s correct.
As much as I despise agreeing with anything from your father’s time, he hosted parties as a power exhibition.
After two years away, you should as well—to prove your authority and growth as a leader.
These are the very people who once doubted you. Time to show them how wrong they were.”
“That’s my point.” She knocks her rock of an engagement ring against the scarred tabletop. “Years of fervently insisting I can rule without a man by my side, and my first party happens to be one celebrating my engagement. It’s like they won.”
“Use that against them,” I offer with a shrug.
“Not to say they won, but to remind them you’re in control.
No ally will expect you to wed a leader from a rival crime group.
That’s pretty much a giant middle finger to them.
Plus, all those who begged Ursin for your hand will see you chose a complete outsider.
It proves you chose for you, not for the Bratva. ”
“Vasilyev included.” She frowns at the mention of his name. “You know, he called again the other day when I was in Italy. Zeno grabbed my phone and detailed out what he’d have done to him if Vasilyev brought it up again.”
My responding, “Exactly,” is cut off by her thumping her head to the table scarred with bloodstains and stab wounds.
“But that’ll mean two engagement parties. The Cosa Nostra is demanding one, and we’re not going to want all Five Families here on our territory, which means a second one.”
“That’s what you get for marrying another mob leader,” Lev grumbles, once again not reading the room.
Vanessa lifts her head but stabs her fingers through her hair.
“Gabriella wants the party to be mid-January, after the holidays. We’ll plan one around that…
I guess. Gabriella’s hiring a planner, so I’ll have the planner do it.
” Her huff is reminiscent of Veles’s whine as she scans the room.
“Anyone have anything else? Maybe something that doesn’t make me want to swallow a bullet. ”
Lev crooks a finger and leans forward in his seat. “Anastasia and I will be heading down to deal with our father after the holidays. After Ivan’s shit, I don’t trust our papa won’t try something if he hears who you’re marrying.”
Vanessa’s lips quirk as she glances from him to me, nodding—telling me she reads between what he isn’t saying.
Lev, as loyal as he is, wouldn’t think like that.
She knows he’s using her marriage as an excuse to protect Serafina, while not outright stating so and getting emotional. “Serafina, you mean.”
Red darkens my brother’s cheeks. Beneath the table, he taps his usual pattern against his thigh.
“Da. Our father was second only to Ivan. If he learns what’s happening with you and that there’s someone important in my life…
” He gestures at Dimitri. “That we all have people to live for. I don’t trust him.
Besides, it’s time. Ana and I should have done it years ago. ”
Vanessa’s eyes flick between us before she lifts her chin off her hand. “Alright. If we can be of any help, let me know.
“Security for Serafina,” Lev replies without a beat, his taps ceasing for the urgency in his tone. “When we’re gone, she’ll still attend classes. I want someone with her, but I’ll pick them myself.”
Vanessa’s eyes—identical to Serafina’s and Ursin’s—shine with both amusement and admiration. “You got it. She’s lucky to have you.”
The compliment lingers until my brother swallows. I swear actual sweat breaks out across his forehead, and though I’m loving watching him choke on his tongue trying to reply, I should probably do the sister thing and save him.
Dimitri’s low and deep tone replaces Lev’s panic, sending all our minds into other places. “And we’re lucky to have you at the helm, Van…Pakhan.”
The rest of my week is split between work and practicing for The Nutcracker performance approaching in the coming days. At first, alone in my studio, and then with the troupe, in costume and on location.
The first day of the show arrives, and with it, all the usual feelings of exhilaration that accompany a sold-out performance.
For the past two years, Vanessa and Dimitri have attended the first night.
They usually try to get Lev to come too, but he’s had an adamant no-attendance rule ever since Papa forced him to sit through them.
That is, until a couple of months ago when he learned Serafina wanted to see one and he did so without even checking with her.
Love. What a quirky thing.
This year, Katya and Zeno join Vanessa and Dimitri, and on night two, Serafina and Lev sit through it. Lev was tenser than the show’s manager, but once again, he did it for her.
On day three, dancing will be easier. Without family observing, there’s less pressure.
That is, until a knock on my door in the twenty-minute window before I’m supposed to be on stage jerks me upright.
I had visitors the past two days when everyone cycled through this place, but I’m not expecting anyone else.
One of the staff stands in the doorway, gaze averting from my robed form. “You have a visitor requesting to see you. He claims to know you and was quite insistent that I ask you. He wouldn’t leave me alone until I came back here.”
“Did he give a name?”
“No, but he’s Italian if that makes a difference.”
The blow pushes into my gut, a combination of irritation and something much lighter resembling happiness—but couldn’t possibly be that because that feeling doesn’t fit the Italian he’s presumably speaking of.
“Send him back,” I murmur, pushing away from the doorway but leaving it parted a few inches. I head for my vanity, to feign that he interrupted me getting ready.
