LEV
Only after Vanessa’s SUV pulls away from the mansion, taking with it the two Mancinis, do I move from my place in the kitchen, escape the cloud of vanilla and peaches somehow lingering, and start for the basement to begin the favour Vanessa asked of me. With Dimitri off to Canada searching for Ivan, I’ll start tracking Ivan’s cell to figure out where he’s popping up.
Anastasia, grin and all, ambushes me in the kitchen doorway, her arms stretching out in an annoying blockade. I push one down to get by, but she shuffles in front of me, irritating me the way she was born to.
“What?” I growl.
“There is no spare room beside yours, which means she would have spent the night in your room.”
“Your point?” Lying to Zeno was necessary, since I doubted he’d appreciate hearing his younger sister slept in a man’s bed, even when sex was the last thing on either of our minds. “The chair isn’t a bed, and the floor is hard. She took one side, I took the other—not a big deal.”
It’s a huge fucking deal.
The look she gives agrees with me. “You don’t like people in your bed.”
“Or near me.” I gesture to the five inches space between us. “Yet, here we are.”
Taking the hint, she lets me by to continue towards the basement. “Careful,” she calls after me. “Your kindness is seeping through. Be sure to patch it up before someone realizes you’re human beneath that thick skin.”
I flip her my middle finger and slam the door shut between us, cutting myself off from the rest of the world. Already, a night’s worth of tenseness seeps away. The static in my brain that’s only been silent around Serafina quells until masked by the better buzzing the basement is equipped with—the humming of my operational servers.
I pass my pride, joy, and obsession—the server racks—and lower into my gaming chair. After I readjust the pillow behind my head and switching on the three monitors, the drag of the mouse beneath my palm is welcoming. My injured shoulder lightly throbs as the pills the doctor left are slow to kick in, but considering it’s my left side and I’m right-handed, it doesn’t matter.
I start by loading the software used to ping cell towers, but as much as my entire focus should be on helping Dimitri find his traitorous father, I instead open a browser tab, typing in the address for a popular social media site. In the site’s search bar, I type a name I very well don’t have a right to.
serafina mancini
Ineedto know what’s so special about her to raise my inquisitiveness. Why shespecifically, of all people, managed to suppress the noise in my head, made me sleep better than ever in my own bedroom and not care that she was in it with me.
She had me lying to Zeno and Vanessa when I’ve never before lied to Vanessa. I’ve never had a reason to lie to anyone, besidesthe assholes we deal with. For both our safety, I did, since it was simpler than the fallout of the truth.
Immediately, Serafina’s enjoyment of the internet spreads across my screen. Profiles from other platforms, posts of her complaining about day-to-day stuff, and the pictures…my fuck, they’re endless.
If I saw these before meeting her, I’d think she was merely beautiful, but reality makes her digital footprint a fraction of her worth. She’s objectively gorgeous, and waking up beside her struck me with a sense of wonder, because she appeared utterly at peace. I found myself pondering if she looks like this every morning until recallingwhoshe is and why it shouldn’t matter.
Her personal information makes her eighteen, which is already a known fact. She doesn’t look that young, particularly in newer photos. In many of her and friends, she seems like the older sister. It’s in the way she holds herself, staring into the camera with confidence they lack.
The more I scroll, the deeper I get. The pictures of her at the beach, I pass quickly when noting the amount of bare skin. There are some of her at parties, which I wonder if Zeno knows about. In those, her eyes are glazed, her smile messier.
In almost all of them, friends are beside her. We’re the opposite in every way. Given she’s constantly around other people, she must enjoy it, while I prefer to avoid social situations entirely.
So again, whatisit about her? Based on pictures, she seems like someone who’d make my head hurt.
Of course, pictures hide the truth. The Serafina who was present isn’t the one in these photos. When she smiled at me, her eyes lit up, but in the photos, they’re dull. She’s happy, but nothappy.
In a particularly clear one, I zoom in on the blue that should remind me of the Volkov woman upstairs but doesn’t. Not onlyis the shade Serafina’s own colour, but it’smycolour, and I now understand why they captured my attention last night.
When I was five, there was a shirt I obsessively wore, to the point our nanny was washing it every day. It faded and got worn down, and then I eventually outgrew it entirely, and it was gone. I scoured my room and the laundry room, cursing the nanny and staff who hid it. Anastasia tried to calm me down, but nothing eased the meltdown.
Finally, they bought me a brand new one, except it wasn’t the correct shade. Close, but not quite. It sent me into another tailspin until I cut up the shirt and threw it in the trash, never to find another in the precise shade as that first.
I found it. Serafina Mancini’s eyes are the exact shade of blue I’ve spent my life searching for.
It shouldn’t be possible. She’s a person; it’s an article of clothing…but it is.
I don’t know how long I spend internet-stalking her before flipping to one of her other profiles and starting down that path too. A path that doesn’t have a comfortable ending, and when the time in the corner of my monitor reveals an hour passing since leaving the kitchen, I’m reminded why this is a bad fucking idea.
She’s younger. She’s also Vanessa’s half-sister, and, depending if Vanessa’s still going through with the divorce after the marriage Zeno forced onto her or not, her sister-in-law too. Serafina is someone I shouldn’t have crossed paths with until Vanessa chose to officially blend our families. She was a pawn in Ivan’s cruel games, and saving her became my job. Allowing her in my bed was a kindness to repay, nothing more, so it doesn’t matter if she caused strange reactions in me.
