66. Nero
NERO
Vanessa’s steps slap through the pool of blood the five slaughtered ex-soldiers have created.
Well, I created when I killed them all.
She stops in front of Georgy Vasilyev, bound and kneeling in that very blood, the sleeves of his suit jacket torn from his numerous escape attempts. Elio stands behind him with a gun lazily pointed at his back—a silent threat to earn his compliance.
She runs her tongue over her teeth, sighs, and drops into a crouch in front of him. “Oh, Georgy, when will men stop being so desperate and stop assuming they know what’s best for me?”
The fragment of hatred that’s yet to be beaten out of him burns brightly in his eyes. “I could have made the Bratva better than the Italian trash you chose.”
She purses her lips. “Could you have? Do you come with an entire organization at your beck and call? Seems like Zeno provides a lot more to my people than you ever will.” She stands, slaps her hands to her thighs, and twists away, discarding him with a look.
“Your future children will be the laughing stock of the criminal world.”
She whirls, teeth bared. For once, terrifying even me.
She’s the woman who took over a male-driven mob and not my best friend’s wife.
“Our children will run a dynasty, but you won’t be around to witness it.
” She scans the three of us. “He’s done you guys more wrong than me, so it’s up to you how to get rid of him. ”
Zeno shifts his attention from Vasilyev to me, standing beside Dimitri and drenched head-to-toe in the blood from the five other corpses lying nearby.
If corpses count as the pile of limbs I sliced off, seeing only her in my mind.
They might not have specifically harmed her, but they would have on orders.
They were part of Vasilyev’s ragtag crew.
They betrayed us and stole from us, and killed their own comrades.
They deserved to burn every second their death was dragged out.
“Did you get your fill or would you like another?”
Vasilyev’s eyes bulge, and he cowers with a whimper, which pulls a maniacal grin to my mouth—the threat of what’ll happen if he annoys me longer.
Considering I was in the middle of torturing them when Zeno phoned Vanessa, who reported Anastasia woke from the coma, this needs to be wrapped up. All the torment from our history can remain here, so we move on together.
“I’m good.”
Zeno jerks his chin at Elio. “End it.”
“No!” Vasilyev’s crooning plea ends with a bang and his body slams forward, face in the blood of his minions.
For a moment, no one speaks. My breath is stilted through the scent of copper and hatred, of former enemies.
Then Zeno’s barking laughter shatters it as he wraps his arm around his wife. “Why is nothing between us simple?”
“It’s all me.” Vanessa burrows into his side with an affectionate smirk. “Unfortunately, assholes like this pop up way too often, which means you’re in for a hard-earned life.”
“An easy life is a boring life.”
Dimitri gags, making Elio laugh in agreement. I stride by them all, eager to get to my car. “You two make me sick. Now that this has been dealt with, I have places to go.”
“And a ballerina to see,” Vanessa calls after me.
Damn fucking right.
Anastasia is asleep when I finally arrive. Zeno was determined not to let me inside the hospital until I showered and changed clothes, considering I looked like an extra in a horror movie.
The room is full of beeps, each one more reassuring than the last. She’s the same as I left her earlier, but different too. Out of the coma and so close to being alright. To being her sparkly self again.
My exhausted limbs drop into one of two chairs with a low groan. Eyes burn in exhaustion, and while she’s asleep, I rest my head beside her hand and allow them to close and rest under the gentle reassurance of her breaths.
She’s alive, and for that, I breathe.
For once, without guilt.
My sleep is yanked away by the barest brush of her soft hand against mine.
She’s awake. For the first time in days, my soul will be healed.
When I lift my head, her striking eyes meet mine, and they’re all I see. Not the bruised swelling, nor the patched-up nose. Not the pain reflecting in her expression that makes me wish I could bring them all back to life and murder them again, slower, over the course of days.
She might not be mine to hold and kiss yet, but my hands itch to touch her. My soul needs her warmth to become whole again. I lift off the chair and, meeting her eyes so she knows I’m done harming her, I slowly and gently cup her face, cautious of the bruising.
Instead of pushing me away, she rests her hands over the top of mine. She studies me the way I am her, taking in what’s probably missed bloodstains because my shower was rushed to get here.
After a moment, after everything this week, all she whispers is, “You’re a mess.”
