52. Nero
NERO
The bottle sits in one hand, my phone in the other.
Neither is encouraging.
Neither is giving me the much-needed escape.
My thumb pulls the image to the right, to the first picture I took of Petrov’s ledgers. At this point, nothing in the old bank transactions and deals will benefit Zeno, but it felt right to take a copy.
I swipe until reaching the page from the notebook that made me pause.
Labelled with an L and a list of dates, I quickly put together that it’s about Lev.
Anastasia alluded to their father tossing him in prison for short bursts of time for a fucked-up form of punishment, so I took the list of dates to be that.
For Lev, for the kid he was when in prison, the bottle inches closer to my mouth. When I swipe to the next picture, temptation dies at the sight of the A marked for Anastasia.
For her, their padre’s death needed to be drawn out for longer. The list of names was pretty simple for me to figure out after her screamed disclosure in Rome. Standing within his office, inside his island home and gripping the edge of his desk as I studied the book—it broke something inside me.
Exactly as predicted, he recorded names, keeping the memory of his daughter’s pain alive. All names except five are crossed out. Reading them again—zooming in the photo because I’m a special kind of moron—inches the bottle closer to my mouth, my hand tightening around the neck.
But I don’t take the swig my body aches for.
By now, she’d have gotten my package. If she approves and wants me to finish the task, I happily will, but sobriety will be the best possible means to make that work. So drinking now isn’t wise when I’m anticipating her phone call.
I rest the bottle onto the floor and lean back, gripping my cell with two hands, reading the page yet again.
Beside the names are attached notes:
Political favour
$1M USD
Weapons
Blackmail
Political advantage
The name marked beside blackmail was whom I murdered and sent the heart off.
She’ll rise from the ashes of my actions because that’s who she is. This time, she’ll go after them. All I’ve done was stack the wood for the pyre. She’ll be the one to light the match.
So after the one, I left the other four despite the urge to go hunting. Their lives are in her hand now, thus no longer my responsibility.
I sit straight again, reaching for the bottle for a sip. Just a little one. One to erase the list from my mind. Instead of bringing the bottle to my mouth, I hover over the trash can button that’d send the image elsewhere.
I can’t. Drinking would be easier, tastier, and mind-numbing. It’ll erase the pain of not only fucking everything up, but not being able to help her in all the ways I long to.
Envisioning my ballerina, my Petrov, I lower the bottle.
Her voice admonishes me for the unhealthiness of addiction, right before she takes my hand and pulls me away.
Maybe to a gym, where we work out the ever-tightening nerves.
Maybe to her studio, where she’d prove why alcohol and exercise don’t go together.
I kill the images, twisting my eyes at the sight of them, and instead open my latest message to her. My explanation with only the read label beneath it. Two months later and no reply. Every day, I hope it’ll be the day she’ll respond.
My lips wrap the bottle, the faint flavour tempting me to tip it back and swallow more.
Instead, I lower it.
“What are you doing?”
Zeno went to Moscow for the week, yet his voice—judgemental, curious, and a bit cautious—has my attention lifting from both vices.
“Why are you home?”
He crosses the room, hands in his front pockets. “Ana received quite the delivery, so I figured you may need to talk.”
“Since when do we talk about shit like this?”
He drops onto the couch across from me and kicks one leg over the other. “Exactly. We don’t. Maybe we should start.”
“Tea time and gossip, Z? My, your upcoming wedding is changing you. Making you emotional and shit.”
He kicks his free leg out but misses me by a mile.
“Fuck you. Make all the jokes you want, but I’m serious.
Your Cayman Islands trip clearly went well, as did your travels after the fact.
” He pauses, waiting for me to admit something I won’t, so it leaves us in a bubble of tense silence. “I saw the box, Nero.”
I toast with the bottle. “Cheers to the asshole’s death. Four more.”
“You were right about the paperwork trail. Feel better?”
Better would not be gripping alcohol like a lifeline.
Better would be having Ana beside me.
“No.”
“Wow, we’re getting somewhere. See, I knew this talking shit would pay off.”
