60. Nero
NERO
Despite everything I said, I don’t head for Padre’s, knowing very well Anastasia and the others are coming back to the villa later tonight. If they arrive sooner than anticipated, they’ll catch me here.
But I need it. Padre won’t have any stocked, and despite the reception party and open bar easily able to provide, what’s coming next doesn’t need to be witnessed by Zeno and the others. My fall from grace won’t be televised for them.
Alone, I enter the villa, bypassing the two dogs who run at me. Evidence of the girls’ morning remains as I stroll through the space. The lipstick hastily thrown onto the centre foyer’s table. The packaging of something or the other. A towel draped over the banister, which…do I want to know?
Bypassing the kitchen because it doesn’t have what I need, I head straight for Zeno’s office, which he has a bad habit of leaving unlocked. Inside, I yank open every desk drawer, checking beneath it, the shelving, and even behind the curtains.
He’s so fucking moralistic that he doesn’t even have one bottle of something strong enough? Nothing to kill the rage burning my veins as I once again walked away from the best thing to ever happen to me.
What else was I supposed to do? Anastasia’s silence was loud.
I drop onto Zeno’s chair, head in my hands as a headache thunders through me at the same time the crash of rain hits the window. Fitting. Poetic justice at its finest. The storm masks the sound of my agony.
My soul tears into pieces, undoing everything Anastasia Petrov forced me to once feel for her.