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That’s the Nero I see in the papers and hear about in whispers.

I exhale slowly. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’vebeenwrong for years. Maybe it wasn’t him at all.

Which brings me, yetagain, to the question at hand: why thefuckam I here?

I swallow it back as I cross the street, slip through the gate at the sidewalk, and slowly make my way up the walkway to the imposing front steps. I start to climb them, wondering how exactly one announces themselves at something like this.

Do I ring the bell? Knock? Let myself in like last time, so we can get right to it?

It.

Hot, mortifying need tightens around my middle as my thighs clench. I don’t have to dive into any cliches about “wondering what’s in store for me”.

I knowexactlywhat’s waiting for me behind that front door.

A monster I’m eager for.

A darkness I crave.

A type of brutal violence that makes my nerves tingle and my core turn molten.

I should turn around, take a cab home, and scrub this whole thing from my life. Go take a bath. Better yet, go to therapy.

Instead, I hover.

Waiting, like I needonemore second to gather my courage before I step inside.

A breeze rustles through the trees behind me. I close my eyes for half a second. And that’s when I hear thevoice coming from around the side of the house.

“Really pushing it on fucking time. I told you before 11 was best.”

I stiffen.

That’s Nero.

I turn and leave the path to the front steps, moving through the shadows, keeping close to the hedges that ring the mansion as I creep around the side.

He speaks again, but this time, the wind picks up, and I don't catch what he’s saying. Just that there’s a sharp tone in his voice that pricks my curiosity.

I stop just short of the corner and keep myself pressed into the shadows as I glance around it.

Nero’s standing beside an overgrown willow tree in the side yard.

He’s not alone.

There's another man, as tall as Nero, with broad shoulders and dark hair, his hands in the pockets of a fashionable black overcoat.

When he turns slightly, my brows arch in surprised recognition.

I guess it’s notthatstrange to see Kir Nikolayev talking to Nero. They’re both the heads of hugely powerful New York crime organizations. And yet, as far as I know—and, as a Kalishnik, Idohave my finger on the pulse of these things—the De Luca and Nikolayev families have no formal alliance.

I know Kir two ways. The first is easy: he’s Bratva, and he and Papa are at the very least friendly acquaintances that have done plenty of business together.

But Ialsoknow Kir through the Zakharova Ballet: he’s both the heaviest investor in the company itself as well as the owner of its home, the Mercury Theatre.

The dim lights from a neighboring building glint through the swaying branches of the willow tree, casting drifting shadows across Kir’s face.

Virtually every dancer in the company has at least a little bit of a crush on the man, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The women. The gay guys. The straight guys all have man-crushes on him. Even Maggie jokes that her longtime girlfriend has preemptively given her a “hall pass” for Kir, if it ever came to it.