58. Nero
NERO
“Good luck.” Dimitri slaps Zeno’s arm before he heads down the aisle to where Vanessa and Anastasia are tucked away in a back room getting ready.
Lev claims a spot in the first pew on the bride’s side beside Katya, leaving Zeno and me standing at the front of the church while the final few guests settle into their seats.
Her Elite are the only people she cared enough about to have in attendance, but with half of them in the wedding, it leaves only the two observing.
The church was looking quite “pathetic,” to use the planner’s word, so she’s been shuffling guests from Zeno’s side to Vanessa’s, evening the audience out.
Serafina is closest to the aisle, stretching to talk to Lev instead of using that university education of hers by smartly joining him.
Beside her, Gabriella and Elio are locked in an intense conversation made more interesting by the way she’s angled into him, and he seems like a man who’d sooner die than look away.
One day, he’ll figure it out. Maybe he’s battling his own conscience over liking his deceased best friend’s wife.
Drawing my attention away from the couple and could-be couple, I nudge Zeno’s side. “Much fancier than your last wedding.”
He snorts, but then smirks, presumably recalling the time he had me draw up a marriage licence with Vanessa’s faked signature so when she eventually got rescued by her Elite, she left Italy with a husband.
They divorced after getting together for good, all so they could do it right and official—hence today.
“Always knew a wife would be in my future, for the good of the Cosa Nostra. Never imagined it being a love match. Nothing I had a real choice in.” He adjusts his tie because apparently the first few times weren’t enough.
If Zeno didn’t have a choice, it definitely wouldn’t be happening to Vanessa Volkov.
The Commission would rather the Cosa Nostra burn entirely before one of theirs weds someone from the Bratva.
Yet, as I scan the church, I find the five Commission members in attendance—pinched expressions, but present.
The music slows after another minute of Zeno obsessively adjusting his tie, instructing those still standing and conversing to take their spots for the impending ceremony.
Serafina throws Lev a final smile before being her mini-Mancini self and doing the exact opposite of what she should be.
She leaps to her feet, the pale-blue dress swirling around her knees as she all but trips up the steps to Zeno’s side.
She swats his hands away from his tie to take over the task and murmurs low enough I can’t hear.
After the final adjustment, she kisses his cheek and reclaims her spot in the pews.
Quiet settles through the church as the music dies down.
The silence puts guests on edge, waiting in anticipation for the music Vanessa and her wedding party will walk to before she marries a Capo in the very church Gabriella once wed Giovanni in, and generations of Mancinis prior to them.
The priest on Zeno’s other side is the same one who wed his parents and later baptized him and Serafina.
Based on his many wrinkles, this could be his final Mancini ceremony.
A soft melody strikes up, doing its darndest to unwind the vicious knots my body has been in since waking—not hungover.
Gabriella was convinced that being inside the grand church with the sun glowing through the many stained glass windows would heal me, but it’s done quite the opposite.
It worsened it by making everything leading up to the initial music chord more real and inevitable.
The couple forwent a larger bridal party to have one person each—myself and Anastasia.
So as the large doors at the end of the hall are opened from the other side, it’s inevitable who’ll face me.
Since last night, I’ve convinced myself this will be fine, but as she appears, a demure smile rips me into pieces and burns me on a pyre of regret, and I accept our distance is impossible.
I’m close, yet unable to do a fucking thing about it.
Apparently, I didn’t regret my actions months ago.
The feelings then and the glass shredding itself to life inside me suggest otherwise.
If it was regret, then I need a different title for whatever the hell is inside me now—when oxygen is sucked from the air and my chest clenches, seconds away from dying.
Without her in my life—with her hating me—death seems like the better option.
Like her shows, Anastasia scans the crowd without settling on anyone in particular. Her steps are perfectly timed with the music drifting from above her head, lithe and poetic on their own. With each one, my knot is tugged on a bit more. And more…until the loop is undone and I’m a pile by her feet.
Everything but her blurs. If I’ve embedded myself into her for at least a single percentage of what she’s done to me, she’ll feel my gaze. I’m drunk—wasted. Soothed by her presence with the same kind of lull alcohol in my veins brings.
