32. Rhaim

32

RHAIM

I didn't get my chance to confront Nero until the following morning, because it was a conversation I wanted to have with him in person—but I felt it rose to the occasion of me showing up at his house.

After the fire burned his place outside the city down, Nero had moved into a stately building that he owned the top five floors of, and had remodeled extensively throughout the years. The outside gate opened for me, I took the elevator up, and Rio, his bodyguard-butler combo, was waiting for me inside.

"He's still asleep," he said.

"Tell him it's important," I snapped, then rephrased myself, because I liked to pretend I still had some solidarity with the working class. "Please."

The man stared stonily at me—it was his only expression, always—but before I had to convince him to change his mind, Nero appeared at the top of a white marble stair.

"Rhaim! I would recognize that sonorous sound of irritation anywhere. To what do I owe the honor?" he asked, then frowned. "Is something wrong? Is Lia okay?"

I supposed it was nice to know he was still concerned about her wellbeing in a general sense. "She's fine—but I made some moves yesterday. We need to talk."

He reached the bottom of the stair and brushed Rio aside. "Of course. Coffee!" he called out, and from somewhere beyond, I was sure someone would hear him, know what he wanted, and bring him some.

Fifteen minutes later we were in his den, holding cappuccinos, and I had caught him up.

"Why did you pick Samson again?"

"Because he's not entirely a vulture. He's just carrion-adjacent."

"And you think twenty-five's reasonable?" Nero asked, then narrowed his eyes at me. "What did you have to give him to earn that?"

I shrugged. "Forty percent, a board seat, and a job done personally."

Nero groaned at that. "Bestiola, do I not give you enough time to play?"

"Fuck you, Nero—I wouldn't have had to be talking to him if you'd just owned up to your plan from the start." And there were a hell of a lot of easier ways to extricate Corvo away from Freddie Senior than a public IPO—some of which were located in the tool chest in my truck.

"I'm an old man," he said, with a grin and a shrug, like it ought to cover up a multitude of sins. "I like to pretend I can still get things by you. How is Lia doing by the way?"

"She's smart."

"Of course she is. That's my part of her genes," he said. "And no...episodes?"

I was sure to give him a mystified look, like I didn't know what he was saying. "Like low blood sugar?" I guessed. "Or is she one of those people with the bracelets?" I said, snapping fingers to pretend to find the thoughts. "Who have epilepsy?"

"No—never mind. It's good to hear she's flourishing."

I remembered how hurt she'd been to find out that her father was essentially selling his company out from underneath her. "I'm pretty sure she'd be doing better if you told her the truth."

Nero waved his hand through the air dismissively. "Once the wedding license is signed, I'll give the St. Clairs all my shares. My forty percent, plus Lia's fifteen, they'll have a majority, and no one will fault them for removing both Freddies from the board."

I couldn't imagine Nero ever dropping Corvo's reins. "Is everything all right?"

"I'm an old man," Nero repeated.

"Yeah, you've been bitching about that for fifteen years now. I don't listen to you anymore when you say it," I said, settling back in my chair.

"You never did. In fact, you're one of the few people who consistently call me on my bullshit. As much as I find that a source of vexation in a world that bends to me by large degree, I'm still smart enough recognize its value."

I set my coffee aside on an end table, wondering where the hell our conversation was now going. "Thank you. I think."

He chuckled at that. "Rhaim, I've been hiding some things," he said, and paused.

"Like usual," I muttered, loud enough so he could hear.

He gave me a rueful smile. "No, these ones are not to dick with you—they're important to me."

I made sure to only give him an expression of deep concern, wondering if he was going to take this opportunity to tell me what the fuck was wrong with Lia.

"Okay," I prompted.

"I'm not as healthy as I used to be."

"That's what happens when you drink every night."

"It's not just my liver. It's a little worse than that, actually. I've got aggressive renal cell carcinoma. Kidney cancer, to be less precise."

I was glad I'd set my coffee down, because if I hadn't, I would've dropped the mug onto his nice white carpeting. "How long have you known?" I angrily demanded.

