Chapter 4
BIANCA
“How much longer are we waiting to go downstairs?” Angela whined, because she was the impatient one out of us three.
“You should always be late to your own party.” My mother's large brown eyes landed on each of us, making sure the information settled in before she carried on. “Bianca, please don’t embarrass our family tonight. The staff and catering will see to it that everything downstairs is flawless but remember that ambience is only half the equation. How you carry yourself completes the picture.” She said it like her viewpoint wasn’t an extension of my father’s, but I knew it was.
Cora whined with her hands on the vanity connected to my oval mirror as Angela cinched her corset tighter. “If the other part is appearance, I’m going to ruin it for all of us because I’m about to abandon this torture device.”
“Your tits look phenomenal,” Angela scoffed, not censoring herself at all in front of my mother who immediately flicked her gaze at me as if judging my choice in friends. “What I wouldn’t give to have half the curves you do.”
“Shut up.” Cora rolled her eyes. “That’s what women say when they’re literally damn models.”
It was true. We gave Angela hell any time she mentioned wanting more of a figure than she already had. I had an ass, and Cora had both great curve and boobs. Even still, extra weight made us self-conscious. Our mothers had raised us that way.
They argued back and forth about their different shapes as I stared at the cars arriving outside while my mother added a few finishing touches to my hair. “This isn’t the look I would have chosen for your nineteenth birthday, Bianca.”
I glanced up at her and tried my best to feel some bit of remorse. My mother had put in the effort to rent this house with Angela and Cora’s parents near the university. We’d had a staff since the day we moved in.
And security.
We were regulated in our college home like I’d been regulated in boarding school and at our family home. Even if we lived in huge homes that were like sororities, acting out wasn’t exactly easy to do. We found our ways, though, and one of mine was wearing something my mother would absolutely abhor.
“It’s a Halloween party, Mother.”
“I don’t care what it is, Bianca.” She tutted.
“Make sure Rafe is near you most of the night for your own good. Your father wouldn’t want it any other way.
” It was a threat she wanted me to hear loud and clear.
Even if I wasn’t under their roof anymore where my father could shove me into a closet, he would still make my life hell if I disobeyed him.
“Yeah, make sure he’s real close to you and Bane is close to me.” Angela winked at me and my mother pursed her lips.
“I’d suggest distance from Bane, Angela. Your mother and I have told all of you this countless times.”
I frowned at her. “Please don’t start, Mom.”
“He might be close to our family, Bianca, but what he did to Vinny and that other boy—”
“I saw the video,” I told her without so much as blinking. “He deserved it. He shouldn’t have touched Bane’s stuff.”
Her reaction was to recoil as if I’d slapped her. As if she didn’t know any sort of abuse. As if we weren’t a part of the syndicate, and my father wasn’t quick to sacrifice her well-being and mine if need be. “Retaliation is never the answer.”
She really believed that, and yet had she retaliated just once for her own daughter, I might not have had my life planned out for me before I was born.
“Well, sometimes a person’s malicious actions breed repercussions, don’t they?
” I said because Bane delivered revenge and justice when she never had with my father.
I turned back toward the window, unable to keep looking at her.
She tsked and then told us the staff was almost done setting up the haunted corn maze. My family always rented out the campus grounds for a few scares. When she kissed my cheek and left, Cora asked, “Haunted maze again this year?”
“And a few other wicked little surprises.” I smirked at her and wiggled my eyebrows.
This year I worked directly with the party coordinator.
Tonight was going to be gruesome, frightening, and twisted.
I wanted to feel alive but also like I was having a heart attack and might be dying, because it might be the very last party I had before I was married.
“Well, I guess wicked surprises are expected from a future Black. If you’re going to marry Rafe, you’re going to end up vicious anyway.
” Angela shrugged, voicing her disapproval of my betrothed as she always did.
Angela was the daughter of the Russian Pakhan who didn’t at all benefit from our arrangement.
So, her constant objection was predictable.
“I’m never going to be vicious to you two. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You were to Vinny last week and now he’s in a coma,” Angela pointed out, giving Cora’s strings one last pull before patting her ass and saying, “There you go, pretty. That’s just right. Just don’t breathe and you’ll be fine.”
