I chose to ignore the comment, reaching over to the gear shift to tangle my fingers with his over top of it. “The first sign of trouble, I’ll come home, okay? I just…I need to see this out. If Dad really did leave something for Brando and I, I need to know. I’ve spent the last five years thinking he just abandoned us.”
Tiernan’s silence was stony, a cement wall-built brick by brick between us. I let him stew though, knowing I’d said my piece and he would either trust me or not.
Outside the windows, Bishop’s Landing blurred past in streams of winter white and bright Christmas lights flaring across ornate entry gates and opulent homes. I remembered driving through the city the first-time months ago and feeling awed by the grandeur. Now, I knew the expensive bricks and mortar hid people just as horrible as anywhere else in the world.
When we stopped moving at another stop sign at the crossroads between Lion Court and the Constantine Compound, I noticed the static current of electricity filling the car and turned to look at Tiernan. His knuckles were white around the steering wheel, his lips peeled back over his teeth in a feral kind of grimace. He was breathing hard, but slowly, as if struggling to control the pace.
When he finally spoke, his tone was sliced to pieces by resentment and anger. “I don’t like this at fucking all. Is that understood? You’ve backed me into a goddamn corner and that’s not a place I feel good in, do you understand me, Bianca?” His gaze cut to mine. “I’m not used to being afraid of anything.”
“You don’t need to be afraid, I’ll be fine,” I promised, taking his stiff hand in both of mine.
He tugged on our hands to place mine over his heart pounding hard in his chest. “It’s an animal response. My fucking mate is going into danger deliberately and I can’t follow.”
My mate.
I tried not to smile at that and failed. Tiernan might not have told me in exact words that he loved me, but I didn’t need him to. Not when he called me his mate, not when his heart beat furiously in fear for me.
“Trust me, please,” I beseeched softly.
His furious gaze scoured my face for a long moment before he sighed heavily and grumbled. “You have two days. I want you home for Christmas Eve, understood?”
“Yes, Lord Tiernan,” I sassed as I lounged across the console to pepper his face in kisses. “Thank you for trusting me.”
“Against my better judgement,” he muttered like the old grump he was. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Or really anything I would, either.”
I laughed through the kiss I pressed to his mouth then opened my car door before he could change his mind.
“Wait,” he said, snagging my hand to pull me close again. His face was fierce mask of intensity as he looked into my eyes and pressed something small and cold into my palm. “I’ve done countless things in my life that I should not have done, but loving you is the best mistake I ever made.”
He closed my hand around the key he’d placed in my palm and I knew without asking that it was the key we’d found behind Child with a Dove at The Met. He was trusting me with his trump card, telling me with words and actions how much I meant to him.
Tears flooded my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall as I look into the most beautiful face I’d ever seen and told him the easiest truth I’d ever known. “It’s funny now to think I ever hated you. The truth is, I think I knew the moment you found us that my heart had found a home, I just didn’t trust it yet.”
“And now?” he asked, dipping forward to clasp my lower lip between his teeth and give it a sharp tug he soothed quickly with the lash of his tongue.
“Now, I’m not just fighting for Brando and me.” I didn’t tell him I was fighting for him, for us.
Instead, I kissed him until there was no breathe left in my chest and my heart was pounding like an insistent knock at the door waiting for him to answer. When I pulled away, his face was flushed with heat and his eyes were all dark, all desire.
“If you don’t come back to me whole by tomorrow night, I’ll burn Bishop’s Landing to the ground and rip Caroline Constantine apart with my fucking teeth,” he swore, tugging a fistful of my hair as if to drive his point home.
“I don’t doubt it, you heathen.” I pressed another kiss to his lush mouth, wishing life was simpler and I could just go home with him then. Instead, I pushed the door wider and got out into the snow. “You take care of Bryant, I’ve got Caroline,” I promised. “I owe you a happily ever after, don’t I?”
The housekeeper answered my knock at the door, but she disappeared silently as soon as I entered the foyer and knocked the snow off my Prada boots. Even though it was well after dinnertime, I was surprised by how quiet the house was. Caroline had told me she’d expected her youngest son, Keaton home from Europe tonight.
Instead, silence seemed to echo through the cavernous entry hall. My socked feet were soundless against the marble foyer and then on the plush carpet as I walked under the twin staircases into the first sitting room then through the rooms after it in search of the matriarch. All the lights were on, a sign of wealth I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to, but Caroline was nowhere to be found.
Finally, just as I was about to give up at go to bed, I found her in the library at the back of the house. Flickering firelight caught my gaze from the hall and the twin doors swung smoothly in when I pushed through into the warm room.
She sat in a wing-backed chair before a fireplace enormous enough for me to stand in. Even though she must have heard me, she didn’t look away from the flames as I approached and for a moment, pure fear clamped its hands around my throat.
Did she know my secrets?
That I was a closest Constantine?
That Tiernan’s cum was dried on the inside of my thighs?
That I intended to take whatever Lane might have left for Brando and me for myself no matter what the cost?
It was only when I drew up behind the side table between the two chairs that I noticed what Caroline was twirling in one hand.
A red rose.
When my gaze snapped from the familiar bloom to hers, I found it seething with dark shadows and firelight.
“Bianca,” she said, my name like an incantation, the first line of a curse. “You’re home late. Out cavorting with the scum of Bishop’s Landing?”
“I told you, I wanted answers. I went to find them.” I was surprised and proud of how strong my voice sounded.
“Mmm, and what did you find on your wanderings?” she asked silkily as she brushed the rose over her mouth, back and forth like a pendulum. Despite everything, I found myself entranced by the movement. “A scarred Morelli perhaps?”
I didn’t say anything because I had the sense every word I uttered would lead me into a trap she’d laid out for me.
She stood abruptly then, so quickly I took a quick, stuttered step away from her. Before I could do anything more, she was in my space, taller than me in her high heels, her pretty face peeled back to reveal true viciousness.
“Bianca, I am going to make one thing very clear to you and it is the absolute last time I will do so, is that understood? After this, if you disobey me, you will not be welcome in this house…” She paused and I couldn’t see her eyes in the deep shadows because she was facing away from the fire at her back, but I could sense them digging into me, trying to unearth whatever I might be hiding from her. “You will not be welcome in Bishop’s Landing. You will not be seen in polite society in this country ever again. Is that understood?”