Chapter 8
BANE
It’s truly eerie how similar they always looked.
The perky-goth/death metal Barbie aesthetic aside, the woman standing in front of me looks so much like Lark.
It pisses me the fuck off even more.
Like a visceral reminder of what I lost.
Most people have a distorted view of what it means to be "mafia royalty". Social media and mafia-slanted paparazzi shit like The Scarface Report, the TikTok account that’s been blasting our Empire State Building photoshoot nonstop, tend to glamorize it.
Yes, as adults, my friends and I—Carmine, Nico, Nero, Roman, and Laz—do have a way of roaming this city like kings.
But it wasn’t always like that.
In middle school, it was hell.
At least, it was if you were me.
I’m not the only one of my friends who went to private school.
With the fathers we had, and the power they held?
Of course we did. But while Carmine, Nico, and Nero as good Catholic boys went to St. Thomas Aquinas, and Roman and Laz ended up at the Pembroke School, Dad thought I’d be best suited to Thornfield Academy.
Not, obviously, because there was anyone else there like me—heir to a criminal empire but also wrestling with what would later be diagnosed as clinical depression—but because my test scores were through the fucking roof.
I think he thought I’d thrive there, with my over-achieving brain. Plus, I think maybe he wanted me to learn outside the echo chamber of mafia-centered private education.
There, I learned for the first time what it meant to be without power.
On the outside, looking in.
An outcast.
I wasn’t feared or lionized for my last name at Thornfield.
I was shunned. Mocked. Bullied by my preppy, old-money, WASPy peers.
For being “a criminal”. For the black clothes I usually wore.
For the “snake bite” double lip piercing, and the metal bands whose logos I’d draw on the backs of my hands in sharpie.
Don’t get me wrong, I could handle it. But it was a battle every fucking day. Me against the world. Always with my fists up and my lips bloodied.
Until I met Lark Peltier.
The other outcast. The one other soul at Thornfield who clearly did not belong there.
I was there because my father was a notorious gangster with a lot of money to throw at fearful admissions boards.
She was there because her grandmother, who had raised her, worked for Don Cesare Marchetti, whose oldest daughter, Dove, was already a student.
Dove somehow entirely skipped the part where all the other shitheads at school bullied you for being mafia. Probably because she managed to integrate into the upper-class closed-door club of the elite. She partied with them. Dated them. Blended in.
But not me, and not Lark.
I suppose our meeting was inevitable, like celestial bodies caught in an orbit. The two weirdos.
The first time we met, she caught me smoking and asked to bum one.
She sat with me, and we talked.
It wasn’t forced. It wasn’t awkward. It was the most natural conversation I’d ever had.
She told me how her grandmother was the housekeeper for the Marchetti family, and how they had generously paid her tuition to Thornfield, too, since she and the ice queen herself, Dove, were besties.
I always found that funny: the two birds, Dove and Lark, being friends, despite also being complete opposites.
Dove was all about cocaine with the cool kids, designer clothes and snobby attitude, and don't forget Scott, the quarterback boyfriend.
Lark was like me: anti-everything. Wearing as much black as the school’s dress code would let her get away with. Metal music on her headphones. Darkness lurking under the surface.
She was my best friend that year.
My only friend.
It’s not like she fixed everything. The next day was the same shit, different day. But things were different . I had Lark. Someone to make the day-to-day existence in that snobby shit-hole bearable.
Until she went out one night, crossed paths with the wrong piece of shit, and got herself killed.
For years, I was so fucking angry that Lorenzo Cielo was killed the night the Marchetti men crashed into that house where he had Dove and Lark, after he’d taken them from the club they’d snuck into, two nights before.
So. Fucking. Angry.
Because that motherfucker wasn’t the only one who never walked out of that apartment alive.
Lark didn’t, either.
For ages, I felt cheated that I didn’t have a responsible party I could punish for that night.
But then I realized I did.
Dove instigated that entire night. She talked Lark into going out and using their fake IDs to get into that club. Lark didn’t party. She didn’t drink. She didn’t go looking for trouble. Dove did.
But it wasn’t Dove who paid the price that night.
It was Lark.
Lark, who started as my friend, turned into the girl I loved—even when she had her dark moods—and then morphed again into the girl I was going to marry.
She died, and Dove walked away without a fucking scratch.
