Dance of Madness: Chapter 14

“Brooklyn, you’re up.”

Beside me, my friend blinks as we walk through the West Village.

“Remind me what we’re playing again?”

Laz chuckles, shaking his head. “You’ve literally been walking with us for the last twenty minutes.”

Brooklyn frowns. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

That’s putting it mildly. About three blocks ago I asked her what she thought about a cute dress I saw in a shop window, and she answered with “both”.

Whatever the fuck that meant.

A block later I guessed she was spacing out again, so I tested her by asking what her favorite ice cream flavor was.

“Totally, same,” she’d replied.

So, yeah. Brooklyn might be physically with us, but mentally she’s miles away, possibly in an alternate dimension.

The only reason I don’t joke about it with her is that she also looks exhausted. Has for a few weeks now. And the last few days in the studio she was definitely dragging, which isn’t like her.

I elbow her quietly in the side.

“Hey,” I mutter. “You okay?”

“Just tired,” she says. “I’ve been sleeping like shit.”

“Well, it’s still your turn,” Laz butts in. “The game is marry, fuck, kill: Disney Princes edition.”

Brooklyn gives him a look. “For reals?”

“For reals,” he grins.

“Wow, lucky me,” Brooklyn deadpans. “Are you two playing, too?” She nods past Laz to Bane.

“I don’t see why not,” Bane says in that slightly gravely tone of his. He shrugs, reaching a tattooed arm up to push his fingers through his dark hair.

“So which prince do you want to fuck, then?” I wink at him.

He snorts. “Nice bait and switch. Your friend Val put you up to that?”

Val can be a thirsty motherfucker, and he hasn’t exactly been subtle in hinting at his interest in…what was it…yes, I think “topping Bane so thoroughly he starts attending Beyoncé Brunch unironically” were his exact words.

“He didn’t!” I laugh. “But, out of curiosity…”

“Still straight,” Bane shrugs. “Tell Val sorry.”

“I’m sure he could work around that.”

Bane rolls his eyes. “Terrific. Might be a problem for me.”

“Obviously, Antonov and I will be making them ‘princesses’ when it’s our turn,” Laz says. “Meanwhile, Brooklyn is totally dodging the question at hand.”

I grew up with Bane and Laz. So did Evie. It’s kind of unavoidable, given the tendency for Russian crime families to know each other, meet up on major holidays, and have fathers who generally enjoy drinking together.

Bane’s father Nikolai, the head of the Antonov Bratva, sits at the Iron Table along with people like Kir Nikolayev, and Evelina and Roman’s father, Pavel Nikitin. Meanwhile, Laz’s father runs the Kislev Bratva, which operates under the banner of the Antonov Bratva. Brooklyn, Evie, and I bumped into them outside of The Blind Tiger as we were walking past West 4th Street into the Village about half an hour ago, and they decided to tag along.

Laz is effortlessly cool: tall, sharp-featured, classically good looking in that model kind of way that’s almost obnoxious. He’s a bit of a charmer, but he’s a good guy.

As long as you don’t cross him.

Bane is the exact opposite. Quiet. Viciously brooding. I’m not sure how else to put it other than there’s a darkness in him, like something broke and then got put back together not quite the way it was supposed to go.

He’s also got this focused intensity thing that most people find unnerving. I suppose that includes me, even though I’ve known him since we were kids. It’s not that I’m scared of him. I might sometimes be a little nervous imagining what he could be capable of, though.

Brooklyn sighs. “Okay, fine.” Her brows knit in concentration. “Marry…Prince Eric.”

Laz arches a brow. “As in Little Mermaid? Explain.”

Brooklyn shrugs. “He stays in love with her even after he realizes she’s literally half fish.” She grins. “And the wrong half—most men would probably agree, no?”

Laz makes a face. “Fair. Okay, marry Eric. Who are you fucking?”

She shrugs lightly. “Beast. Obviously.”

Bane chuckles. Laz rolls his eyes. Evie and I glance at each other and nod firmly.

“Facts,” Evelina blurts. “Like, no contest.”

