44. Nero
NERO
The door to my bedroom crashes open, which is plain cruel, though nothing less than I deserve either. Not after yesterday. The day before?
Actually, what day is it?
“You have to be fucking kidding me.”
My Capo’s voice is as painful as the door slam was on my brain, which isn’t even thudding. No, it’s the thundering of a concert at the same time a crowd cheers as their favourite hockey team scores or a club at one a.m. at the same time a dozen guns shoot simultaneously.
I go to move in the direction of Zeno’s voice, but my head is weighted to whatever I’m lying on, my limbs limp and useless.
He’s moving, though, which is good since I’ve just learned my body won’t cooperate.
His feet cross whatever room I made it to, crawling here at the conclusion of my alcoholic binge after Anastasia’s spectacular exit.
Suddenly, hot, blistering light in its truest and blinding form casts into the room.
I twist my head, but it’s pretty useless.
The asshole opened the curtains and released the sun on me.
Feet cross the room before a hand yanks on my ankle. I roll away and shield my face while parting my eyes to see Zeno, not my friend, but my Capo, glaring down at me. “What the fuck have you done, Nero?”
“I tried to tell you yesterday.” My tongue feels thick, words jumbled around my hangover.
Zeno sneers before grasping for my shirt and yanking my body upright, forcing me to face the sun—and presumably my maker when he’s finished with me. “Dumbass, I was in Moscow yesterday.”
Right. Time zones.
“It’s been a week.”
A fucking week? I turn, searching for my phone to confirm the date…or piece together how I’ve gotten to my room when my final memory is drinking in the living room.
“You’re fuckin’ with me.”
He releases me with a hard shove to my chest, but sadly not hard enough to put me on my back.
“Two days after I left, Elio reported that you hadn’t been to work or seen by anyone.
I figured you were off on a bender, licking your wounds, but not…
this.” He’s looked at the garbage with less disgust. “A fucking week? This place is disgusting. The staff aren’t cleaning this. ”
Disgusting? Every word from his mouth makes less and less sense. Another sweep of the room, this time after a rub of my eyes to clear out however many hours of sleep I’ve gotten, has me seeing what he’s actually describing.
A dozen liquor bottles are all spread around, with more broken glass scattered between them—which means even more finished bottles that got smashed.
Clothes cover much of the room, and the bedsheets are ripped in another corner.
The bathroom door is broken, the three different circular cracks in the wood matching the bruises on my knuckles a bit too well.
Empty pizza boxes are stacked by the door, and—hey, there’s my cell.
I slide my legs to the end of the bed to head for it, to pray with every-fucking-thing that a text message is waiting. Only as I straighten, the ground rushes at me, and I end up on my ass, groaning as my head lands on the mattress.
Zeno huffs. “Whatever attempt that was, it was pathetic.”
“My phone.” I point. “Please.”
He sneers but retrieves it, tossing it onto my lap. The battery’s low in the red, and there are quite a few notifications: texts from soldiers, missed calls from Elio and Zeno, but nothing from her.
She didn’t…
“Of fucking course she didn’t.”
Oh, I said that aloud.
“Anastasia officially hates your ass now, so if you were checking to see if she reached out, I have news for you.”
Tossing the useless piece of tech to the side, I squint up at him, wishing he’d do me a mercy and shut the curtains. “Is she okay?”
“After ensuring you didn’t single-handedly start a war with the Bratva—” Bite and humour combine in his tone before he crosses the room and kicks stray clothing out of his path to settle into the small space on the floor.
He stretches his legs and crosses his ankles before his extended sigh becomes the only sound he’s yet to make that eases my head.
“She’s alright. Haven’t seen her much after that first day, to be honest. She’s been locked away in her studio or at work. ”
That doesn’t make anything feel better at all.
Groaning, I drop my head back against the bed, my eyes tightening shut with images that have plagued me last night—this week. Anastasia in my bed. Anastasia beneath me.
Maybe that’s how I got to my room. Went chasing the image.
“I feel bad.”
He scoffs. “Bad is only the start of what you should be feeling.”
He’s right. I feel broken. Shattered like her heart was that day.
“I need answers, man. What the hell happened?”
There isn’t enough alcohol in the world to get me through this conversation, but the fact I’m even thinking about it is laughable.
I did all this to assuage myself of fault and instead destroyed the trust of someone I care for.
I ruined what could be. I hurt her in ways I didn’t know possible to harm another.
Ways I can’t live with myself over. No apology will be enough to bandage my actions.
“Eleven years ago, your father sent me on a job in Poland.”
Surprise flickers in his expression, his head straightening off the wall at the mention of his father. “You texted me about this one.”
“Anastasia was performing a show there. My task was to kidnap her, so your padre could use her as a bargaining tool. Your father had others tail me to ensure the job got done. Once I met her, I couldn’t do it.
Not without knowing what would happen when she was brought back here. We both know what he would have done.”
His flinch confirms his agreement. Anastasia would have been a captive, and then probably dead. My feisty ballerina wouldn’t be alive for me to be falling for.
“I helped her escape. She ran back to her father, and we never got a hold of her. When I…” Inhale. “When I returned here, Elio told me your padre was killed.”
