“What about what I want to know?”
A soft exhale that was almost a fond laugh. “I’m sure you can find a way to…coerce me into revealing all my secrets.”
Heat flared in my cheeks and pooled in my groin at the fantasies that prompted.
“I’m sure I can,” I agreed because I knew it would make him laugh and despite my turmoil, I was starting think I’d do anything to see Tiernan’s scarred smile or hear his rusty laughter.
He rewarded me with a husky chuckle then sobered. “Don’t misunderstand me, little thing. I’m not playing a game with you. The stakes are much higher than that. I’m hunting more than just your body, now. I’m a greedy man and I won’t stop until I have your soul.”
I breathed deeply, trying to keep my equilibrium. “Well, that’s not easily won or bought.”
“It wouldn’t be worth anything if it was.”
Another silence, but this one was tender somehow. I had the sense that Tiernan wanted me there just as desperately as I wished I could be there.
Still, I clung to the fact that even if he wanted me, maybe even loved me, he had proven himself to be untrustworthy.
And what was love without trust?
Something, I decided, like a wish without hope.
“Brando is beckoning so I’ll let you go,” Tiernan said. “But I want you to think about something before you do. I hated Lane and Caroline Constantine because of someone they took away from me when I was young. But it’s not revenge against them that will right that wrong, because the truth is my own father took something from me long before anyone else did. He ripped away from me what I should have loved most.”
“Who?” I whispered, as if Id break the spell of his vulnerability.
I don’t know who I thought he’d say, some lost lover or his clearly estranged family, but it definitely wasn’t what he uttered next, in a voice razed to the ground of his soul.
“Myself. I realized after thirty fucking years, I still didn’t know myself or like myself very well. There was an entirely undiscovered part of me partially unearthed by the curious, innocent hands of two orphaned Belcantes.” He paused to allow me to digested the tremendousness of his words. “Now that I’ve discovered what I really want, do you think I’m the sort of man who would ever allow it to be taken from him? At least not without one hell of a fucking fight?”
“Who are you fighting for exactly?” I asked, trying to mark the shakiness of my voice.
Fight for me, I wanted to plead. Please, God, for the first time in my life, let someone fight for me.
“Brandon. You. Myself. The family we could have together if you’re forgiving enough and brave enough to come home.”
I blinked sightless at the mirror, at my wet, wavering reflection in it.
His voice gentled as if he could sense my utter shock and inability to process anything further. “I hate knowing you’re in a house with a madwoman like Caroline Constantine, but it’s your choice and as much as I’m fucking desperate to, I won’t take that from you. Just be careful. For me and for Brando. I’ll have him ready for you daily call tonight. Oh, and Bianca? Open the rest of that present when you hang up the phone.”
He ended the call before I could respond, but I didn’t lower the cell for along moment. My entire chest was a writhing mass of slippery emotions, some of them snakes and some ribbons. I was too terrified of the former to sort between the two so I just sat them feeling everything all at once.
Five or ten minutes later when I could breathe properly again, I dug my thumb nail beneath the tape of the present and rent the paper open in a clean line.
A silver frame slid out of wrapping and landed on the marble vanity top with a clatter, almost falling over the edge into my lap. Instinctively, I caught the cold edge and looked down into the glass covered center.
Someone, probably Walcott, had taken the photo one morning in the kitchen at Lion Court. In it, Tiernan was wearing one of his partially dismantled bespoke black suits, the jacket discarded and the sleeves of the black button up rolled to expose his corded, tattooed forearms. He was bent nearly double to look into Brando’s wide eyes as he explained something to the older man, his hands open and raised passionately. His face was in profile, one cheek sprinkled with floor, one hand coated in. On Tiernan’s scarred cheek, a small palm print of white powder appeared in stark relief on his tanned skin from where Brando had obviously patted him. I stood behind my brother, my hands on his shoulder, partially leaned over his head so I could see Tiernan’s expression as they spoke. It was a candid photo. No one was looking at the camera. And somehow, that heightened the intimacy of the moment.
Tiernan and I were curved over Brando like two parentheses.
And, despite the space between us, we were curved into each other, our awareness of the other somehow obvious in a million little physical tells. The way I smiled softly at both him and my brother, the hand he had braced on the kitchen counter right beside my hip, his fingers close enough to brush my school skirt, the way my hair made a curtained backdrop for both our bent heads.
We looked in every sense like a family.
A happy one.
Pain and longing cut through me like a thousand knives, snapping sinew and carving through bone, until I was slumped over the vanity unable to hold up my weight. I clutched the photo in one hand, the card with the bloody thumb print in the other, and I cried until the entire vanity was covered in my tears.
When I was done, eyes aching and chest sore, I peeled myself off the marble and forced myself to place the gifts face down beside me. The small, childish part of me wished fervently I could just call my mother or father and ask them for advice, but that hadn’t been a powerful option long before they’d passed away. As usual, it came down to me.
I was lost in a maze constructed between the Morelli and Constantine houses and I had to find my own way out. The question was whether I would end up with the Constantines who hid their secrets and lies behinds silks and saccharine smiles, where I had always assumed I’d belong, or with the blatantly cruel Morellis and their black sheep third born son.
8
BIANCA
Later that morning, Caroline insisted on taking me Christmas shopping.
I’d been to Fifth Avenue and perused the ritzy offerings of Manhattan with Tilda, Tiernan’s cousin, when I first moved to Bishop’s Landing, but nothing could have prepared me for the experience of shopping with one of New York’s more elite figures.
There was a personal shopper waiting for us at the entrance of Saks with two glasses of champagne waiting on a gilt tray. She treated Caroline as if she was true royalty, deferring to her on all things, readily accepting the matriarch’s sometimes acerbic comments about the clothes that had been pulled for us beforehand. When I mentioned that I was getting hungry, the woman even offered to call out for food for us. Everywhere we went, jewellery stores I’d never dreamed of seeing, clothing stores where a single garment was as much as a down payment on a house, Caroline was greeted with revered awe.
For a small-town girl who had spent most of her life favoring anonymity, it was…surreal.
But it was also pretty damn fun.
Caroline had certain expectations of how I should dress, but she also let me pick outfits that suited my style and coloring. Once, after trying on a velvet, navy blue dress just a shade darker than my eyes, she had even stopped emailing on her phone long enough to stare at me.