NERO
I’ve lived a privileged life.
There’s no denying that. Sure, you can point to the tragic murder of my parents, to the abuse that marred my early teens, and my subsequent issues with intimacy, trust, and guilt.
But shitty things like sexual assault or losing your mother and father can happen to anyone. They can happen to people with far less than what I was born into.
Wealth—an obscene amount. Power: also at an obscene level.
Good genetics, a brain that works overtime even when I try to silence it, great friends, good schooling… There are times I’m not sure I deserve any of it.
But of all the privilege that’s been heaped upon me, there’s one part that I know, without doubt, I don’t really deserve.
Especially after what I fucking did to her.
It was the middle of the night when I brought her to the bath. By the time we staggered into the bedroom, it was almost dawn.
Milena’s been asleep for the last hour, but I haven’t slept at all. I’ve just been lying here with her in my arms, her cheek to my chest.
Looking at her. Wondering how the fuck I got her.
Twice.
I stroke her hair, my other hand clutching her tightly, like I’m afraid the next breeze might blow her away from me.
That sure as shit isn’t happening.
Nothing’s going to take her away from me.
Eventually, I go to move her off me onto the pillow beside us. Just as I do, she stirs, frowning as she opens her eyes. Her hands instantly clutch at me, a small grin on her lips as she kisses my chest.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she murmurs lazily.
“I know this is a house full of creature comforts,” I grin, winking. “What with the hot water and dubious electrical system—”
“Not to mention the cage in the basement,” she grins impishly at me.
“You know, I’d forgotten about that—”
I choke, laughing as she flicks my nipple.
“But the one thing we don’t have here is a coffee machine. So I’m going to go down the block and get one.”
She groans. “Get one for me too, and I’ll let you leave.”
“Splash of milk, no sugar,” I nod.
She frowns. “Should I be concerned that you know so many little details about me?”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” I grin as I lower my mouth to kiss her.
When I’m dressed, I head outside and walk the block and a half to the nearest Starbucks. I order Milena’s coffee, then get a triple espresso for myself because I’m beat. I reach for my phone while I’m waiting, then scowl when I touch an empty pocket.
Shit. Left it back at the house.
Whatever.
“No no, like this.”
I glance up when I hear the barista’s voice before I realize he’s not talking to me.
“Sorry,” a girl with blue hair standing beside him frowns, her shoulders sagging. “I suck at this.”
The guy laughs. “Don’t sweat it. This is why we train you. The trick is to pull the shot first, then steam the milk. That way, the espresso settles while you’re frothing milk, rather than the milk getting cold while you wait for the shot.”
The blue-haired girl nods. “Cool, that makes sense. Shot first.”
I’ve barely slept in three days. Still, something she just said tickles my brain.
Shot first.
“It was retaliation. Your family shot first.”
Shot first.
When Milena got home that night, she was told that the Kalishnik Bratva was hitting back at my family as retaliation. That we’d “shot first”.
Except I know that isn’t the case. Not in the “it can’t be true” dramatic sense.
I mean I know goddamn well it didn’t happen.
I was fresh out of Knightsblood University back then. Aldo was still my father’s consigliere, but I was Dad’s right-hand man; the crown prince sitting beside his father the king, learning how to rule the empire.
I knew every in and out of our various businesses. I was friendly with every caporegime. I was intimate with every fucking detail of every fucking operation that went down. So when I say “that didn’t happen” in regard to our family starting a war with the goddamn Kalishnik Bratva, one of the most powerful Russian families in New York, I mean I know in my very blood that it didn’t.
Because I’d have known if it did.
“Grande coffee and a triple espresso?”
I blink at Ms. Blue Hair as she passes me my coffees across the counter.
“Thanks… Actually, hold on. Do you have a phone I could use?”
She looks at me like I’ve got three fucking heads.
“A cell phone. I left mine at home, and it’s an emergency.”
“Uh…” She glances at the guy who was just training her, who’s also looking at me like I’m a fucking lunatic.
“You did hear me say emergency, yeah?” I grunt. “Fuck it, here.” I yank out my wallet, pull out my Amex black card, and slap it on the counter next to the drinks. “Collateral. If I run off with your phone, there’s literally no limit on that. OK?”