He inhales sharply, curses lightly, and gets to his feet.
This is it. This is where I lose my best friend. How much pain can one heart go through this week?
“Nero, that wasn’t your fault.”
That wasn’t what I expected him to say.
“It was a coincidence. His murder already happened by the time you returned, with or without her.”
I push to my feet, more sober than I’ve been in a week…apparently. “If I took her, maybe your father wouldn’t have been at that bar. Maybe he would have been waiting for her delivery. Maybe—”
“We don’t know any of that for certain.”
“It doesn’t change the way I feel—then or now. The feelings that have been eating me alive all these years.”
Zeno drops his eyes to the nearest smashed bottle.
“That’s when you started drinking.” Fingers drag through his hair, and he turns his back on me.
“That’s when you—fuck, Nero. This whole time, you’ve been drinking yourself to death for him.
” He whirls back around, dropping his hands to his side.
“You’ve spent years mistakenly hating yourself for something the Volkovs did.
Hearing this now… All these years, you never told me. ”
“How could I? How could I admit to my best friend I was behind his father’s death?”
Zeno exhales loudly. “No. We’ve talked about this—you’re not behind it. I’m talking about your drinking. All these years, I never put it together. The timing. I’m a shitty friend.”
“You’re not. I controlled it back then. Considering you’ve been the Bratva’s enemy since, it was productive to swallow my guilt and move on.
But with you and Vanessa’s truce”—my gaze flicks to his left hand, sans ring for now—“it’s different.
You stopped blaming them, which means I had to as well, and my brain couldn’t contend with moving on entirely, with doing nothing in his name. ”
“When I asked you months ago if you had a problem with her—”
“Not her,” I interrupt. “It wasn’t any of them.
It was the fact that you moved on from your hatred, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t be able to.
I had no one to direct it to, other than myself.
Suddenly, I was hanging out with the new generation of those who were behind his death, and I couldn’t even hate them. Didn’t want to hate them.”
“Fuck.” He rubs a hand down his face, scans the mess, and then stares out the window. “There’s more to it.”
“Sì. I thought if I could get rid of the people who were the Elite, I’d be able to look you in the face and admit what happened. That I’d be able to explain my fuck-up, while my actions be some measure of forgiveness. So I started hunting them.”
Zeno turns, his shoulders lowering beneath the weight.
“That could have begun something bigger. It’s why I asked you months ago to leave this alone.
You disobeyed an order.” Rather than the anger that would be expected from anyone else not following a command, Zeno’s voice is weighed down by exhaustion.
“I’m aware. Anastasia and Lev’s padre was hidden well, which doesn’t surprise me. I once asked her about him, but she wouldn’t give anything away. The night of your party, her phone was there. It was the ideal situation. That’s why I disappeared for a few days.”
And why she now hates me.
For a few minutes, Zeno’s completely silent, staring from me to the floor, and sometimes out the window, shaking his head. “This is a mess. Answer me one fucking thing. Did you sleep with her only to get her father’s contact information?”
“No. It started that way, months ago, but I do genuinely care for her now.”
“Alright.” He nods once, then again. “Alright, you might be able to fix this.”
There’s no fixing the hatred she wore as a shield.
“She wants nothing to do with me. To explain, she’d have to let me get close enough. Besides, it’ll make little difference. Did you hear all of what she yelled?”
“Most, not all.”
I drop onto the bed behind me, crossing my legs at the ankle to keep myself steady.
“She’s pissed at me for stealing what should have been hers—theirs.
I guess he did…things to them. Made their teenage life hell.
” Since he didn’t hear everything, I won’t go into their story. “I’ll skip the wedding, Z.”
His head snaps up. “I’m pissed, and this is a goddamn mess, but you’re still my best friend. She’s agreed to go through the ceremony, but besides that, she wants nothing to do with you.”
My insides physically flinch. “I can do that.” Because admitting to him that I don’t plan on doing so won’t end well for me, not after all this.
“Use that wedding to your advantage, Nero.”
“Yeah.” As emotions creep up again, I wipe my face, trying to erase them. They’re pointless and will get me nowhere. “Yeah. I fucked up so badly.”
“You did. You really liked her?”
“I think I might have been falling for her.”
It’s silent between us again until Zeno steps over broken glass.
“Shower. Clean all this up. We’ll figure it out.
Thanks for telling me.” He opens the door after nudging more clothes away from it, and then stops, hand on the doorframe.
“Look…of course, I miss Padre, but maybe this was for the best. If Ursin had never killed him, I wouldn’t have been after the Bratva, which means I’d never have met Vanessa.
There isn’t a future I’ll accept that she isn’t by my side.
So, what I’m saying is, maybe this was a good thing.
I’d trade my father for my fiancée any day. ”
Only when he’s gone, those final statements lingering like a hammer into the hangover from hell, do I let myself slide to the floor again. I reach for my phone and do the one thing that won’t work, but at the moment, it’s all I got.
I dial her number.
The call rings and rings and rings until the sound echoes through my empty heart. Her voicemail picks up, so I hang up because the electronic voice isn’t what I need.
Fucking damn it, more than alcohol, I need Anastasia.
More than life and air and oxygen, I need my Petrov back.