“Wait, seriously?” Laz looks perplexed. “The big hairy monster?”

“Uh, yeah?” I giggle. “I mean, we’re talking about getting railed, not romance or marriage or whatever. Beast for sure knows how to fuck up your shit.”

Evie laughs and turns red. Brooklyn fist-bumps me. “Atta girl.”

“And kill?” Laz sighs, clearly getting bored.

“Also easy,” Brooklyn says. “Scar.”

“Oooo, good one!” Evelina blurts.

“What?” Laz makes a face. “That’s bullshit. He’s not a prince.”

“Is so!” Brooklyn throws back. “He’s Mufasa’s brother. Mufasa is the king, which makes Scar a prince. He’s also a dick and kills Mufasa, so he can go fuck himself.”

Bane nods thoughtfully. “She’s got a point.”

Laz rolls his eyes. “Bullshit. Human princes only.”

“Do I still get to bang Beast?” Brooklyn asks hopefully.

Laz exhales heavily. “I think I’m done with this.”

“Join the club,” Bane mutters.

We stop playing the game, but the conversation stays on the topic of Disney princes—specifically, which of them is the most toxic. Florian from Snow White gets high marks for making out with an unconscious minor he finds in the woods. Aladdin gets a nod for all his lies about himself to trick Jasmine.

A participation award goes to Li Shang from Mulan—not for being toxic, but for very obviously being into men, and desperately trying to hide it from Mulan.

But even as I try to remain present in the conversation, my thoughts keep returning to the alarm bell going off in my head that cannot be ignored.

A very loud alarm bell named Nero.

Speaking of toxic…

I’ve been avoiding him. Not responding to his numerous text messages. I’m almost sure I saw him lurking in a blood-red Porsche outside the Mercury before rehearsal the other day. I hid out in the coffee shop across the street to avoid walking past him. Madame Kuzmina made me pay for my lateness with an extra round of brutal conditioning.

But still.

Worth it.

Because this has moved in a seriously insane new direction.

He was in my room again. This time, he made sure there was zero confusion about whether I had dreamed it or not.

This time, he left evidence.

Sticky, dried evidence, all over my body and soaked into my panties and tank top.

He snuck in. He touched me again.

He came on me.

I should be terrified. Furious. And maybe I am. But not as much as I should be.

Instead, I…don’t know how to feel.

Actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly how I feel. I’m just not ready to say it out loud. Try as I might to force myself to be horrified and disgusted by his total disregard for my boundaries, my body, my consent, and so much more, I keep finding myself unable to be as angry as I should be.

Brooklyn is going off about Prince Charming from Cinderella and his obvious foot fetish. “Not to mention how fucking stupid he is. I mean he spent the whole night dancing with her, and he doesn’t just, like, recognize her fucking face?”

Meanwhile, I’m lost in thought, drowning in the memory of the fever dream that turned out to be real. To waking up and feeling his dried cum on my body.

I lick my lips, slipping my phone out of my bag and tapping on the exchange I’ve read a million times but have yet to respond to. I don’t even know how he got my number, to be honest.

Right. He’s also not even remotely trying to deny what he did.

At. All.

I mean… This is what I’m dealing with. Even if I was going to respond…I mean, how the fuck do you even reply to that? A freaking thumbs up emoji?

I close the app before the pulse between my thighs can get any worse.

God, he’s sick. So am I, for getting turned on by this.

But why?

That’s the question I can’t answer. How much of this is me actually wanting this brand of depravity and ultra-dark kinkiness, and how much is guilt.

Because there’s an inconvenient truth here that I can’t ignore: my family destroyed his. Papa’s men killed his father and mother on that night of violence and mayhem. Almost killed Nero himself.

I’ve carried that with me for four years, tucked deep inside. I’ve never told anyone. Never said it out loud.

But it’s always lingered there, like a sickness.

So…do I want this brand of crazy that Nero’s brought into my life? Am I turned on by him sneaking into my room, touching me, and coming all over my body while I sleep? Or is it just that some fucked-up part of me thinks I deserve it?

