Nero: Made Men novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Old Men

Nero came up the Brandt House stairs at eleven that night with nothing in his hands.

He wore the black suit from the oath, wrinkled now, and the coat he'd walked out of the loft in.

I opened the door of my single before he knocked.

"They took everything," he said.

"I know. Come in."

I played him Sal's voice from Katia's phone, once, standing in the dark between the bed and the desk.

When it ended, he sat down hard on my desk chair.

"He made it up," he said. "All of it. My brother."

"Yes."

"Thirty years in my father's house. He eats at our table."

"I know."

He put his face in his hands, and his shoulders shook once.

I crossed the room and stood between his knees.

I took his wrists and pulled his hands away from his face.

"You have no loft, no cars, no name on a list," I said. "You have a boarding-house bed that's thirty-six inches wide and a girl who wants you in it."

He laughed, a cracked, wet sound, and pulled me against his stomach.

"Katia's across the hall," he said into my sweater.

"The walls are paper."

I was eighteen, he was twenty-seven, and neither of us cared.

"Then you'll have to be quiet."

"Make me."

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