The guy frowns. “Sir, I don’t know what this is—”
“You can use mine.”
My eyes snap to the girl, holding her phone out to me.
“Next employee of the month, right here,” I grin, shoving the Amex card her way before I take the phone. “Relax, I won’t even leave the store.”
I text him a heads up that ‘unknown’ is me. He texts back a burner number.
Kir picks up on the first ring.
“And who might Lenora Crofton be?”
“A very understanding barista,” I grunt. “I don’t have time to shoot the shit.”
Kir takes a slow breath. “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“I need to ask you one of those questions we agreed I’d never ask you.”
I can practically hear Kir’s scowl. “Which one, specifically?”
“Who hired the mercenaries that night.”
Kir is silent for a few seconds. “C’mon, Nero. You know as well as I do that we never learned that. Someone powerful, obviously. Wealthy enough—”
“No more games, Kir,” I growl quietly. “No more bullshit. Who.”
“I don’t fucking know, Nero.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Look,” I snarl. “I understand that sometimes, the business you and I do can put you in a tight spot, given the business you mostly do with the higher echelons of the Bratva world.”
He laughs coldly. “I don’t think you understand the half of it.”
“Answer the question, Kir. Please.”
He exhales heavily. “You know I can’t do that.”
I grit my teeth. “I think that was an admission that you do know.”
“What will it change?” he growls. “What will it give you?”
“More than you know,” I hiss back. “Kir, it’s important.”
“So are the vows I spoke when I took my seat at the Iron Table.”
“Ahh, so it was a Russian family.”
“Nero—”
“I know it wasn’t Pavel Nikitin or Nikolai Antonov.”
He sighs. “Goddammit—”
“Drazen Krylov?”
“He was still in exile four years ago.”
“Yelizaveta Solovyova.”
Kir growls. “And what the fuck problem would Yelizaveta have with your family?”
“Thank you. So, no one on the Iron Table. Let’s move on to the High Council.”
“Nero, I am telling you—”
“Not Viktor Komarov. He’s in Chicago…” I muse. “Not Yuri Volkov. My mother played tennis with him a few times, and she and his wife were friendly—”
“Nero!” Kir hisses. “Enough!”
“Not Anastasia Javanović—I’d know,” I growl, thinking of Mikhail. “And Gavan Tsarenko seems unlikely…”
I purse my lips.
“That just leaves Marko Kalishnik, doesn’t it?”
My pulse jumps when he doesn’t immediately deny it like he did the rest. We both go quiet for a few seconds.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I finally hiss quietly.
“You know why,” he spits back. Then he sighs heavily. “I don’t know the details.”
“But it was the Kalishnik family.”
“I don’t know the details—”
“Thank you, Kir,” I growl. “For your help.”
I hang up. Then I give the girl her phone back, take my credit card and coffees, and leave.
There’s a tightness in my chest as I head back to Greymoor. A black cloud shadowing the joy I felt barely fifteen minutes ago.
I know it’s not Milena. I know that. But I still have to figure out how to tell her that someone, probably her father, has been lying to her for years.
The fact that there was no “preemptive attack” on the Kalishnik family by mine.
The fact that instead of coming after my family themselves, they outsourced the job to mercenaries for some reason.
That’s too many oddities to this entire saga for me, and it points to one explanation: someone, probably Marko, is covering something—
My steps halt suddenly.
“My father was undergoing heavy treatment for cancer when your family was attacked. He was pumped so full of chemo that he was barely conscious.”
“He’s never calls me malyshka. He calls me solnyshka.”
When it hits me, it fucking hits me.
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
But before I can follow that train of thought, a black van screeches to a stop at the curb next to me. I whirl to run, but four guys come at me from both directions on the sidewalk, surrounding me as the van door opens and three more men jump out.
I drop the coffees and take a swing, snarling as I smash one guy in the face, then whirl to dodge a punch and take out another’s legs.
But there’s just one of me.
They all get a taste of me as I’m brought to the ground, kicking and fighting. Then I see stars and my vision blurs as something heavy slams into my temple.
My body goes limp. A black bag is yanked over my head.
Shit.