Regardless, it doesn’t explain how I crave more every time I even think about him. Doesn’t explain why I can’t stop wondering what comes next.

“Oooo!”

I’m yanked from my thoughts quite literally by Evie tugging on my arm. “Let’s go in here! This place is adorable.”

I look up and blink in surprise when I see that we’re outside a super-cute, Parisian-themed used bookstore. Then that predictable feeling flickers to life.

“I thought we were looking for dresses,” Brooklyn sighs.

“We are. Later,” Evelina declares. “I just want to browse a little. Plus, I want a photo of that mirror in the back.”

I follow them in, grateful for the chance to focus on something other than my thoughts.

The store smells like old paper and leather. Every surface is stacked—books on books on books. Dusty hardcovers, yellowing paperbacks with crinkled and worn spines, even a whole section of vintage pinup magazines, which is really cool. A turntable near the register plays soft, scratchy jazz.

Evie is snapping away at the vintage mirror on the back wall that she spotted from outside, asking the shopkeeper where she got it. Brooklyn is with Bane, browsing the old Playboys and other pinup magazines.

I drift toward the fiction section. I know exactly what I’m looking for, because at this point, it’s a freaking compulsion. Bookstore? Library? Must go in and look.

The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Part of me looks for it because it holds such nostalgia for me. It’s the book that got me through the dark times when my mom died. And of course, it’s also the book that led me to him.

But there’s another reason I look, especially in used shops.

The night of violence, when I ran from my pen pal’s embrace and returned home to learn the truth about my family’s war on Nero’s, our correspondence ended.

We never exchanged names, or numbers, or emails. The only way we could reach each other was between the pages of a book in the New York Public Library.

I was in lockdown for a week after that night—Uncle Levka’s orders. I learned later from Papa that Levka had actually used outside muscle to go after the De Lucas, to minimize blowback on our family. Papa told me he hated that that had been the case, but he also swore me to secrecy.

To this day, I don’t know if anyone but Papa, Levka, and I know that our family was behind the De Luca tragedy.

I honestly get the sense that Papa is still embarrassed that it happened at all, even though it’s pretty much the event that shocked him into recovery. I firmly believe it jump-started his body into fighting harder to kill that fucking cancer, so he could get back in charge of the empire.

After that lockdown ended, though, the first thing I did was go to the main branch. I wanted to tell him everything, tell him how sorry I was for what happened to him and his family. I had a tear-stained letter in hand, spilling my guts, telling him I was pretty sure I’d fallen in love with him.

That I still wanted masks, but I wanted him without them, too.

But when I got there that day, there was no book. It wasn’t checked out, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be, or in any other of our spots.

I tore that library apart for months looking for it. But it was gone.

Eventually, one of the librarians figured out what I was doing and took pity on me. She told me gently that sometimes older books were rounded up off the shelves and either donated or sold to used book stores, and that sometimes a human error would make it look like the book was still in the library system, when it wasn’t.

So that’s why I look in old shops like this.

I’m not just looking for any copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther. I’m looking for the copy.

Our copy.

It’s a shot in the dark, and I doubt I’ll ever find it, but it never hurts to look.

When I get to the Classics section, I scan the shelves for a minute before I find the G’s. There’s a battered, but not super old, paperback that includes part one and two of Goethe’s Faust. But no Werther.

I sigh, turning to go find Evie. Suddenly, I freeze when I see it.

Not on a shelf.

…In Laz’s hands.

He’s leaning against the edge of a bookcase in the corner, flipping through a battered copy of it. It’s not the copy, I can tell from here, but still.

I stop mid-step. Laz looks up, eyebrows raised. “You okay?”

I stare at him, then the book. My throat works. “Uh, yeah…” I chew on my lip and nod at the book in his hands. “Have you read much Goethe before?”

He holds it up. “Oh, for sure.” He shrugs. “I actually love this one. It’s one of my favorite books. Sad, but great. Weirdly, it also perks me up when I’m in a slump?”

He goes back to his reading, like it’s nothing.

My thoughts are spiraling.