My middle finger lifts, sending a lewd and silent gesture his way, which he only laughs at. “What do you want me to say?”
“Say nothing. I’m curious what’s happening here, though.” He jerks his chin at both the bottle and my phone.
I toss him the device, letting him see the pictures—if he didn’t already read the book.
While he reads, I could attempt to drink.
Drown myself within my misery and forget everything of life and the world until the wedding where I’ll inevitably be near her.
A day I’m dreading and perhaps planning on dying beforehand to escape from, but also one anticipated.
My cell lands on the leather couch to my right as he tosses it back. The bottle slides further up my thigh as I lean back, other hand ready to twist the top off; to crack it open and forget within the sweet amber colour that reminds me so. Fucking. Much. Of her.
My Capo, my friend, he watches, waiting for me to decide. As if he has any fucking idea of the storm bustling inside my head. The signals demanding to chug and flee from reality. The monster clawing my stomach open, begging to be sated.
The bottle itself reminds me of the club I attended with her. It’s the same brand I drank that night.
Alcohol ultimately led me to Anastasia. It’s been my means of healing through the culpability about Giovanni.
It made Anastasia look twice. She put me to bed—being disgusted and said she’d only talk to me sober.
After that, seeing her smile became stronger than the high.
She was my high. Nothing in any bottle anywhere could be stronger than what being beside her did for my body.
After that, drinking became casual. A comfort to get through the pre-wedding shit and the fact Zeno would always be down a parent. The more time with her, the less I craved the liquor. The less I cared about Zeno’s parental absences.
Then I fucked up, and she left me with a broken heart and shattered soul. The fix of which was only discovered at the bottom of a bottle.
Can the past few months be considered healing?
Sometimes days pass without any recollection.
At some point, Elio and Zeno’s faces would swim into reality.
Sometimes together, other times separate.
All the time angry and annoyed and pulling me from somewhere.
Sometimes bed, sometimes the floor. They’d toss me into the shower, douse me, and then send me off to work.
After a few weeks, their attention thankfully decreased. They began leaving me to my misery. Days would pass before remembering to shower and restock my liquor cabinet for the next round, as staff continued the endless deliveries I demanded.
They didn’t give up on me, not really. Zeno’s here. Elio calls every morning, even when I can’t answer.
She gave up on me, though.
And that’s why I twist the lid, the cracking filling the room.
My best friend sighs because he knows what’s coming. He’s aware the only way to heal is to forget. If she’ll never forgive me, there’s no real point in sobriety. She grounds me. Everything I do for her fixes me. Everything I do with her fulfills me in ways drinking never does.
I remained sober for her when attending her show.
To slip away to Moscow, I couldn’t take Zeno’s plane, which meant getting on the commercial flight without being sloshed.
After the show, escaping became my entire focus, and I didn’t stop moving until I was seated on the plane.
The little shots on the airplane were a start but nowhere enough.
When I returned, I attempted to drown the fact she was right there beneath a bottle, only to pass out from exhaustion after two drinks in and well before hitting blackout level.
Then Elio was dragging me to a murder scene, and I later hopped a plane to the Cayman Islands.
A call from my guy later, I was hunting Anastasia’s trauma.
That’s what…almost five days without much liquor? Five days of near sobriety.
No fucking wonder I’m on edge. My skin is itchy and seconds from peeling off in order to escape this damn horrible life.
“She wouldn’t want you to.”
Of course she wouldn’t, but she’s not around to decide that. If she was, I wouldn’t drink. I wouldn’t need to. I’d have her.
She’s not here…but maybe I can get her back.
I can get her back.
I could place the bottle down. I could get better for her. She’d return if I changed.
Drinking isn’t the issue, my inner voice reminds me—and I wish he’d die. But it’s right. She didn’t leave due to my addiction. She has no idea how bad it was and how much worse it’s gotten. Her absence made me into this monster. She’d hate this version and how I’m living my life.
My mind drifts to my bedroom a floor above. It’s a destroyed mess I barely notice anymore, often passing out face-first on the dirty bedsheets. It’s nowhere fit for my ballerina.
I should clean it.
I should clean myself.
