41. Anastasia
ANASTASIA
Nero
I’m sorry.
As the jet settles onto the landing strip of the airport in the Cayman Islands, my thumb strokes over his text for the millionth time. It was stupid to pray that once taken out of airplane mode, a follow-up message with more details would arrive.
I assume his actions are behind my chest’s constant clenching, which formed after waking alone and stupidly assuming he was in the bathroom or getting breakfast after our night together. It was disappointing he wasn’t wrapped around me in bed, but I shook that off.
My enthusiasm crashed when I found everyone except Nero in the kitchen. Zeno explained he had to return to Rome earlier than planned for something family-related, but considering he wouldn’t meet my eyes, it makes me wonder how he ever lied good enough to sneak into Vanessa’s life and bed.
Within the hour, his message came. I waited hours for a better explanation, but that was it. Two words, nothing about his apparent emergency. Not even details about what exactly he’s apologizing for: leaving suddenly or that we fucked and I’m not who he wants after all.
Just like that, he reminds me why I disregard relationships. Why Nero was forced behind firm lines and was never supposed to sneak to the other side. He did, and I’m the idiot who fell for it. Was coming to like him. Like him, like him.
He’s decided for us and shattered every belief I had about him being a good person.
It hurts. He didn’t even say goodbye.
As my brother stands from the adjacent couch and shuts his laptop, he glances at the name attached to the text thread on my phone. “You made me lose the bet, by the way. You owe me.”
Sighing, I stand too and follow him out into the bright sunlight the flight crew opens the door to let inside. “You’re making no sense. Not that you often do, but especially not now.”
He waits until we’re both descended the plane’s steps and he’s walking beside me. “We all had a bet going as to when the two of you would finally fuck. Zeno and Dimitri both gave you up until their wedding. Fina bet the Cosa Nostra party. Vanessa won, correctly timing last night.”
“And you?”
“Christmas.”
“That was a month ago. You assumed I’d break that soon?” It’s almost an insult…maybe a compliment.
He shrugs and starts rolling up his sleeves. “How the fuck should I know? You’re a very confusing person.”
As he finishes getting ready for the Cayman Islands, I stride by him in my shorts, tank, and sports bra with a flick of my fingers.
“If only you listened to me about your outfit choice back in Moscow.” I warned him that the Islands in the winter are nothing like the negative temperatures and snow of home, but he opted not to listen.
“Yeah, yeah, Fina said the same. Shut up.” He heads to the side, where the car we booked is waiting for us.
“It’s weird hearing you use a casual nickname. Though, I’ll admit, Fina is better than Sera.”
“It’s my name, not yours, so never speak it again,” he says with a bit of a growl that only makes me giggle. I might run from a man’s possessiveness, but on my brother, whose trauma was much different than mine, it’s sweet.
Lev gets into the driver’s seat, as he usually does when we’re going places together, and we begin the trip to our father’s house.
“How are we doing this?”
“Quickly.” His knuckles whiten around the wheel as he taps his pattern along the back of it. “Unless you want to drag it out.”
“You don’t?”
“There’s been enough bloodshed since last year. I’d prefer we tell the old man what we have to, get it over with, and go the hell home.”
He’s tense being this far from Serafina, but it’s alright. I always dreamed of dragging Papa’s pain out, but for Lev to get through this easier and faster and return to his safety net, Papa’s pain isn’t worth that much.
“For the entire flight, a part of me wanted to go home and forget his existence entirely, to not reopen these wounds.” He touches his chest where a tattoo depicts the number of prison stays he survived.
“Sometimes I’m grateful he did all that shit because it made me who I am.
For a long time, that was someone I didn’t like, but I somehow still won the love of a woman—someone who could do a whole fucking lot better than me.
I’m who she chose, scars and all. I wouldn’t change a thing, prison included, if it meant losing her. ”
With this single speech, my own twin becomes a stranger.
I rest my hand on his. “Quickly then, but still with a short stretch of pain. You might sorta appreciate his actions, but I still despise the fucker. I need some measure of his pain to cure me.” We both know it won’t, but it could make me feel better.
His eyes cut to my phone on my lap. “Is this about the lack of trust you have for others?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“This related to last night?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You like him?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Then some pain,” he agrees quietly.
The rest of the drive passes silently, the impending murder of our own flesh and blood building both a bridge and a gap between us.
A part of me wants Lev to speed up, so we can get this started and finished as quickly as possible, while also enjoying the beauty of the land.