"Just a few months. We caught it late, it's spreading, and I've already gone through more medications than would fit in a smuggling car trunk," he said with emphasis. "Not just a normal one."

"Like that makes a fucking difference," I said darkly.

"Don't be like that, bestiola." He snorted at my currently affronted state. "You knowing wouldn't have changed a thing."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded. "And—who else knows?"

"You, me, my doctors, and Rio, who drives me back and forth to my appointments, and who is paid well enough to never speak."

"How long do you have?"

"A few months to a year. It's slow, but also inescapable—because I'm done with fighting things."

I felt a part of my soul rush out of my body. I couldn't imagine a world without Nero Ferreo in it. I had dealt with death before. I'd already lost a wife; I wasn't prepared to lose my oldest friend, too.

And then all of the stress of our other on-going business decisions rushed in to fill that gap.

"Call off the IPO," I pleaded.

"And disappoint Samson Investment Corp?" Nero clearly teased.

"How are we supposed to do our roadshow without you? And all the fireside chats?" There was always a dog-and-pony element to going public, wherein you paraded around your best and brightest, giving potential investors intimate access to existing board members at exquisite vacation homes or upscale parties.

"I can still do them," Nero said.

"For now," I snarled.

"Precisely," Nero said, coolly not taking my bait. "And you'll handle everything for me, like you always do."

"And what happens if you die before we manage this thing? Who takes care of Corvo then?"

"I won't die a second before my time," he said. "I swear."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Nero," I said, at an even louder volume, and noted Rio coming to the door of the den to eye me.

"This is why I didn't want to tell you," Nero went on. "I didn't want things to change."

"Says the man who wants me to take his company public before he dies."

He didn't rise to my bait. "Do you remember the Salvatore brothers?"

I frowned, irritated he was trying to change the subject. "Nero?—"

"Do you?"

"Yes. Fuck," I growled. The Salvatore brothers had been early on in our acquaintance. They ran an underground gambling ring that we'd wanted a stake in—and when they wouldn't give it over to us, we took it, after a somewhat epic gunfight. I'd had to pry a 9-mm round out of the meat of Nero's upper arm afterward, and melting away all the bodies in industrial strength acid had taken weeks—but that'd been our leg up into casinos, and now Corvo had two in Las Vegas, and another one locally on the way.

"We were so fucked in that basement," he said.

I made a face at him. "I remain convinced we could've negotiated with Georgie if you hadn't slept with his wife."

"Well, she wasn't supposed to tell him now, was she?" Nero said with a laugh. "I could've died there, or during that escapade underneath the Hell Gate bridge, or—you remember when my house burned down?"

"Is the fact that you're a cat with nine lives the point here?"

"It is. And that you should know by now I don't die until I say I do. I'll make it," he said, sounding absolutely sure of himself.

I wish I shared even half of his certainty about anything in my life—other than his daughter. "Does Lia know?"

Nero closed his eyes and he shook his head. "I don't think she'd handle the news well."

"You're her dad. You owe her the truth. At least about some of this?—"

"No," he said, reopening his eyes to piece me with them. "But I need you to swear something for me."

I already knew I was going to regret it—and that I couldn't refuse him, regardless. "What?"

"That if for some reason I'm not well enough to see this through, both the IPO and seeing Lia safe," he said, which was the closest he'd ever come to admitting his mortality in front of me, "promise me that you will."

"Nero."

"Say it, Rhaim. You may be a beast, but you're also the only person I trust."

I glanced over my shoulder at his omnipresent man. "Don't say that where Rio can hear."

Nero laughed. "There's money"—he jerked his chin at the bodyguard—"and then there's blood," he said, referring to everyone else in his fucked-up family. "And then there's friendship."

He offered his hand out to me.

I stared at it for a moment, wondering what he'd make of me if he knew even half of what Lia and I had done, everything I still intended to do to her, and how I was planning to keep her.

But—like the monster I was—I still put my hand out anyhow to shake his.

"See, if you were just placating me you wouldn't have hesitated," Nero said, filling in my pause with what he wanted to be true.

"To the Ferreo-St Clairs," I said when I released him, and he toasted me with the last of the coffee in his mug.