Page 29

“I need you to stay home, now, da? No need to be scared, moya plemyannitsa.”

“What’s happening, Uncle?”

“War, Milena. We are at war. The De Luca family fired the first shots, and we’ve responded with more hellfire than the bastards ever saw coming.”

His face is grim yet proud as he tells me. I’ve barely heard of the De Luca family. All I know is that they’re Italian, very powerful, and—according to my uncle—have been trying to start something with our family for months.

“Those motherfuckers sent a sniper, Milena. Tonight! To this very house!”

My face goes white.

“Was anyone?—"

“Da, Milena,” he growls thinly. “They got some of ours. But Antonio fucked with the wrong Russians,” Levka goes on. “And this war he started will be over soon. He’s already dead,” he grunts with a grimace, “and so is his wife. I just heard that we may have even gotten the crown prince Nero, too.”

Nero. I’ve heard of him. The heir to the De Luca empire. He went to Knightsblood University with my friend Evelina’s older brother Roman and a few other young men I know from the Bratva world: Laz Kislev, Bane Antonov, Mikhail Javanovic.

But besides that, he’s a complete unknown to?—

“Da," my uncle snickers. "We caught him with his pants down with some girl out in Brooklyn. A converted artist loft in Bushwick.”

My heart stops beating.

“Some shithole on Decatur Street.”

The world grinds to a halt under my feet. Time freezes in a horrific moment of clarity and pain.

The "shithole on Decatur Street" is where I just came from. A loft where I finally met in person a man I’ve only knownthrough letters for MONTHS. Where I kissed him. Where I asked him to chase me through the dark, pin me to the ground, and fuck away my virginity in a violent clash of pain and pleasure.

…And then, that same masked, unknown man shoved me out the back door and told me to run as the bullets rained through the windows.

The sharp clap of Madame Kuzmina’s ringed hands as she barks a correction to Dove across the rehearsal space yanks me back to the present.

Mostly.

I swallow as I stare blankly at the phone in my hands, the memories of that night of ecstasy and terror, of fantasy and blood trickling through my thoughts.

It was when my uncle said those words that it all clicked horribly into place.

The man behind the letters, the book, the mask—who touched me like I was something cherished and devoured me like I was something cursed—had a name.

Nero De Luca.

The mad emperor.

Or at least, I’m ninety percent sure.

Hedidn’t, in fact, die that night when my uncle’s men filled that loft space with bullets. He buried his parents, took over the throne, and made a name for himself carved out of brutality and carnage.

And I gave him my heart and virginity the night it all came crashing down.

Again,probably.

“Wow. Didn’t peg you for a Nero De Luca fangirl.”

Brooklyn’s voice jolts me so hard I almost drop my phone. I fumble to catch and quickly lock it, my face blooming with heat as I glance up at her.

“I wasn’t looking at?—”