The Cayman Islands will never be somewhere we can vacation after today unfortunately taints it.
Eventually, Lev parks in front of the large house made up mainly of glass windows. It’s been years since we’ve been by, but nothing has changed. Right down to the dead garden Papa never cared for.
I take the lead, pulling my gun from my waistband. Papa isn’t expecting us, and someone who spent his life in the Bratva wouldn’t have a weapon close by at any given time or in any area of his house, so we need to remain vigilant and equipped.
Halfway up the path, Lev stops me with a hand to my arm before crooking a finger at the stone I was about to step on—and the four blood drops on it.
Lev retrieves his gun too and slowly paces around the side of the house. I back up, trying to see as much of the building as possible from way down here, and then the immediate area for curious observers.
Blood drops could be nothing…or they’re a lot more.
“Side and back are clear.” Lev returns to the front of the house and then points up by the door.
“Cameras are installed all around this place. He’ll see us coming, so be prepared.
I’d like to say he won’t attack, given who we are, but…
” He tosses a grimace over his shoulder.
“It’s been nearly three years, so who knows. ”
He maintains the lead, checking the door and finding it unlocked.
Another tick to the instincts that have me tense and scanning the area.
If he’s home, having a door unlocked isn’t an abnormal thing for a person, but this isn’t a normal person either.
Years of threats and fighting, of power and privilege, would mean instinctually protecting it.
Lev slowly nudges the door open, placing his foot inside to test the floorboards for creaks. Heel to toe pressing down, he crooks a finger for me to follow.
“Fuck.”
The four blood drops from outside get a whole lot bigger and more in here. A smudge in the hallway, a footprint beside it. A line of red connecting to a larger pool—and the body slumped within it, his throat slashed.
Papa.
It’s a dream and a nightmare wrapped into one.
Lev rushes forward to roll him onto his back, but there’s no point. Even if there’s still a pulse, it wouldn’t be going for long. Not with an injury like this.
I wander closer, staring down at our father’s face, searching for even a shred of grief and empathy. Even if we were on our way to do exactly this, our version would be healing. A decision made by our hands, not someone else’s.
Papa is no more than a stranger to me now. He’s aged a decade in the almost three years that’s passed. His slit throat, pale skin, the blood—I wait for some fragment of grief to hit. For my mind to remember this is our father.
It never comes.
Lev meets my gaze, his mouth a flattened line. He blinks once, nods, and like that, we make that the second of shared grief for a man who deserved none.
He stands and wipes his hands on his jeans. “Someone beat us to it. Same as the other Elites. Katya’s correct; someone’s wiping them out.”
“He’s the final of Ursin’s, so if she’s right about us all being a target, then we need to tread carefully. Dimitri and Katya should move back into the mansion for the time being.”
“I agree, but we’ll figure out the mechanics later.” He steps around our father’s corpse and heads for the hallway. “He has cameras, which means they’re likely recording. We might be able to figure out who’s behind this.”
“I’m half surprised you never tapped into them sooner rather than sending a soldier down every so often.”
He shrugs half-heartedly. “Couldn’t care enough about a man who had limited days on this planet left. We agreed years ago to release him and move on. Hacking his cameras meant having to look in on him.”
We pass a variety of small sitting rooms, a piano room, a small library, taking in all the signs of how Papa lived his final few years. It’s like wandering through a stranger’s home. There are no mementos, no pictures of us.
His office is at the end of the hallway.
There’s shelving along one wall and a glass desk in the centre, a computer that Lev awakens with a tap to the space bar.
It unlocks, password free. After only a few clicks, he locates the camera software, and somehow knows how it all works as he starts scrolling through historical footage.
I watch my brother doing his nerdy shit, appreciating his skills when he finds the correct feed.
At 5:47 this morning, a person appeared, a hood pulled up over their head.
No mask and his head was angled down, as if aware there’s a camera.
He disappears inside the house, and Lev speeds the recording up until the same person exits less than a half hour later.
He shuts the door and starts down the path, but at the last second, right at the edge of the camera’s view, stops and faces the house.
He makes the sign of the cross before ducking out of sight.
There was something eerily familiar about—
“Wait.” A hand to the desk, I lean closer to the monitor. “Go back to when he turned around and zoom in as much as possible.”
Lev clicks a couple of keys until the image becomes larger. Slightly blurrier too, but it’s enough to make out the face. The eyes that recently studied my body like he was painting artwork. The stubble that burned my thighs.
“Svolotsch’!”