All Chapters of Zero, What a God!: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
11 chapters
Chapter 1
Vanessa's laugh drifted through the half-open bedroom door. "Mmph… relax, he's just a guard. He won't be home before six."Vittorio froze in the hallway with the cake box in his hands. What? That was his wife's voice.Thursday night was his first wedding anniversary with Vanessa, so he had swapped his break at the Whitmore Heights guard post to ride home for one hour. The forty-dollar cake in his hands said Happy 1st, Nessa in pink icing.Thursday night was his first wedding anniversary with Vanessa, so he had swapped his break at the Whitmore Heights guard post to ride home for one hour. The forty-dollar cake in his hands said Happy 1st, Nessa in pink icing. In his jacket pocket, an empty orange pill bottle rattled, because Dr. Graves, his memory therapist, had put the refill on hold two days ago without giving a reason. Near the front door, he had stepped past a pair of men's Italian loafers, two sizes bigger than his own.Inside, the bedside lamp lit up their bed. Vanessa lay in it
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 2
At twenty past five on Friday morning, a woman in black running clothes stumbled in front of Vittorio's patrol cart on the jogging path around the lake. She took two more steps and collapsed.Vittorio had not slept since the ATM.Almost four billion dollars waited behind the name on Teresa's card, and he had still spent the night lifting the barrier for residents' cars.The woman was Celine Rhodes from The Crest 301, the CEO of Rhodes Holdings and the most untouchable woman in the complex.Vittorio knew at once that the fall was staged. She had tucked her chin and landed on her shoulder, and he had watched recruits hit the mat for years.Why would a woman like her study a night guard closely enough to stage a fall for him?He carried her home anyway, half a mile in his arms, because he wanted that answer more than he wanted his bruised ribs to stop burning.The door of 301 opened to her limp thumb on the scanner, and a note on the hall table said the housekeeper had the day off. He la
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 3
Vittorio pressed his palm flat on Teresa's photo. "Give me a name!""Not yet. You would walk out of here and kill him before lunch, and the people behind him would disappear the same day." Celine did not even blink.Vittorio's hand stayed on the photo. He had waited six months already, and this woman wanted him to wait longer."Teresa worked in this house for years. She ironed my father's shirts, and she was the only person in this house who ever asked me whether I had eaten. Six months ago, while I was abroad, Adrian accused her of stealing my family's sapphire brooch and fired her."Vittorio's chest tightened, because that week Teresa had come home early with her apron folded in her bag and told him only that the family no longer needed her. She had made soup that night and hummed over the stove, and he had believed her.Seeing his face, Celine lowered her voice. "She came to the Crest gate twice in the rain, begging to see me. The guards turned her away on Adrian's orders, and nobo
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 4
Vittorio raised his head, and his voice came out low and heavy. "Insult me all day. Leave my mother out of it!"For one second, he saw exactly how Brock's elbow would bend and how far it would go before it snapped. The cold climbed up his wrists, and the tattoo under his windbreaker began to warm.If it glowed here, Leviathan and Crimson Wolf would both learn which gate Zero guarded. The man who sold him at Gallows Ravine would arrive before noon, and Teresa's killer would disappear before Celine ever gave him a name. So Vittorio counted four breaths in and held four, the way the Corps had drilled it into him at fourteen.The cold sank back into him before the tattoo could glow."Wh-what was that?" Brock muttered behind him, and his grip slipped a fraction.The slip was all Vittorio needed. He turned his wrists once, Brock's thumbs lost their hold, and Brock stumbled backward into the coffee machine.CLANK!The pot tipped off its plate, and hot coffee splashed down the front of Brock'
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 5
The divorce papers hit the floor at Vittorio's feet."We never introduced you to anyone, you know that? At every wedding and every Christmas party, we told people Vanessa's husband worked nights. My sister still thinks you're a doctor on the night shift, and I never corrected her." Diane twisted her pearl necklace between two fingers.Kyle snorted behind his phone, and Vittorio kept his eyes on the papers at his feet.Last Christmas, he had spent the Carter party in the kitchen, washing glasses nobody asked him to wash. Every time a guest wandered in, Diane steered them back out before they could shake his hand. So that was the reason, and they had been hiding him the entire time.Diane stepped over the folder. "You couldn't cover this rent alone for a single month. My daughter paid the water bill while you ate gas-station sandwiches, and she cried to me about it every Sunday."There was no rent, and Vittorio let that lie pass along with the one about the water bill.Ignoring his sile