“I’m a man who nearly lost his heart. I’d say I’m looking pretty good, all things considered.”
Her lips, cracked and dehydrated, part. “What does that mean?”
“You know what it means.” You’re still avoiding.
A hint of a smirk touches the corner of her mouth, her bruises pulling taut with her. Unable to stop myself, I trace the crease with my thumb, so fucking pleased to find her able to smile again. She catches my hand, inspecting the dried blood in my fingernails.
“Did you get them all?”
“Every last one, Vasilyev included. He tried to escape, but we found him. He took a bullet to the back of the head.”
“Good,” she breathes, her eyes fluttering shut. “If only I learned why me. Was it convenience that I was the first of Vanessa’s people to go outside? Then again, they hid the weapons in my brothel out of all our businesses, so it almost feels personal.”
“He was trying to hit Vanessa where it hurt the most.” That we got out of him during his capture. “Going after Zeno was too obvious, but he knows what you mean to her.”
“Asshole. I tried to get to him, but he ran, and my energy was done.”
“Hey,” I say soothingly, tugging her face back to me.
“You did amazing. Besides, I’m glad he ran, that he didn’t fight you.
He put up a half-decent fight against Elio, which means against you when you were already injured and done for…
” I finger the ends of her hair, gaze diving away so she finishes the rest for herself.
It would have been a bigger fight, and I could have found her in a lot more dire condition.
Dead.
My throat fills with bile—or is that emotion? Fear in its basic form.
This time, she’s the one who moves. Brushing a thumb below my eye and drawing the single tear away. A tear that’s filled with every truth I’m ready to lay out for her here and now, to bare my soul and see what comes next.
“You scared me like nothing else, Anastasia. I died a million times when finding you in that warehouse. Getting Z’s call only to learn you’d come after me but didn’t check in.
For Lev to track you there. The drive was the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced.
Speeding only to be unsure what I was speeding to, praying to everything in the universe you’d be alive and okay.
” The bruises on her forehead and the bandage on her nose are now a blessing, that her injuries weren’t worse.
“Arriving, finding you lying beside them. Every step to you was one more I wasn’t certain I’d make, afraid my legs would give out.
Then I did, to be faced with needing a plan if you didn’t make it.
I would have hunted every last one of them if you were the one I had to bury in the ground.
I’d have dragged their torment out for fuckin’ years in hopes it’d bring you back to me.
Eleven years ago, I was sickened by the concept of you dying, but now…
the concept is inconceivable. There is no life if you were to die. ”
After all that, after a speech I didn’t know was inside me, water mists her eyes. She licks her cracked lips and whispers, “I didn’t die.”
“No,” I agree, but the reminder has yet to ease me.
“You survived because that’s who you are.
You’re a survivor, and I’m so fucking proud of you.
No, actually, I’m grateful. Grateful you kept yourself alive.
Grateful you made it so when I rolled you over, your pulse still beat.
Grateful you saved me months ago and ensured this time I didn’t return to being that person.
Because had you died, life wouldn’t be worth living.
I’d give up and let the darkness consume me because maybe then, I’d find you on the other side. ”
The admittance—the rough fact—the truth I hadn’t even put into words myself before today scrapes at my throat, but fuck, if that’s how it’d go.
If my ballerina were to never dance again, if her sparkling eyes would never regard me with either disdain, lust, or affection, I’d bury her myself, hunt the bastards and make them pay for as long as my rage would allow them to cling to life, and then I’d drink.
And drink, and never stop drowning the pain, the remorse, until finding her again in a place where the darkness wouldn’t touch either of us.
Where I was truly and undoubtedly deserving of her.
“Thank you for finding me.”
Her nails scrape into my hair, and I catch her hand with my own to bring it to my mouth and kiss her cut-up, bruised knuckles.
“Always. No matter what, I’ll come for you.
No matter if you send me away right now, that you’re still pissed at me, I’ll accept it.
I’ll get out of your life for good, but it doesn’t mean I won’t watch over you.
Even if you can take care of yourself, I’ll need the reassurance that you’re alive. ”
“I was coming after you.”
Five words. So simple, so meaningless, but they’re not at all. They’re packed with a second message—that she isn’t pushing me away. A final message that she cares for me in return.