“Hell!” I curse, running upstairs.
“What are you going to do?” Apollo asks.
“I’m going to see if I still have a girlfriend!”
“If she doesn’t want you anymore, you can tell her I’m available to comfort her.” My furious glare nearly drills a hole through Drako’s skull.
“Idiot, jealous, and possessive. It’s official, guys—we’ve lost a soldier. He’s completely in love.” He raises an imaginary sheet of paper and dramatically crosses out my name before banging an imaginary gavel on the table, shouting, “Guilty! This court is adjourned.”
CHAPTER 31
NINA MARCHESI
“No.”
My mother’s loud, categorical voice pulls me out of the restless sleep I feel like I only just fell into.
It was a shitty night. No. It was a very, very shitty night. I felt like a stupid girl, unable to stop crying, hurt and guilty, and it was impossible to hide that from my mother.
I greeted her from a distance when I got home, throwing out a quick good night and an apology for worrying her before running upstairs to shut myself in my room. She showed up half an hour later, bringing a sandwich I couldn’t eat and a mug of tea I mercifully drowned in.
She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t say the infamous—and deserved—“I warned you.” My mother simply held me and let me cry in her arms until my tears dried up, leaving me with nothing but a silence stirred by the chaos of my own thoughts. I still don’t know how I feel.
Guilty? Absolutely—and what else? Hurt? Yes, that too, but I can’t tell if I even have the right to that. The way Nero looked at me, the way he spoke to me—I never thought I’d be on the receiving end of so much contempt from him, and that raises a million other questions.
“Please, Rosa, I need to see her. I need to apologize.”
The sound of Nero’s voice lifts my body as if I were marionette and his deep tone were the puppeteer pulling my strings.
In seconds, I’m at my bedroom door, ignoring the sting of the cold floor against my warm feet and the many times my eyes feel the need to blink away the fog of sleep and exhaustion. I don’t cross the threshold, though.
I just stop there and crack the door open, sharpening my hearing to catch the argument happening downstairs.
“You are not coming in, Nero! My daughter cried all night! I knew this wasn’t a good idea, boy! I warned her, but in my heart I still believed you’d be decent! That you’d treat my daughter the way she deserves to be treated! Nina is a good girl, from a good family, Nero!”
“Rosa, please, I know all of that.”
The way he agrees with her sounds so defeated, so sad. “I just need to look at her. If she doesn’t want to talk to me, I swear I’ll leave.”
The silence that follows makes my heart jump in my chest.
“She finally fell asleep just now. I’ll see if she’s awake and if she’s willing to talk to you. If she’s sleeping, I won’t wake her,” my mother warns, then adds after a breath, “and you won’t stay here waiting for her to wake up.”
“I just need her to know that I’m here,” Nero says, and I hear the door close.
I don’t bother abandoning my spying post when I hear my mother climbing the stairs. She finds me standing in the doorway, the door still half-open. Her hand is gentle as she pushes it wider.
“You heard?” she asks, caressing my cheek softly. I nod. “And what do you want to do? I can send him away—just say the word.”
“You didn’t let him in?”
“No.”
“But people—”
“Let them all go to hell, Nina. No gossip will ever be more important to me than your wellbeing.” I nod again. “What can I do for you? Do you want some tea?”
“What time is it? Aren’t you going to the shop today?” I ask, already turning my head toward the clock hanging on my wall. The hand points to seven in the morning.
