Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream Duet #1)(25)

Is it? Ezra countered, hands flying. Or is it your father’s? Your mother’s?

“Everything I do, I do for my family,” I ground out.

“Why?” Walcott asked seriously, sitting beside Henrik in the two leather chairs set before my desk. “They don’t deserve you, T.”

A dark laugh scraped up the sides of my throat like talons on its way out of my mouth.

They didn’t understand and I couldn’t exactly blame them.

Henrik was cast out of his family home at thirteen for being a gay man. Walcott had lost every single one of his friends and admirers after his accident had left him severely scarred across eighty-five percent of his body. Ezra had grown up on the streets until Bryant found him and recruited him to do our dirty work alongside me when we were just seventeen, the same age as sweet and tender Bianca crying alone upstairs.

These men didn’t have any family, let alone family like mine.

We weren’t just blood kin, just a unifying last name.

We were a goddamn institution.

Morelli against the whole damn world.

They didn’t know what it was like to be feared and hated by siblings who had otherwise banded together against the cruel forces of our parents and were thick as fucking thieves.

“Don’t say we don’t get it,” Henrik said flatly. “We know what it’s like to be shunned. You let us into your life because we get it. But you gotta get over this need to prove yourself. You made your first million eight years ago, for fuck’s sake. You don’t need their money.”

“You don’t need their love,” Walcott went on. “You got a family in us now.”

“It’s not enough,” I said simply, the words lashing out like a lightning strike, electrifying the air in the room. “Do you know what Bryant took from me? First, my family, the brothers and sisters I loved suddenly looked at me like I was the enemy. And then, as if that wasn’t fucking enough, he took Grace from me just because she’s a distant Constantine cousin…” I sucked in a deep breath of air that scorched down my throat like the phantom burn of whiskey I craved. “He took the family I could have had with her away forever.”

Henrik hesitated then squared his shoulders and said, “He wasn’t the one that killed her, T.”

“He might as well have been the one to do it!” The words ripped from my chest, the tang of blood on the back of my tongue I didn’t realize was from biting through my cheek. “He hid her from me. Depressed and alone…she couldn’t have felt she had any other fucking option.”

Only, she wasn’t alone.

Not totally.

No one but Ezra, Grace, and I knew about the pregnancy until they did the autopsy report, but I’d always wondered if somehow, Bryant found out.

I didn’t realize I’d stood up and thrown my glass of expensive-ass water across the room until the glass smashed against the door and fell tinkling to the ground. My chest was heaving, anger sparking through my limbs like an untamed current.

Violence.

This was me.

My reason for existence.

To brutalize. To curb others into submission under the dominance of my father.

He’d taken away everything I’d ever loved so I forgot the mechanics of it. So I could be his monstrous tool, his enforcer and his heartless servant.

And for years, I’d done it, because that was all I had.

I hadn’t known a soft touch from my siblings since Carter had that arm slung around my shoulders. I hadn’t known love since Bryant ripped it away from me before I was even really a man.

And despite years of hardening my heart, of sharpening my mind, I still couldn’t rid myself of the stupid human compulsion to make my siblings love me again.

So, these two seemingly contrary needs existed in tandem within me.

End Bryant and win back the respect of my sisters and brothers.

Bianca was the key to that.

Taking down the Constantines and Bryant, both of whom had terrorized us for years, would prove to them that I was on my siblings’ side while also securing my personal vendetta against them for ruining my life.

I didn’t care that she was young.

By the time I was seventeen, I’d killed two men and taken countless beatings.

Age was a number tied to the passing of time, not the maturation of the human heart.

And Bianca had taken enough knocks to be considered an old soul.

She was fair game.

Even if she wasn’t, she was my game. My golden fucking ticket to respect and autonomy.

I wouldn’t let anyone—not my friends, not Bianca with those wet, blue velvet eyes, not Brando with his funny kid-candor—get in the way of my mission.

Besides, they were offspring of the man who had tried to ruin my family and started the feud between us in the first place. He was the reason I was indentured to my father. The reason I’d been born into a war that would rage until the day Bryant died and beyond.

Using Bianca Belcante to bring down the Constantine family was the only way to bring my family peace.

To bring me peace.

And after years of fighting, that was all I really wanted.

A hug from Carter.

A kiss from Eva, Sophia, Daphne, and Lisbetta.

Respect from Lucian and Leo.

Harmony for my mother who was driven to drink and do drugs by the past and by her husband.