NERO
I’m still fucking buzzing when I get home.
Still fucking hard.
I get rid of my clothes like I’m peeling off my skin the second I walk in. The lights stay off as I drift through the shadows, stepping into my bedroom and moving to the wall of windows overlooking Manhattan.
It’s mirrored on the other side…not that I give a shit. Dark inside or not, no one in the streets below would see me naked, my hand wrapped around my steel-hard cock as I lean against the glass.
I plant a hand against the window, staring at the monster staring back at me.
My jaw’s set. My eyes are haunted. I look rabid. Deranged.
Hungry.
The instant the memory of her big blue eyes comes back to me, I start to stroke my dick, hand tight around my thickness, the swollen head already leaking precum. I replay the choking, whimpered, desperate sound Milena made when she gasped and writhed for me—when her sweet little cunt wrung my fingers tight as she dripped all over me, seconds away from coming.
I picture her eyes, wide and wild. Her brow caved, her jaw slack. Her legs spread and my fingers deep between them.
That pristine, polished, haughty princess veneer she wears so well shattering as she turned into my eager toy, humping my fingers like a horny cock slut.
I finish with a grunt, my muscles clenched tight. My dick surges and pulses in my hand, my balls drawing up tight as hot white cum sprays in ropes against the glass, like I’m covering the city—my city—in my mark.
I suck in a ragged breath of air, giving my cock one final squeeze, letting the last drops of pearly white cum drip onto the floor.
When I’m done—as the aftershocks fade, and my heart slows, and the tension should be draining from my spine…
Nothing’s changed.
The roaring’s still there.
The fucking screaming that lives in my chest, always just under the surface.
I wash my hands, pour a glass of whiskey, and knock it back. Then another. The burn is weak. It doesn’t scorch deep enough tonight.
I walk to the window and look out over the city. Somewhere out there, she’s still trembling from what I did to her.
But I still feel like I’m the one coming apart at the seams.
The surge of raw emotions inside of me is relentless, all-consuming, welling up so fast that I almost slam the empty glass in my hand into the window in front of me, just to feel something.
My legs shake as I stagger away from the window, yanking pants and a shirt on again and dropping to a knee next to the bedside table. I punch in the code, open the top drawer and fumble inside for the revolver.
This gun is different from the one—or two—I usually keep on me.
I haven’t done this in months. I don’t enjoy it.
But right now, I need it.
It’s quiet when I pull up at the side gate of the massive Bronx mansion. The guards there nod me through without a word. So does the one outside the back kitchen door when I park there.
It’s been a while, but this is hardly my first time here.
I head upstairs to the back wing of the house, heading down a darkened hallway to the closed office door. I barely rap my knuckles on it, then surge through.
Kir glances up from whatever report he was reading as I storm toward his desk. He doesn’t blink at my obviously manic state, just eyes me cautiously as I yank out the revolver and the single bullet and slam them down on his desk.
His dark eyes drop from me to the gun. He still doesn’t say a word as he exhales slowly, closing his laptop and taking off his dark-framed glasses.
He rolls his neck, stretching his arms, letting the muscles of his forearms flex against the rolled-up sleeves of his dress shirt.
It’s one in the morning, in the comfort of his own home, and the motherfucker is still dressed up. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him in anything less formal than a dress shirt, slacks, and a tie. He’s the kind of rigid fucker who considers removing his suit jacket “unwinding”.
But right now, the atmosphere in the room is in anything but “unwinding” territory. Kir looks at the six-shooter and the bullet next to it, his face grim.
“I thought we were done with this.”
I shake my head. My jaw’s so tight it aches. “Nope,” I growl. “Not tonight.”
“Nero—”
“This isn’t a social visit,” I hiss. “Load the fucking—”
“No,” he says quietly, shaking his head.
“Do it,” I grunt, “or I will. And I won’t stop at one.”
His nostrils flare, and his eyes drag up to mine. “What triggered this?”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
“Just load the fucking gun.”
“I’m going to say this as plainly as I can, Nero,” Kir says gently. “What happened to you, and what happened to that woman, is not your fucking fault, if that’s what this is about.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Yeah, it’s not those demons tonight.
It’s the worse ones.
Your parents are dead, Nero. It was mercenaries. We have no idea what coward hired them. I’m so sorry…
“Just fucking do it,” I croak. “Please.”
I need this before I unravel completely.
He swears under his breath, clearly hating this. But then he picks up the revolver, his movements clean and efficient as he slips the bullet into one of the six empty chambers, spins it, and racks it shut with a loud click.
My throat works. “Show me,” I say.
He opens the revolver, tilts it just enough to flash the single bullet. Then he snaps it shut again and sets it down on the desk.
“Life is pain,” I murmur. “Sometimes you can’t escape it.”
Kir exhales slowly, shaking his head. “No,” he growls. “Sometimes you can’t.”
I pick up the gun and step away from the desk, toward the window. I look out over the vast wooded grounds at the glinting lights of Manhattan.
I feel the world holding its breath with me.
I tighten my grip on the revolver. My pulse is hammering, making my skin ripple like there’s a bomb inside about to rip me open. Everything inside me is wound tight—blood, breath, thought—a prison I can’t escape.
I stare out at the lights, and that’s when the reel starts playing.
My mother’s laugh, echoing down a hallway. The sound of my father pouring his Scotch. The smell of his cologne on my blazer before church.
The blood. The screaming.
The guilt.
I squeeze my eyes tightly closed, my fingers curling around the revolver’s grip.
Through the pain and the ache and the roaring in my head, I think of Milena.
Her fucking mouth. The way she gasped into the mirror. The way that for a moment, with her, it was quiet.
Briefly, it felt like freedom from my madness.
But that’s a lie, isn’t it? There is no freedom. There’s no fixing what’s broken in me. Only the noise and the chaos.
The anguished wail that never, ever stops.
It’s back right now, louder than ever. A siren in my head. A whistle, building to a scream.
I bring the gun up. My hand doesn’t shake as the barrel touches my temple.
Cold metal against warm skin.
Breathe in. Hold. Wait for the final release.
My finger brushes the trigger like a lover.
My arm muscles tense, my jaw clenches, and the lights swim in the darkness of my vision as I squeeze my eyes tightly shut.
Click.
The silence that descends over the room after the snap of the dry-fire—the hammer hitting an empty chamber, and not the single bullet—is deafening.
No gunshot.
Just the sound of my own ragged exhale tearing its way out of my chest.
But just like that, the screaming’s gone. Immediate catharsis from my fucked-up self-therapy.
I hear Kir step forward, and I let him take the gun—still pressed to my temple—from me without a word. I blink out of my spell, turning to watch him open the gun, remove the single bullet, and then drop them both heavily on his desk.
We don’t speak for a long time.
“I know you hate this,” I say quietly.
“I do,” he grunts. “I also understand it.”
I nod, inhaling and exhaling slowly as I glance back at the lights of the city through the window and the trees.
“I found two more of them.”
My spine stiffens and my jaw tenses as I slowly twist my head, my eyes stabbing into his. “Where,” I growl.
“I’ll have them by tomorrow night. If you’d like to do the honors—”
“I would.”
He nods. “Okay. I’ll bring them to the usual spot.”
“Before eleven would be best.”
“Sure. I’ll be there.”
“Thank you for tonight,” I say, glancing at him.
He can’t meet my gaze. “Life is pain, Nero,” Kir says quietly, running a hand over his jaw. “But it can more than that as well, if you allow it to be.”
I nod as I pick up and pocket the gun, then turn to go. “See you tomorrow night.”
“Until then.”
