Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream Duet #1)(12)
There was no artifice in Bianca. No grace or learned charms. She ate Lucky Charms cereal and read Marvel comics with her little brother on Friday nights. She argued passionately about climate change, nearly biting off my head for using a private jet and single-use plastics without understanding that environmentalism didn’t have enough economic merit to change the ways of the big dicks with big money who ran the world. She lost her train of thought looking at the way the dawn broke over the horizon and turned the clouds mottled pink and she sighed over the images of paintings she looked up in library art books. She wore oversized shirts that skimmed the tops of her thighs and chest-baring sports tops around a man who could eat her for breakfast as if she were safe in my company.
Clueless and na?ve.
She would be even easier to manipulate than Aida.
Despite her youth and naiveté though, there was no doubt Bianca was strong-willed and smart. Aida bragged constantly about her daughter’s good grades, but it went beyond that. Bianca had gumption, something most women lacked when they were faced with my scarred face and cold demeanor.
She wouldn’t be as easy to manipulate as her mother, but something dark and hungry in my gut was excited about that. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to see Bianca’s stubborn chin wobble with tears and her eyes flash as I took her under my wing. Under my control.
Poor little thing thought I was her salvation when all I intended to offer her was ruination.
“I-I don’t have any money,” she pointed out. “Brandon and I…we don’t have anything… Anyone.”
No, but they would.
I’d give them my world on a silver platter and watch raptly as it gobbled them up.
“Hush,” I purred, a dark seed of joy blooming in my gut. “I’ll take care of everything. Did you call the police?”
“They’re on their way. I haven’t told Brando yet. He’s still asleep. I’m worried they’ll try to take him from me.”
“Don’t worry about that. Someone will be there shortly to get you two and take you to a hotel.” I had already texted my associate, Ezra Feck, to pick them up and get them settled. While his official title was my bodyguard, the truth was, he was more of an enforcer. He was also one of the only people I trusted with the enormity of my secrets. Elena Lombardi, my lawyer and the only woman I entrusted with the seedier side of the Morelli buisness, would be there in the next few hours. “I’ll be there when I can.”
“When you can?” she repeatedly dumbly. “My mother—your girlfriend—just died and that’s all you have to say?”
I sighed wearily. “Now is not the time to be childish, Bianca. You need to be strong for your brother.”
“I am strong,” she barked back, a Chihuahua snapping at a Great fucking Dane. “But my mom just died, Tiernan. Are you so cold that doesn’t mean anything to you?”
I stared at the ring on my right hand, the heavy, ornate silver carved around a fat, square sapphire the same color as Bianca’s wide-eyed gaze. It was the McTiernan ring, given to the eldest male child through the generations.
My mother, Sarah, had pushed it onto my broken finger when I was nine after Bryant had taken his fists to me for some forgotten crime. I hadn’t screamed as the metal caught on the protruding bone even though it hurt like hellfire. The look in her eyes held me transfixed, the grey gone to stone with somber intensity.
“You belong to no one but me.” She stroked her hand over my wavy dark hair, then clamped her fingers over the back of my neck to give me a little shake. “Bryant can have the lot of them, but you’re my Tiernan, lord of my house.”
And then later, the ring on my finger, stuck at the base by the swollen mass of flesh around my broken bone above it, my father had cornered me in the hall, his eyes fixed on the silver.
He’d reminded me, as he was prone to, that even if he didn’t want me, didn’t love me, would never be proud of me, I was still his to do with as he pleased.
He’d broken every other finger on my right hand.
If either of my parents died, I wouldn’t go to their funeral.
So…
“No.” My voice was flat, cold. “It doesn’t. Death is a part of life. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you’ll grow up and get smart.”
“You’re a monster,” she whispered, but her voice was stronger than it had been at the start of our call. Hating me gave her resolve, an anchor in her storming torment.
“Undoubtedly,” I agreed as my computer pinged and the guardianship agreement appeared in my inbox. Elena worked quickly. “Yet you asked for my help and you’ll reap what you sow.”
In the background, sirens wailed.
“I didn’t have anyone else to call,” she admitted softly, and I could picture her sitting in some dark corner, the dawn light breaking open across the classically beautiful planes of her face, her eyes dark as wet blue velvet with unshed tears.
Prettier in her sorrow than she’d ever been with her smiles.
Tragedy, I could understand.
“You called the devil you know,” I surmised, standing up from my desk as my man, Henrik Basso stepped through the door and jerked his chin at me. “I have to get back to work, Bianca, but I’ll come for you. And when I do, remember that you asked for this.”
A little pause. A hiccough of hesitation.