He didn’t have to type out the “or else…” because it was implicit in his tone even over text.
Elias looked at my grimace and winced in sympathy. “Everything okay?”
“No,” I said honestly, anger sweeping through me like a tornado, sucking up every positive thought I might have harbored about Tiernan. “My guardian is a possessive, over-protective, bossy jerk.”
Gabriella laughed. “Tell us how you really feel.”
I smiled at her, but the ends of my lips were mangled with irritation. Who did Tiernan think he was? I might have been only seventeen, but I’d been independent for years. Aida never checked in with me. If anything, I checked in on her and on Brando. I was responsible, a sixty-year-old soul in the body of a teen. I had never done drugs, had a single sip of booze, or even kissed a boy unless you counted Quinn Masters forcing himself on me in that locker room incident.
I didn’t need Tiernan to baby me.
I didn’t want him to.
All the crackling electric irritation beneath my skin amped even higher as I stood there and stewed. He’d ruined a perfectly lovely afternoon with his alpha-male bullshit and I wanted to ruin his.
An idea crystalized in my mind and a slow, wicked grin overtook my face.
“Hey, do you have to be home right away?” I asked my new friends as I dug into my backpack and counted the wad of hundreds Tiernan had handed me that morning. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now…”
* * *
It hurt.
There was no way around the pain. A tattoo on any part of the body was bound to hurt, but one etched into the delicate skin of the wrist was especially painful. A small part of me nestled into the deepest, darkest folds of my being might have enjoyed the teeth-clenching hurt, the buzz of it zigging through me until all my nerves danced, but I’d gotten good at ignoring it.
Elias and Gabriella sat beside me in solidarity, chatting about mundane school gossip and the upcoming Lane Constantine Memorial Ball as the man with a dyed-green fauxhawk bent over my wrist with his vibrating tattoo gun.
I was underage, but Tiernan had given me two thousand dollars in bills and I’d put them to good use to convince the man with the tattoo shop on the outskirts of the Upper East Side to ink me. I’d also turned off my phone so Tiernan, the asshole, couldn’t find me.
“I’m actually supposed to go to that,” I admitted to Elias as he spoke about the ball the Constantines were holding at The Met next month to celebrate Lane’s life on the anniversary of his death.
He blinked. “You are?”
“Yeah.”
He and Gabriella exchanged looks as I gritted my teeth against the sting. It looked like the guy was almost done, but my whole forearm was on fire from the pain. A bead of sweat dripped down the edge of my hairline into the shell of my ear.
“How did you get an invite? Not to sound elitist, but it’s one of the most illustrious events in the city. I thought you were new here?”
“I am, but I’m staying with the McTiernan family,” I explained. “They’re pretty well off.”
Elias frowned, eyes unfocused as he searched for something in his memories. “McTiernans, I’ve definitely heard of them. I’ll have to ask Aunt Caroline or my mom. It’s going to bother me I can’t remember who they are.”
I shrugged. “Whoever they might be to your family, I’m nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Gabriella said kindly, squeezing my free hand. “You spend enough time in the ‘right’ circles, you realize that most people are just out to get something from you. It’s refreshing to meet someone who doesn’t give a crap about our family names.”
When I blinked at her, she laughed and added, “My name is Gabriella Zappa. My dad is Enea Zappa, the head of Zappa Shipping International.”
I shrugged because I had no idea who the hell Enea Zappa or his company were.
She laughed again, thick brown hair shifting around her waist as she tossed her head back. “See? You don’t have a clue and that is amazing.”
“It is,” Elias agreed. “When I started at SHA, everyone tried to be my friend as soon as they found out my last name. It took a while for them to realize I have absolutely zero pull with Caroline.”
“Because you’re poor?” I asked, forgetting to be tactful because I was in too much pain.
He shrugged a shoulder, a thin veneer of boredom overlaying a deeper anger that made his jaw tense. “Among other things.”
“That sucks,” I said softly as the tattoo artist pulled away and gently dabbed the blood off my new ink. “I know what it’s like to feel shunned by your own family.”
Elias’s eyes, so much like Lane’s, that pure, unblemished blue of a midsummer sky, were filled with warmth for me and old, stale pain. “Thanks. Sometimes, I think I’d do anything to fit in, but I know nothing will change. Not really.”
“Especially not when your cousin is porking the enemy,” Gabriella teased to lighten the mood.
Elias shoved her off her stool, prompting us to burst into laughter.
“It’s done,” the tattoo artist, Harlan, grunted. “Take a look before I wrap it for you.”
My humor froze in my lungs, little particles of ice that shredded the soft tissue so I found it hard to breathe.
A small, perfectly formed dove in mid-flight spread its wings between my wrist bones. It was a resplendent replication of Picasso’s dove, the same dove my dad referenced in his nickname for me.
Tiernan might have stolen my locket. He might try to crush me under his heel.
But he couldn’t take my memories from me.
He couldn’t take the blood and love of Lane Constantine from my body unless he cut me up and bled me dry.
“Go fuck yourself,” I murmured as I stared at the dove.
I didn’t need a tattoo to ensure I’d never forget Dad or who I’d been when he’d been alive, when I’d been his daughter, even if it was only in the shadows.
But it helped.
It helped a lot.
Because what was the point of art if not to give eloquence to the myriad of emotions originating in the human heart that were too immense to be translated into simple words?
“It’s pretty,” Gabriella said, bending forward, her dark head against my light, to peer at the design. “It suits you.”
“Thanks,” I whispered, my heart floundering in my throat.
“Let me see,” Elias murmured, taking my hand gently to extend it for his viewing. His rough tipped thumb smoothed under the irritated skin, his breath hot against me as he bent close to look.
That was how he found us.
A teenage boy bent over my hand like he intended to give it a kiss of admiration.
The bell over the door of the cramped shop tinkled as someone entered. I couldn’t see who it was from down the hall behind a half wall, but I could tell, somehow, by the way the air flattened like a can of old pop, like dead air space after cacophonous static.
Somehow, Tiernan had found me.
Every atom of my body stilled, held suspended in pure, fresh terror.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The sound of expensive shoes stalking down the short hallway on measured steps.
I held my breath, my blood roaring like the waves against Bishop’s Landing in both ears.