Cora grumbled a no shit before straightening and holding her corset at the waist. “She wasn’t evil to Vin, Angela. Bane was, not her.”
I kept listening to them bicker while the staff outside waved another SUV up toward the front steps and then beelined over to them on the brick roundabout to escort a woman in a ball gown out who was wearing a clown mask. The costumes were killer themed this year.
“So, you’re saying everyone’s more concerned about Bane, and no one will be looking at my big ass in this dress?” Cora started up again about her outfit.
“If my ass was that size—”
“Don’t you dare say you want a bigger butt, Angela, or I’ll kill you,” Cora threatened.
“Would both of you quit?” I sighed, still not turning from the window. “If Angela smolders us with a look, we’re going to melt. Cora, you could go butt naked onto a runway for the first time ever and not one person would comment on you needing to lose weight. They’d be in awe of you.”
“Not if you were on the damn runway next to me.” She blew a raspberry and came over to wrap one of my curls around her finger. “You went over-the-top with this outfit. I don’t think anyone will even recognize you. You look fucking evil… Do my makeup?”
I smiled at her description and got up to go stand over the vanity where I pointed for her to sit.
My curls were laying just right after drying them and adding cream.
My skirt was short, and my fishnet leggings were ripped, the combat boots gave me a bit more height.
And my makeup was a very heavy smoky eye with blood red lipstick.
We both looked in the mirror, and I pushed her straight blonde hair forward over her shoulders. “What do you want to look like tonight?”
“I don’t know…the bloody vampire look is a whole vibe.” She pointed to the red makeup dripping from my mouth. “But maybe just the smoky eye you have?”
I nodded and grabbed the eye shadow, loving this part of the day. Adding a mask that could make you extenuate every feature you had helped lift spirits. “Opting for pretty rather than gruesome? Got it. Some of us don’t want too much terror in our lives.”
“I’m not going into the damn fun house.” Angela sniffled in the security detail’s arms. He was supposed to only be her bodyguard, but she’d told Cora and me in very specific detail how his dick looked.
“Oh Ang.” I patted her back. It seemed the corn maze had been a bit too much considering she’d decided to go through with only him.
That meant all the attention was on them as one couple the whole way through and she’d finally come out of it crying in Mr. Bodyguard’s arms. “You should’ve gone with all of us.
I’m going to talk to them about toning it down. ”
She grabbed my arm. “No. It’s fine.” She pointed a pink fingernail toward the exit with Drake who was in my lit class coming out laughing and the girl with him timidly smirking. “People like it. I’m just a baby. The actors in there were intense.”
I sighed, not sure I’d made the right decision with the killer theme.
Everyone was vetted, of course, but fear was personal and addictive for some.
Every person going through the maze had to sign a liability waiver.
My father had made sure of it. I mean, people had to sign an NDA just to be here.
But even still, the actors were never supposed to break character.
The thrill was inevitable and intoxicating.
I had an unhealthy sort of relationship with it and even if I wanted to feel it every now and then, it didn’t mean others enjoyed it.
“Let’s get you some food and a drink.”
“Alcohol, please,” Angela clarified, and Cora rolled her eyes, “No, really?”
Neither of them were twenty-one, but my father was a people pleaser along with a show-off. Alcohol would always flow at my parties now. Nineteen was old enough, he’d scoffed and said if I couldn’t be responsible now, I’d never be.
We walked through the first floor of the home, taking in the menacing decadence, while I welcomed everyone and said my hellos.
Candles were lit for ambience rather than lights.
Cobwebs filled the corners of the cathedral ceilings and the chandeliers had been draped in black lace.
Fog was thick in the air and curled around us from hidden machines.
Creepy clowns wove among us, holding glasses of champagne that had red bubbles.
Every element was designed to unsettle, and it made my heart beat faster as I took in every guest and the way they jumped now and then with a bit of fright when they saw something that scared them. The music was low and thrumming, heavy enough to rattle bones, while the shadows moved as if alive.
I knew most of the costumed guests and cataloged who had all showed up the best I could. Some were indistinguishable from the hired phantoms lurking in corners, and the air itself seemed charged, as though tonight something darker would be let in.