I wish she was walking just to me—for me. In a white dress rather than the deep red one, almost a burgundy, that she is. Her dress matches the tie the wedding planner shoved into my hands earlier this morning, and that means something.
That she’s mine. In my head and heart and even my fucking soul, she’s mine. Even though she never will be again. Not really.
Through it all, while she scans the church taking in the architecture, smiles at Zeno, and looks over the crowd, she never glances my way. Not once.
When she eventually reaches the end of the aisle, she lifts onto the dais opposite us in position for Vanessa’s arrival. The soft organ melody shifts into the bride’s march, and the crowd simultaneously stands and turns their attention to the now-shut doors.
My focus remains on Anastasia, taking in the way her grip on the bouquet crushes the stems and the rigid line of her jaw as she’s gritting her teeth. She’s tense in a way no maid of honour should be.
I get it, cara mia. I do.
I get it because this is agony.
An excited hush falls over the crowd as the double doors open again to the bride’s arrival, and then an ooh as Vanessa appears on Dimitri’s arm. The title best man needs to come before Anastasia’s stalker, so I unwittingly shift my attention to the end of the aisle.
Just as my gaze moves, Anastasia looks over. A flick of her eyes that clash with mine in the tiniest second of connection she immediately breaks. The gravitational force behind that single glance changes everything. My trajectory, my direction north…my future.
After today, I’ll never see her again. Not if I have any chance of keeping my promise. I won’t survive life without her, which means removing myself and figuring out how to live as a dead man walking.
This is different from the moment outside the Moscow precinct, which shouldn’t have happened. Confusion, shock, and happiness over her release sucked everything into the cavern formed.
Today, it’s back. Bigger and deeper than before, while I’m standing on the precipice, a second from leaping in or dragging her along with me.
For Zeno, I force my attention down the aisle where Vanessa, in a whole lot of white, is walking with her arm around Dimitri’s.
It’s strikingly different than the dark colours she normally wears.
Objectively, she’s pretty with her hair bound up and a seemingly typical wedding dress that hugs her frame until flaring at the train, lace sleeves giving her an innocent guise everyone here knows is false.
But she’s nothing compared to her maid of honour.
Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or some shit like that, Zeno staggers forward like he’s about to either run from her or to her, to drag her away for the private ceremony I wish they’d had instead. He may even keel over from blood loss if his paling skin is an indication.
“Down, killer,” I murmur, much to the disgraced look from the priest.
“She’s…”
I never learn exactly what Vanessa is. She’s a bride—his bride. And in a matter of minutes, she’ll be his wife.
My best friend will have a wife. It’s so fucking weird to think about.
She reaches the end, and Dimitri slides his arm from hers, and with a kiss to her cheek and a murmured statement that cracks her resolve, he hands her to Zeno.
Dimitri, being her only male relative, took up the mantle of the father-of-the-bride—something he mentioned a million and one times last night, each instance with pride.
Lev, being as sober as I was, explained Dimitri was the one who encouraged Vanessa to take her place as the Volkov heir and not allow systematic gender roles to decide her future, so it was fitting he pushed her into this chapter of her life too.
The priest begins the painfully slow part of the ceremony. Admittedly, I zone out, checking in long enough to complete my part and hand over two rings.
They’re pronounced man and wife. Zeno sweeps Vanessa into a kiss that gets Serafina whistling and the crowd cheering. They begin down the aisle, meaning Anastasia and I need to follow.
She maintains the smiling bridesmaid facade as she links her arm around mine. She’s warm—warmer than all the liquor consumed in her absence. The scent of her fruity shampoo and the intensity of her perfume knocks at my senses, staggering me off my feet.
She isn’t looking my direction, but at least she isn’t shying away either. Regardless, it’s going to be a long fucking night, so I pin her close for the ten seconds she’s mine.
We’re propelled out of the church and down the front steps.
The wedding planner almost immediately hauls us away from everyone and towards nearby trees, where she’s already pushed Vanessa and Zeno to.
Anastasia disentangles herself, stepping to the side when the rest of our family catches up for the family-mandated pictures.
Serafina approaches, pressing into my side. “She’ll forgive you. Give it time.”
I’ve been giving it a whole lot of time.