What is happening to me? This…this itchiness in my palms and the way my heart thumps hard and fast enough against my sternum, it practically hurts. My breath evaporates quicker than it does on stage.
I hate his cockiness; that he showed up here. Also, what the fuck is he doing in Russia?
Nero appears in the doorway in a pressed tux that sends me back to the beginning—to when my dislike was tangible enough to grasp and use to push him away. To Sera’s wedding, the first time seeing him in something dressy.
He enters, gripping a bouquet of roses, scanning me up and down. Ocean eyes push waves all through my body with the same overpowering sensation as if he was stroking me with his hands. They course up my legs, over the hips he once gripped, up my sides and near the slit in my robe.
He shuts the door, hiding the world while keeping the suffocating pressure inside. Until it’s only him and me and the silence broken by the hitch in my breath I pray he doesn’t hear.
I can’t be falling for this…this…this—whatever this is. Nero is the same kind of man as the others from my history. It’s a belief I’ll live and die by if I must.
“I’ve heard it’s rude to show up without flowers.” He juts them forward, daring me to accept them. His fingers brush along mine as he hands them over, the muscle in his cheek twitching.
Typical Anastasia would push them—and him—away. Since that’s what he expects, and if I have any hope of maintaining control of this situation, I need to rely on friendliness.
“Did you come with Zeno?”
He scrapes his fingers through his hair, mussing it from the slick-back put-together look he’s managing. My insides jolt at the sight of him natural again—the Nero I’ve come to know. “Nah, I’m alone.”
“In town for business?”
A smirk graces his sinfully full lips before he accepts the non-existent invite to approach. “C’mon, Petrov. Stop pretending you don’t know who I’m here for.”
He takes a step, so I do as well. The backs of my knees hit my vanity bench, trapping me. Trapping me in a manner I’d been before and vowed to never again.
With Nero, he’d hurt me in worse ways than any other man.
“Why would you come?”
Another step, until he steals the flowers from stiff fingers to reach by and rest them on the vanity instead.
It places him further inside my vicinity, close enough to spot the dimple on his cheek and the glisten in his eyes; to smell his cologne and be reminded of every other moment we were close to one another.
“You’re a smart woman. Figure it out. What does one do as an observer during a ballet show?”
“Smartass.”
He tips his head, bringing his hand between us. We’re both watching and waiting for his next move with anticipation and fear. My heart thuds harder than I knew possible. Surely, it’ll give me away.
He fingers the edge of the robe, slipping just inside but goes no further than trailing up to my neck, over my pulse, and around my cheek. As he straightens slightly, his breath blows warm over my face and eyes continue up to my hair in an artful updo paired with the silver crown for my character.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “You’re gorgeous. An angelo.”
“Compliments aren’t your thing, Amato. Give up.”
“You think I’m lying?” His eyes flash, and the next thing I know, his finger is digging into my chin, and my head is being tilted. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been told how you look.”
“All the time.” It’s a bit defiant, a bit breathless.
“We both know you’re too confident to not believe them.”
“I believe them.” Lifting my chin, I go to move away, but Nero is quick. In the same breath, he latches a hand around my neck, his other on my hip. “It’s their motives that have me questioning it.”
“So you’re questioning my motives? Why does everything need to have one? Maybe you are my motive.”
Something reaches out and grips my heart. Hope, perhaps? Except I gave up that feeling a long time ago. “You’re not a good liar.”
“Or you’re simply not equipped at dealing with people telling the truth.”
Blyat. He couldn’t have been more accurate if he tried.
Trick, trick, trick. It echoes around my head, rebricking the walls that shook by a few fucking flowers.
“If this is your way of flirting, you suck at it.”
His bedroom smirk sends my thighs together, and the hand that slides from the back of my neck to encompass the side, thumb pushing into the underside of my chin. Instincts demand pushing him off me, but doing so proves he affects me.
And he isn’t. He can’t.
“What if this isn’t an attempt? Made you smile, didn’t it, so it’s worth it.”
Smile? I didn’t fucking smile. In what universe is my grimace a smile?
“Why are your tattoos covered up?” His finger brushes along the patch of makeup covering one by my collarbone.
“Tattoos don’t really go with ballet. The dance style is known to be aesthetic, and body art ruins it—in others’ opinions. I was a ballerina before I worked in the Bratva.” In my current role anyway. “So my fans already knew me as one thing.”
He grunts, flicking a finger at the rack of tutus and outfits from previous performances. “Like the costumes you wear.”
“Exactly. Covering my tattoos is part of the costume. It’s makeup I’ll wipe off later.”
“Shame,” he murmurs, eyes flashing to mine. “I like your…what’d you call it? Your ruined aesthetic?”
He lowers his head again until brushing his cheek against mine, his lips branding a line across my cheek I’ll be washing with acid to remove. Real burns are better than his burns.
“Make me proud, Ana.”
With all the cocky swagger his brand of male comes with, he strides out of my dressing room.
Only after the door shuts do I remember needing to correct him about my name.