“What happened here? Were you robbed?” Drako asks. “How is that even possible? You don’t even have furniture yet! Did they take the bed?”
“No. I ended my relationship,” I answer, still standing in the same spot, beside the open door.
“You ended it?” Apollo asks, confusion written all over his face.
“We thought you’d proposed to Nina,” Atlas joins in, his usual serious, analytical gaze fully fixed on me, searching for every scrap of truth he can find without it passing through my lips. A dry laugh escapes me as I turn my head and my eyes land on Nina’s face in one of the many fragments of photograph scattered across the floor.
“I did.”
“And she said no?” Drako asks, incredulous.
“She said yes—and she’s pregnant.” Apollo’s and Drako’s eyes widen to their limits, while Atlas keeps his expression impassive, waiting for what they all know must come next. “The child isn’t mine.”
CHAPTER 44
NINA MARCHESI
I blow the air out through my mouth, summoning courage, and place my finger on the fingerprint reader. Coming back to Khione wasn’t an easy decision—two days weren’t even close to enough for the confusion in my head to clear—but I couldn’t postpone this forever.
I need answers. If not for me, then for the baby growing inside me. After yet another sleepless night, the sun rose bringing with it the certainty that I would get up and board the ferry as fast as I could reach it.
I bring one hand to my abdomen, whispering a silent prayer—the same one I’ve been making for the past two days and nights: that there be an explanation. All I ask is that there be an explanation. I push the penthouse door open when the lock disengages.
The destruction scattered around the place makes my eyes widen, and I rush inside on instinct.
“Nero?” I call, my heart suddenly pounding in my throat. “Nero, are you here?” I ask when he doesn’t answer. “Nero?” I keep shouting his name as I move in and out of every empty room, searching for him.
I pull my phone from my pocket and finally turn it on. The uninterrupted flood of new messages only prolongs my agony, because the phone freezes—receiving, receiving, receiving—unintentionally delaying the moment when I might understand what happened.
I finally manage to unlock the screen, and when I see that Nero’s last message notification doesn’t hint at anything that could justify the state I found the penthouse in, I call voicemail. That doesn’t help either, because the messages start playing from the oldest to the most recent—and Nero left me 112 recordings over the past forty-eight hours.
If I have to listen to all of them before finding out what happened, I’ll probably faint. I hang up and dial another number.
“Hi,” Drako answers, and the absence of his familiar irreverence makes every hair on my body stand on end. If the destruction around me weren’t enough proof that something is wrong, Drako’s tone would be.
“What happened?” I ask, terrified. “Where is Nero?” The man on the other end of the line hesitates for far too long. “Where is he, Drako?”
“He’s at the office,” he finally says. “But he’s in no state to talk to you right now, Nina.”
“N-not in c-condition?” I stammer. “What do you mean, not in a condition?” Terror scrapes its claws inside me before crawling through my veins and settling in my heart. Faced with the possibility that something happened to Nero while I was gone, fear spills over my skin and pools at my feet, freezing me in place. “What happened to him? For God’s sake, Drako!”
“He—” Drako starts, then cuts himself off almost immediately. “He needs time, Nina. I don’t think it would be a good idea for you two to talk right now.” Relief washes over me—only to be completely replaced seconds later by a feeling I can’t quite name.
“He doesn’t want to talk to me?” I ask slowly, my stomach sinking. Lysandra’s words echo in my mind like a second consciousness.
Could it be? Now that his mother has made it clear what he wants from me, won’t Nero even look me in the eyes while he breaks my heart—proving every promise he made was a lie?
Or maybe not. A small, timid, hopeful voice whispers in my head, trying to replace the desolation I’m beginning to sink into. Maybe he’s discovered what his mother did and is too ashamed, trying to find a way to justify it. Maybe not everything she said is a lie, and he doesn’t know how to tell me.
Those recordings… The mere possibility that Nero might really have said those things makes my stomach churn, but people change. Maybe Nero was that man once, but isn’t anymore. Maybe he did all those things, said all those words—but not about me.
It’s pathetic that I cling to that hope. Ridiculous in so many ways I don’t even dare to count—yet I hold on to it anyway.
Whatever the truth is, as certain as I was when I got out of bed in Athens this morning, I am now. I need to see Nero. I need to hear him. I need to know what’s true and what’s a lie. I need him to tell me that everything is a lie—except our love.
***
“I’m sorry, Mr. Nero Zanthos isn’t available to see you,” Icarus tells me, and I blink, startled. Shit.