My pen pal loved that book, too. He said it made him feel like he wasn’t alone in his worst moments.

My pen pal also told me his family was mafia. He said he had a younger sister. That he didn’t sleep much, and that the night felt more honest than the day.

My nerves are suddenly jangling.

Laz’s family is mafia. He’s got a younger sister, Galina, at Knightsblood right now.

He’s a notorious night owl and insomniac.

My gaze flicks to his eyes.

They’re fucking green. I’ve seen his eyes a million times, but never noticed it before.

I feel dizzy.

For four years, I’ve been fucking certain it was Nero.

But what if I’m wrong?

“Milena?” Brooklyn calls from the front. “Come on, we’re going to hit Maison Aurore down the block.”

I blink. Laz is already tucking the book under his arm like he’s going to buy it. The moment passes, like it never happened.

I nod in a numb haze and fall in with the others as we exit the shop. The sun’s getting lower, the breeze a little cooler now.

Brooklyn grabs Evelina’s hand and leads the charge like she’s storming Normandy. I follow behind them, quiet.

Thinking.

Spiraling.

Unsure what cracked open in my chest when I saw Laz with that book just now.

What if the man from the warehouse that night wasn’t Nero at all.

What if it was Laz.

Green eyes. Tall. Gorgeous. Charming. Mafia family. Younger sister. Reads Goethe.

I feel myself tingling as I glance at him out of the corner of my eye as he walks next to me, talking to Bane about who-knows-what. I stumble when he suddenly glances at me, his brows knitting.

“Shit, sorry, were you going to buy this?” He holds up the copy of Werther.

“Nope,” I blurt quickly. A little awkwardly.

He frowns. “Okayyy?”

“Great book,” I mumble before hurrying to catch up with Evie and Brooklyn.

Maison Aurore is just two blocks over. Very high-end, curated, seriously great stuff. I’ve spent way too much here over the years.

Brooklyn is already flipping through hangers. Evelina follows with bouncy interest. I break off and drift toward a rack of slip dresses.

Maybe a distraction will help.

“Oh, hell yes.” I turn. Brooklyn’s nodding at the dress I’ve stopped at—an electric violet sequined thing with a hint of glittery silver threading through it.

“You have to buy that.”

I snort. “How about I try it on first?”

She rolls her eyes. “Amex black cards are wasted on some people.”

I smack her arm, making her giggle.

Brooklyn knows I hate being labeled as a mafia princess or some privileged trust fund brat with Daddy’s credit card. Obviously, I’m insanely fortunate. I live in a virtual castle. I want for nothing. I could almost certainly buy this whole store…if I had my father’s credit card.

But I don’t—and I don’t want to. Obviously, my needs are taken care of, but what I spend on myself is my own money from my dance career. Which ain’t much.

“Bitch,” I tease.

She grins back. “Oooo, touchy-touchy. Seriously, buy that. It’s gorgeous. If you don’t, I’m buying it for you.”

Unlike myself, Brooklyn comes from nothing. What she has, she’s worked her fucking ass off for.

She’s not buying me a five-hundred-dollar dress.

“Let me go try it on.”

She smirks. “Much better.”

Laz and Bane are outside the shop where Bane is smoking a cigarette. Brooklyn wanders over to where the salesclerk is helping Evie hold up an array of bubbly pink gowns in front of a mirror.

I take the dress with me to the back of the store, slipping down a small hallway and into one of the dressing rooms, closing the door behind me. I turn to face the floor-length mirror, gazing at my reflection for a minute.

What if it’s Laz…

I shake the thought away, turning from the mirror to hang up the dress. I strip down to my bra and panties, pluck the dress off the hanger, and tug it down over my head. My hair tumbles over my face, briefly turning my world platinum blonde before I find the armholes and the neck.

That’s when it happens.

A hand slams over my mouth, stifling the scream as it tears from my throat. A heavy, muscled weight slams into me, one hand pinning me to the mirror as the other grabs my hip possessively.

Lips tickle my ear, making the hairs on the nape of my neck stand up as heat ripples down my spine.

“Miss me, princess?”