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 6
The stonemason behind St. Anne's Church looked Vittorio's uniform up and down. "Our cheapest headstone costs more than you make in a month, guard."Vittorio had ridden straight from Mercer Street in his uniform, with the windbreaker still hiding the torn shirt, past the bakery and the harbor cranes, while the church bells rang half past eight.The message from S. still sat unanswered on his cracked phone.The stonemason had read the patch on his sleeve before he bothered to read his face.A month of his pay was a number Vittorio knew by heart, because for half a year he had counted it in twenty-dollar bills at the kitchen table.He took a creased envelope from his jacket and set it on the workbench between a chisel and a coffee mug. "I'm not asking for the cheapest, sir. I want the best gray granite in your yard, with her name cut deep enough that the rain can't wash it out."The envelope held five hundred and twenty dollars, one bill for every week since the funeral. On the weeks it
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 7
"Look who wandered in. Did the guardhouse lose its guard?" Trent Holloway's voice rang across the marble floor of Prestige Motors.Vittorio stopped just inside the glass doors. On the way from St. Anne's, he had gone home to Mercer Street long enough to trade the torn uniform for his cleanest shirt and the slacks he had bought for Teresa's funeral. His electric bike now stood chained to a lamppost on Harbor Avenue, and the valet had pinched the chain between two fingers and asked whether it would be staying long.Inside, the air smelled of leather and expensive coffee. Under the white lights, twelve cars sat on raised platforms, and each one cost more than the whole building on Mercer Street.Trent stood beside a cherry-red Porsche 911 with his right arm in a white sling. Vanessa hung on his good arm, and the new diamond flashed every time she touched the car. Two hours ago, she had stuffed the divorce papers into her bag. Now she was stroking the hood of the car she had talked about
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 8
"Don't hold your breath, babe. He's going to cry in a minute." Vanessa held up her phone and recorded Vittorio from three steps away.Vittorio looked straight into the lens. A year ago, the same phone had filmed him reading his wedding vows, and she had made him read them twice because the light was bad. He had meant every word both times."Say hi to the girls, Vittorio. Tell them how you were going to buy a Rolls-Royce with your coffee money, then tell them who's paying for your next sandwich."At Teresa's funeral, Vanessa had worn sunglasses and checked her phone during the prayer. Vittorio had told himself she was crying behind the dark lenses.Trent turned to the salesmen and lifted his sling. "You want to know what happened to my arm? This guard jumped me from behind last night and broke my wrist like a coward. I had to cancel a charity match because of him!"From behind? Trent had thrown the first punch, the knee, and the two kicks while Vanessa looked on from the bed."Should I
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 9
Trent shoved Robert's shoulder. "Have you lost your mind? You're bowing to a guard!"Robert staggered and caught himself on the Ghost's fender. He did not straighten, and his eyes stayed fixed on the floor in front of Vittorio's boots.Vittorio watched the room take it in. The salesmen had frozen, the woman by the Bentley had lowered her sunglasses again, and Vanessa's phone hung forgotten at her side."Finch, I'm buying a Porsche from you today! Who is this nobody to you?" Trent's voice climbed too high on the last word.Robert opened his mouth, but Vittorio answered before Robert could speak. "He called me Zero. That name won't mean anything to you, Holloway."Vanessa burst out laughing and grabbed Trent's good arm for balance. "Nobody in Port Halden is called Zero, and zero means nothing!"She had called it nothing, yet in a hangar on the other side of the world, a hundred soldiers had once stood at attention for that word. Vanessa had slept beside it for a year without once asking
Last Updated : 2026-10-21
Chapter 10
Robert slid a thick red folder across his desk toward Vittorio. On every page, the owner's name was the same single word, Zero.The office sat behind a glass wall at the back of the viewing room. Beyond the glass, the silver Valkyrie crouched under the lights, so low that its roof barely reached Vittorio's belt. Vittorio turned the pages slowly, and every signature on the registration, the insurance, and the service records belonged to Robert.Robert rubbed his thumb along the edge of the desk. "I started her engine once a month, sir, every first Sunday. I kept hoping you would walk in and complain that I had let the battery die."While Vittorio learned to walk again on Teresa's living room floor, this man had come in every month to start a car for a commander the whole Corps believed was dead. Vittorio had not even known the car existed."Did anyone else come for it? Anyone from the Corps?" Vittorio asked."Not one, sir. A few men called the first month to ask whether the car was sti
Last Updated : 2026-10-21