“When he talked on the phone, he mentioned he was doing it for the sake of the family. Capital ‘T,’ capital ‘F.’ He mentioned the name Bryant.”
My head rang as if I’d been hit at the temple with a baseball bat.
Had someone in the family tried to abduct Bianca as a girl? To what fucking end? To humiliate Lane and Caroline? To blackmail them for money?
Was that person still out there, waiting and watching for Bianca to reappear?
If it was Bryant, who the hell would he have trusted with the task if not me?
“I think you just passed it,” she said softly and I noticed we were half a block beyond the turnoff for the museum.
I sucked in a controlled breath, hoping it would calm the tornado ripping through me.
Was I putting Bianca in danger by outing her to society?
I had refused to think about what would happen after.
After she found out I was Tiernan Morelli.
I hadn’t known she had this history with my family, this full-bodied fear. She wouldn’t trust me after this, wouldn’t stay in my house a moment later. She couldn’t take Brando from me, not really, but she was almost eighteen, she could file for emancipation or run away.
My chest filled with acid, burning and tight. She’d be alone and vulnerable to my enemies, to the Constantines’ enemies, to the Constantines themselves.
What would they do with Lane’s bastard daughter? A daughter who stood to inherit a substantial amount of Lane’s holdings.
“Tiernan,” she called a moment before a soft hand traced the length of my puckered scar beneath the flimsy cover of my beard. I shivered at the intimacy, pulled from my paralysis. “Thank you for bringing me here tonight. It means more than I can tell you.”
“It’s nothing.” My voice was shredded.
Her hand dropped to her side, but she smiled at me, a little shy but feeling bold. “You know, I’m almost certain you aren’t as much of a monster as you make yourself out to be.”
I snarled at her. Why the fuck did people keep implying that?
She didn’t flinch at my gesture or when I reached out to crumple her silken curls in my fist. When I brought her close, leaned over the console between us, her lips fell open like my aggression was the key to the lock of her arousal.
I didn’t kiss her though. I breathed against her parted lips, panting with the exertion of holding still while conflicting emotions raged war inside me.
“You’re a silly little thing if you believe I’m anything short of evil,” I warned her, because it was true but also because I was suddenly desperate for her to understand. I needed her to know she’d laid herself prone on my altar and all I intended to do was sacrifice her with a knife to the belly.
Her eyes were black in the shadowed car as she reared forward and caught my lower lip between her teeth. She pulled it taut, scraping her teeth along the sensitive flesh, then flicking her tongue along the parted seam of my mouth.
“Evil tastes good,” she concluded.
The simple gesture, intensely sexual from such an innocent girl, made my blood turn to magma, scorching me from the inside out. I got out of the car without ceremony, almost scrambling in my haste to get away from the sudden siren.
I needed my head on straight.
This wasn’t about her.
This was about Bryant.
About learning the truth about my birth.
About getting peace for Grace.
About my family seeing I was a vital part of their Morelli institution.
“Tiernan,” Bianca called as I rounded the car, having opened her own door.
I tugged her out without ceremony. We were late enough that the red carpet was empty, the paparazzi dispersed, the partygoers inside deep into the champagne. After closing the door, I dragged her behind me up the shallow steps to The Met’s glittering entry where a man waited to collect our tickets.
“Wait,” she demanded, tugging back at my hand so we paused halfway up the stairs. “Tiernan, what’s going on?”
“What’s going on?” I growled, slowly losing my mind as I stepped down to loom over her. “What’s going on, Bianca, is that you’re driving me mad.”
She licked her lips unconsciously, aroused by the threat of me bearing down on her. “Why?”
“Because you aren’t like them,” I ground out, hating that she was nothing like her father or Caroline or any of their horde. “You aren’t like anyone.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It’s hell,” I snapped. “I had plans, goddammit.”
Something shifted in her eyes, that clever brain finally cluing in. “Plans for what?”
I breathed hard through my nose as my eyes scraped over her face, noting her loveliness, the tenderness in her eyes. I was being rude, terrifying, bullying her just because I was surly and unbalanced, but she didn’t care.
I’d only ever been my worst self with Bianca, yet she still seemed to search for something in me, see something in me that gave her hope.
No, not hope.
My chaos and aggression, it brought her peace.
Without realizing it, my hand grabbed her wrist, thumb tracing the raised skin of her dove tattoo.
“I had plans,” I repeated, clutching her chin with my free hand, angling her head so the lights from the museum spilled onto her face, honey over porcelain. “But you damned them all to hell.”
“I’ve found hell’s not such a bad place to be,” she whispered, her gaze locked on my mouth as she raised on her tiptoes in her tall heels, bringing her inches from my lips. “Not with you.”
She kissed me then, for the first time.
Taking my mouth in a deep embrace, coaxing my tongue out to tangle with hers, hands locked around my neck to bring me deeper into her. She tasted like sugar, sweet and warm melting in my mouth.
I wanted her, I couldn’t deny it.
I wanted to keep her for myself, hoard her in my cave-like home for my pleasure alone like a dragon hiding treasure.
But I didn’t deserve that.
Her goodness, her beauty, her warmth.
Even if I did, I had a plan with so many roots it was impossible to imagine digging it out of myself now.
I wrenched myself away from her, staring over her shoulder so I wouldn’t get lost in those dilated eyes, those open, swollen lips.
“Come.”
She came, following after me as I led her the rest of the way up the stairs, through the main lobby and up more stairs, following the din of the party. I accepted a glass of champagne an insistent server thrust upon me, but I didn’t follow him into the crowded hall. Bianca hesitated when I pulled her to the right instead of left down the hall toward the event, but she didn’t say a word.
Her trust burned in me.
When we entered the room where the Picasso hung, she tensed beside me and I knew she’d seen it before. I headed straight to the painting, the glean of Lane Constantine’s name glowing in the light from above the frame. She numbly accepted my untouched flute of champagne and set it alongside hers on the ground beside us.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I took my knife from my pocket and flipped it open. If I took the frame off the wall, it would trigger an alarm, so I held the frame in one hand and stabbed through the canvas at its edge with the other.
“Tiernan!” she cried, trying to pull on my arm. “What the fuck are you doing? That’s my—” She hesitated, catching herself before the reveal.