Page 90 of Violent Pawn

“You have to be fucking kidding me.”

My Capo’s voice is as painful as the door slam was on my brain, which isn’t even thudding. No, it’s the thundering of a concert at the same time a crowd cheers as their favourite hockey team scores or a club at one a.m. at the same time a dozen guns shoot simultaneously.

I go to move in the direction of Zeno’s voice, but my head is weighted to whatever I’m lying on, my limbs limp and useless.

He’s moving, though, which is good since I’ve just learned my body won’t cooperate. His feet cross whatever room I made it to, crawling here at the conclusion of my alcoholic binge after Anastasia’s spectacular exit. Suddenly, hot, blistering light in its truest and blinding form casts into the room. I twist my head, but it’s pretty useless.

The asshole opened the curtains and released the sun on me.

Feet cross the room before a hand yanks on my ankle. I roll away and shield my face while parting my eyes to see Zeno, not my friend, but my Capo, glaring down at me. “What the fuck have you done, Nero?”

“I tried to tell you yesterday.” My tongue feels thick, words jumbled around my hangover.

Zeno sneers before grasping for my shirt and yanking my body upright, forcing me to face the sun—and presumably my maker when he’s finished with me. “Dumbass, I was in Moscow yesterday.”

Right. Time zones.

“It’s been a week.”

A fucking week? I turn, searching for my phone to confirm the date…or piece together how I’ve gotten to my room when my final memory is drinking in the living room.

“You’re fuckin’ with me.”

He releases me with a hard shove to my chest, but sadly not hard enough to put me on my back. “Two days after I left, Elio reported that you hadn’t been to work or seen by anyone. I figured you were off on a bender, licking your wounds, but not…this.” He’s looked at the garbage with less disgust. “A fucking week? This place is disgusting. The staff aren’t cleaning this.”

Disgusting? Every word from his mouth makes less and less sense. Another sweep of the room, this time after a rub of my eyes to clear out however many hours of sleep I’ve gotten, has me seeing what he’s actually describing.

A dozen liquor bottles are all spread around, with more broken glass scattered between them—which means even more finished bottles that got smashed. Clothes cover much of the room, and the bedsheets are ripped in another corner. The bathroom door is broken, the three different circular cracks in the wood matching the bruises on my knuckles a bit too well. Empty pizza boxes are stacked by the door, and—hey, there’s my cell.

I slide my legs to the end of the bed to head for it, to pray with every-fucking-thing that a text message is waiting. Only as I straighten, the ground rushes at me, and I end up on my ass, groaning as my head lands on the mattress.

Zeno huffs. “Whatever attempt that was, it was pathetic.”

“My phone.” I point. “Please.”

He sneers but retrieves it, tossing it onto my lap. The battery’s low in the red, and there are quite a few notifications: texts from soldiers, missed calls from Elio and Zeno, but nothing from her.

She didn’t…

“Of fucking course she didn’t.”

Oh, I said that aloud.

“Anastasia officially hates your ass now, so if you were checking to see if she reached out, I have news for you.”

Tossing the useless piece of tech to the side, I squint up at him, wishing he’d do me a mercy and shut the curtains. “Is she okay?”

“After ensuring you didn’t single-handedly start a war with the Bratva—” Bite and humour combine in his tone before he crosses the room and kicks stray clothing out of his path to settle into the small space on the floor. He stretches his legs and crosses his ankles before his extended sigh becomes the only sound he’s yet to make that eases my head. “She’s alright. Haven’t seen her much after that first day, to be honest. She’s been locked away in her studio or at work.”

That doesn’t make anything feel better at all.

Groaning, I drop my head back against the bed, my eyes tightening shut with images that have plagued me last night—this week. Anastasia in my bed. Anastasia beneath me.

Maybe that’s how I got to my room. Went chasing the image.

“I feel bad.”

He scoffs. “Bad is only the start of what you should be feeling.”