I should… My gaze finds the bottle again.
I need help.
The liquid sloshes. I’m shaking.
I miss her.
I don’t want this anymore. To be this anymore.
Anastasia will never return to me. Fuck, I wouldn’t forgive myself if I was in her position.
Alcohol may not have caused our issues, but it sure would if she witnessed my hell.
My eyes don’t remain open for longer than an hour at a time, and I’m unable to handle a fucking conversation with my childhood best friend without getting smashed.
I have to be done with this shit.
“Nero?”
I need to.
For her. For myself. For him. For the Cosa Nostra.
“Take it,” I rasp.
My arm doesn’t stretch the bottle towards him, but I don’t hug it closer either. It remains poised on my knee as Zeno drops one leg from the other and shifts off the couch. He slowly approaches while my attention remains on the floor between us.
A hand lands on the glass beneath mine and my fingers tighten on the neck, ready to tell him to fuck off, fly back to his new home, and go play with his pretty fiancée and leave me and my hell alone. He can go see her while I remain here in the burning flames of my actions.
Her. Anastasia. My ballerina.
My index finger lifts off the bottle as images flash.
Anastasia and I dancing in her studio. The first time she really eased around me.
My middle finger lifts.
Anastasia and I in the club.
Fourth finger.
Anastasia spending Christmas with my padre.
Pinky finger.
Anastasia seated beside me at dinner, pretending she didn’t enjoy me petting her thigh.
My thumb slides from the bottle, surrendering it to him.
Zeno moves to the side of the room, presumably discarding it from view. My hand still hovering over the ghostly memory of it lowers to the couch, sinking into the leather instead of searching out the required liquid gold as he reclaims his seat across from me.
“I need help, Z.”
He suggested it before. Detox, rehab. I need it all. This time, I’m ready to listen to his suggestions.
“We’ll get you help if you answer me why.”
“I’m tired. It’s been my vice for way too long.
It’s my solution to everything. The day your father died, I found the balm on the bottom of a bottle.
For eleven years, it’s been dragging me through life.
I went after the ex-Elite to resolve my responsibility.
Only in doing so, I broke trust with the person who was making it better.
” I swallow that admittance, which is much more bitter than the drink I should be sucking back.
“Z, she made things better. The cravings went away. I felt normal. Then I shattered a perfect fuckin’ thing. ”
“So I ask again, why? This for me, her, or yourself?”
“All.”
“Not good enough.”
My teeth press together. I’m over here, baring my soul, and it’s not good enough?
“Myself,” I finally admit. “Myself, to be better. To be someone worthy of her. Whether or not she ever forgives me, she won’t like this version.
I don’t like this version of me.” My eyes lift, but not to his face.
It’s not possible yet. But his chest. “I don’t remember much since the day it all came crashing down, which isn’t fair to you or the organization, or Elio, who’s taken up being my babysitter.
I’m doing this for me, Z, so I can be better for everyone.
I’m doing it for you so that you can trust me again.
I’m doing this for her—with her in mind. ”
“Good answer.” He stands, approaching.
“It’s been a week,” I murmur, swallowing roughly. “A week with only two drinks.”
“You’re doing good, but I want you to attend detox regardless. To fully dry out in a place meant to help. After that, we can decide if rehab or something else is next.”
I bob my head, too choked up to verbalize my agreement. Saying anything gives a name to my addiction. An admittance I’ve already said to myself—that I have a problem to resolve. Detox feels like a curse word, when it’ll actually be my saving grace.
“I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“Get rid of it all. Every bottle. What’s in my room and in the kitchen. And…and if you want any for yourself, hide it and don’t tell me where it is. Please, Z.”
“Give me one hour.” His steps take him across the room, the gentle clacking of his shoes against the marble that isn’t as shiny as it normally is, ever since he forbade the cleaners from entering the villa because he didn’t want me using them to clean up my mess.
“Z?”
He turns. “Sì?”
“Grazie. Not only for today, but the entirety of our lives.”
“She’ll be proud of you.”
He leaves, and it’s thoughts of Anastasia I pass out to.
In a rare instance of sobriety.