Chapter 29
BANE
When I was a kid, there was a door at the end of the hall on the third floor of our house. A door that was always locked. I was told never to go near it. No creeping around. No snooping. No eavesdropping.
It wasn’t anything sinister or crazy, just Dad’s office. But even though I knew from a young age that I’d been born to one day lead an underworld empire, my parents wanted to keep me away from it for as long as possible.
They didn’t want me in that office because that office represented an end to innocence and childhood. It represented violence and darkness, death and anger.
It was forbidden. It was a door I wasn't to go near, and definitely not open.
I’ve been thinking about that fucking door a lot recently, and I don’t need a shrink to tell me why.
I married the door a few weeks ago, and blew it right off its hinges.
There are so many reasons I shouldn’t have gone near her—kept my distance.
Instead, I pulled her close. I trapped her. I married her, binding her to me, despite our dark history.
Both the way she shattered my heart when Lark died, and the way she barged back into my life, meeting me on that night that could have been my last.
We haven’t spoken about that night on the roof since. I don’t know, maybe she thinks I was up there as part of some master plan to force her to marry me.
I wasn’t.
I was on the edge that night for the same reason she was. Because every year, when the anniversary of Lark's death comes around, it gets harder and harder to pretend it’s in the past, or that I can keep on going.
There’s a black hole inside me that’s slowly sucking in all my light, life, and joy.
Plain and simple, I was on the maintenance deck roof of the Empire State Building that night because it’s a long way down and a real quick stop.
Ironically, ever since that night, I have been in free-fall.
Not a dramatic or suicidal one. One that involves falling into her, into something I can’t bring myself to name.
And what worries me now is the sudden stop.
Will she come to her senses? Remember more about our pasts and realize she should run, not walk, away from me? Or realize why I’ve still got a wall up between us, and still haven’t shared her bed?
I still haven’t told her that one truth that could destroy her.
The problem with falling for someone is that eventually, you have to touch the ground again.
And I don’t fucking want to.
I pace the length of my living room, the moody lighting casting deep shadows over my face. I glance out the window, then back at my phone, my brow knitting.
She went out hours ago, after using the Mercury's treadmill. Last I heard, she was getting food with Evelina and Brooklyn.
Nothing since.
I want to tell myself it's fine. I do feel a little bit of an asshole that I'm not worrying about a looming, shadowy threat trying to “get” her. But I’ve looked through the security footage from the night she was supposedly chased back to this building. I also paid someone to hack into the Metropolitan Transit Authority's system and steal a copy of the dash footage from D’Angelo’s bus. It wasn’t the clearest image, but…
Yeah.
I’m not so sure she was pushed, either. And there seriously isn't a trace of anyone chasing her through the Upper West Side the other week.
That's what's worrying me right now. Not that someone is trying to hurt her. That her own mind is fucking with her.
Making her see people and threats that don’t exist. Confusing and twisting her reality. She told me about seeing Dr. Turov, and mentioned dialing back her meds. It made me take a closer look at what she’s on. It’s a lot, and some seriously high doses, too.
I exhale, gritting my teeth.
I’m not fucking used to worrying about somebody like this.
Caring about them.
…honestly, a lot fucking more than just caring.
I want to say that this is something I “haven’t felt in a while”, since Lark. But the reality is, as much as losing her broke me, I can look back on our relationship now through clearer glasses, not the rose-tinted ones I wore back then.
I can look past the shiny veneer and see the rot that was there. The way we clashed. The way I changed who I was to be what I thought she needed. The way I told myself that feeling manipulated and fucked with was part of what love is.
I don’t think those things anymore. I know better.
So when I consider what I feel now for this woman I’ve brought into my life?
It scares the shit out of me.
My phone buzzes with a message from one of my men down in the lobby.
She’s back.
I stop myself from going to meet her at the elevator like a fucking puppy dog. Instead, I stay where I am, by the living room windows, gazing out at the city.
The front door to the penthouse opens, and I hear the heavy thud of her chunky black combat boots.
“Bane…”
I imagined I’d get an apology for going AWOL, or her usual shrugged-off sass.
I’m not prepared for the broken, haunted sound of her voice cracking behind me. I turn, and my face caves when I see the shattered, scared look on her face.
“Come here, little bird,” I murmur as I cross the distance between us and pull her into my arms. She chokes out a sob, clinging to the front of my shirt, burying herself against my chest.
“Something is wrong with me,” she chokes, trembling against me.
“So fucking wrong. I get thoughts I can’t control,” she whimpers.
“Do things I don’t understand. I blank out, and find myself somewhere else, and I don’t have any idea how I got there.
There are like…” She shakes her head, going silent.
“Tell me,” I murmur.
”I—I can’t.”
I kiss the top of her head, my arms circling tighter around her.
“Yes, you can. You know you can.”
Her grip on my shirt tightens.
“There are chunks of time I can’t remember.”
Fuck.
This is worse that I thought. And it both breaks my heart and makes me furious—because I want to fix her, but I don’t know how.
I don’t know if I can.
“I was with Evie and Brooklyn,” she says, more quietly. “And then suddenly it was hours later, and I was at my dad’s, in the carriage house.” She scowls. “Felicity filled it with her fucking PetalGlow shit.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it as I touch my fingers to her chin and lift her gaze to mine.
“Well, there you go. It makes perfect sense.”
She frowns, and I grin.
“Of course you don’t remember how you got there. You got contact-high as shit from all those fucking essential oils.”
She chokes out a ragged giggle, smiling even as a tear trickles down her face. I wipe it away with a finger, ignoring my phone when it buzzes again in my pocket.
“Stop trying to cheer me up,” she mumbles.
“No can do, little bird,” I murmur as I kiss her forehead. “I married you, in case you forgot that, too, and cheering you up is part of the gig. So is reminding you that you aren’t crazy.”
That last part might be a lie. But if it is, it’s one I’m okay telling her right now.
My mouth lowers to hers, and slowly, with a tenderness that has me completely out of my depth, I kiss her.
My goddamn phone buzzes again. I groan, pulling back from her.
“One sec.”
I turn away as I yank out my phone. “What?” I snap.
“Boss.”
Sergey’s voice is so tight the hairs on the nape of my neck crinkle.
“Bane…”
I whirl to the choked voice behind me. Her face is pale, lit by the glow of her phone, and her eyes are wide as they stare in horror at the screen before pulling to mine.
“Boss,” Sergey grunts again into my ear.
“Yeah, I'm here—”
“There’s been an attack.”
I freeze. “What?”
"Someone hit the Marchetti place. The carriage house went up like a bomb. Felicity Marchetti is in hospital.”