“Bossy,” I quipped, trying to swallow my laughter when her eyes narrowed further, but I did as she asked and motioned for Hank to lower the pull Santo was attached to.
Bianca stepped forward to help him out of the shackles, rubbing her hands over his arms to chafe the life back into them. It turned something over in my chest to see her with him, to know she forgave him and gave her love to him even though he’d abandoned her. This girl was the purest, gentlest soul I’d ever known and she awed me every single fucking day. Men like Santo Belcante and I didn’t deserve her, but I didn’t give a fuck about that.
There was something in her that was drawn to the dark like a moth to a flame. I knew she would venture again and again over the course of her life into the shadowy underworld and I was the perfect partner to shepherd her through the blackness and keep her safe at the same time.
She was too good and I was too bad, but life wasn’t black and white, and somehow, together, we made more sense than we did separately. Night and day. Ice and fire. A matched set.
So, for the first time in my life, I was ready to spill all of my secrets and put my complete trust in someone other than myself.
Something about seeing them together dislodged an idea at the back of my brain. A way to take down Bryant that suddenly seemed so clear.
“Santo,” I drawled, waiting until he looked up from righting his shirt to continue. “There is a way I believe you can make nice with Bianca and I.”
He snorted. “Let me guess, it’s dangerous.”
“Life threatening,” I promised with a feral grin. “You’re going to love it.”
13
BIANCA
He took me to the cemetery.
It wasn’t exactly a place for romance, but after he parked his Aston Martin in the parking lot, he told me to wait while he got out and walked around to my side to open my door for me. It was gallantry from a villain and the contrast combined with the night-dark creepiness of the cemetery satisfied some need for duality in my soul.
I was exhausted from the turmoil of the last twenty-four hours, but I would’ve followed him to the ends of the earth if it meant knowing the last of his closely guarded secrets. In fact, there was an awful giddiness in me at the idea of being able to share in his pain.
Like he’d said in his note to me, I bled for him as he bled for me. If he had to carry the weight of trauma, I wanted to be able to shoulder some of it myself. To have the privilege of giving such a powerful, proud man some relief was a heady thing.
Tiernan’s silence had an intensity that seemed to vibrate in the air between us as he took my hand and led me up the snow crusted hill to the rows of grave stones dotting the long plot. We stopped deep along the far outer line of markers before a large tombstone engraved with curling vines of flowers and a smaller matching one to its right.
The name on the large one read Grace Priscilla Anne Constantine and on the smaller, Our Baby.
My heart froze inside my chest, the fierce winter wind cutting through my flesh and bone to calcify the organ in ice. When I looked up at Tiernan with wide eyes gone wet, his were unfocused and fixed on the graves.
“When I met her, my first thought was of course her name is Grace,” he said so quietly I had to sway closer to hear him. “She wasn’t a great beauty, not like the rest of the Constantines. They made sure to remind her of that whenever they could. But she had this energy, this bubbling over of happiness and kindness that washed over everyone like sunshine. I fell in love her the moment I met her.”
“Where was that?” I whispered, afraid to break his confessional.
“I wasn’t allowed to go to school after this.” He ran a gloved thumb over his scar. “And I had no time for extracurricular activities outside of the martial arts training Bryant insisted on. Actually, I rarely left the fucking house. But I started to go for runs in Bishop’s Landing just to get away from the lunacy at the mansion. I met her on the beach one day.”
I thought about our interlude on the beach and tried not to feel jealous.
As if sensing that, a ghost of a smile whispered over his mouth and he squeezed my hand. “I was seventeen, Bianca. And she was the first girl outside my family I’d ever had a meaningful interaction with. It’s not surprising I fell in love with her.”
No, it wasn’t.
It was heartbreakingly easy to imagine Tiernan at seventeen, sheltered in some ways and utterly broken by the brutality of life in others. Scarred and ostracized by his family, I could almost feel the echo of awe in joy in my own heart at the thought of him faced with a kind woman who could see beyond his brusqueness and shallow disfigurement to the goodness that lay beneath like buried treasure.
I leaned into his side, offering him my silent support and warmth.
“We were careful, but we were kids. Bryant was a controlling, obsessive parent. It’s no wonder really that he caught us.” He shrugged woodenly, but I could feel the tremble of fury through our clasped hands. “Six weeks. Six weeks with Grace was all I got before she disappeared. I met her at our spot on the beach for three weeks before I heard the rumors that Caroline had sent her away.”
He stepped forward until his expensive loafers sank into the mound of snow over her grave and crouched down to wipe the snow off her gravestone.
“I tried to find her, but I didn’t have the resources I do now.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “She must have been fucking devastated, lonely and afraid. She found her escape in booze and filthy street drugs.”
“She killed herself?” I whispered through numb lips, shaking from more than the cold as I hugged myself.
He jerked his head in some semblance of a nod as he stood and stepped back into line with me. When he grabbed for my hand, I latched on just as strongly.
“We’d just found out she was pregnant,” he admitted in a voice like gravel. “We were meeting to make a plan.”
Agony cut through me, splitting me straight down the middle. A headache pointed at the center of my skull and my heart threatened to spill out my throat.
“I’m so sorry, Tiernan,” I said, hugging his arm to me because I didn’t know if he would accepted more and I didn’t want to intrude on his sorrow. “That’s…that’s just fucking tragic.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, scrubbing at his face with his free hand even though he wasn’t crying.
His eyes were red-rimmed, but dry, his mouth pinched and his scarred stark white. There was so much pain in every inch of him, I wanted to latch onto him and suck it out like a leech.
“This is why you hate Bryant and the Constantines,” I surmised.
“Bryant must’ve told Lane and Caroline about our relationship. They ripped her away from me and it killed her.”
And with her, any dream Tiernan might have kept safe from his brutal father at the deepest corner of himself that he might one day have love and family.
Fuck, life was brutal.
It didn’t matter if you were born wealthy or poor, beautiful or scarred. Tragedy was the great equalizer.
It hurt to admit I could believe both Caroline and my dad capable of doing something like that. Caroline with her need for obedience and perfection, and my dad with the ability to put himself and his loved ones above all else. It had always been something I admired him in him, but now, I was horrified to see its dark side.