The two of us are in this room right now because of the sins of the past. And now, she’s going to atone for those sins.
I watch with an eyebrow cocked as she deftly takes off her clothes. This isn’t about being sexy, obviously. She might as well be loading a dishwasher. And I get that she’s used to changing in front of people, because of ballet. But that's not why she’s so nonchalant about it right now.
She’s doing it to thumb her nose at me. She thinks if she doesn't cry, that's sticking it to me.
Would I prefer some tears? Maybe.
Those’ll come later.
She faces me, her chin set, her head held defiantly as she stands there in just her underwear—a plain, black thong and an even more utilitarian gray bra.
All the same, my jaw tightens.
Whatever anger I feel for her doesn’t change the fact that she’s stunning. She was always gorgeous, and the hard partying, addiction, and rehab over the last few years haven’t done shit to change that.
Being a professional dancer training hundreds of hours a week doesn’t exactly hurt, either.
I let my eyes drag over her tight, toned body. The athletic arms and feminine shoulders. The soft rise of her breasts, her nipples tightening visibly through the plain gray bra. The toned stomach and slim but rounded hips, tapering down into long, runway model legs.
My dick twitches in my pants despite my efforts to stop it.
I can’t help it when looking at a woman that stunning.
It's just biology.
Silence blankets the room as my gaze slides over her curves. Her soft skin, now with a smattering of delicate tattoos on her arm, wrist and hip. The pink and blonde hair. The ruined dancer's feet which give her unexpected character.
I smile coldly. All her emo-goth manic-pixie-dream girl armor is doing shit to deter me.
I lift my eyes to hers. “I did mean all your clothes.”
She glares at me. “Pig.”
I shrug. “Oink oink.” My eyes narrow. “Seriously, lose the rest.”
I watch smugly as she unhooks her bra and lets it fall to the floor, her eyes avoiding mine. I stare at her body openly as she bares it to me, my eyes lingering on the slope of her small tits. Her rosy-pink nipples as they tighten in the air.
The panties drop to her ankles before she deftly steps out of them. Then she just stands there, arms at her sides, a grim expression on her face as she stares fixedly at the wall behind me.
I’m amused that she doesn’t try to cover herself, even though I know this is also part of her trying to “stick it” to me.
My gaze slides down her toned stomach and between her soft thighs to the pink slit of her pussy.
Clean shaven. Though, there’s a slight dusting of stubble, which amuses me. It means she likes to keep it shaved, but she wasn’t expecting to need it shaved when she came here tonight.
She notices where my eyes land, and I don’t miss the haughty little smirk on her face.
But when my gaze shifts to the thin, evenly spaced white scar lines across her upper thigh near her hip, the smirk fades.
For the first time since she took her clothes off, she tries to cover part of herself.
Her palm slides across her hip, but my voice stops her.
“Hands to your sides.”
She shoots me a look, her mouth opening and then closing, then her hovering hand retreats to her side, and she holds her head high again, meeting my gaze without flinching, glaring right at me.
“Well, you’ve made it abundantly clear what you expect from this.”
Before I can even blink she’s turning to the side and bending over the chair across the desk from me, her elbows on the armrest, her muscled back slightly arched, her head down, a cold, stormy expression on her face.
“Just fucking do it already so we can get it over with.”
The room is quiet for a moment. My lips curl darkly at the corners as I stand from my chair and slowly—slowly—make my way around the side of my desk, until I’m looking right at her tight ass.
On the one hand, I’m staring at her soft, pink pussy framed by her creamy thighs, and my cock starts to swell.
Again, it’s just biology.
But on the other hand, this is not how I want her. I want her begging me when I do—either to do it, or not. This unfussed “get it over with” attitude throws me and pisses me right the fuck off.
I chuckle. Her face heats as she turns her head to the side, glaring back at me.
“What is so funny,” she grits out icily.
“The fact that you think this is a one-time thing,” I purr. “That I fuck you bent over a chair in my library once and…we’re good?”
Her back ripples as a shiver flies down her spine.
“How many times,” she hisses.
Slowly, my amusement turns bitter.
I hate the way she’s so readily bent over like this, so detached in her apathetic acceptance of the situation. Like she hates it, but she’s going to grit her teeth, take it, and that will be that.
It feels like this isn’t new to her. Like she’s used to doing things like this for men like…well, me.
It's oddly infuriating, given our history.