Chapter 8
BIANCA
The first year taught me a few things about Bane Black. First, I learned that his family was every bit as conniving and ruthless as my own. Their strategy was plotting ahead and making political and diabolical moves. But Bane was different. He didn’t hide behind the polished smile that they did.
As I packed the three suitcases my mother and father told me I could bring with me the next week, my mother came to my bedroom with her own form of apology.
It was a warning, rather than a sorry for spilling the secret of my miscarriage.
“You have to realize that he is vicious,” my mom whispered to me as I packed.
“I’ve told you once before and I will tell you again. ”
She talked a mile a minute, like she could make up for handing me off by filling me in on the turmoil I was about to endure. “I had to give in a time or two with those mob men.” My eyes widened at her admission, but she hurried on, “Your father sent me to them.”
I started to point out how sick that was of my father, but she held up a hand.
“He’s done his best, okay?” What was best when you’d give your own spouse away?
“Just remember it’s better not to fight.
Better to just let them have what they want.
Remember your place and remember what you must do for the family and the syndicate. ”
“They’ve lived next door since I was a child, Mom. They aren’t that way—”
“You’ve been protected.” She grabbed my elbow, a new fear in her dark eyes. “You were considered a child, not a woman. The night your father said I was a woman they could have … well, let me tell you a story, Bianca.”
Bile rose in my throat upon hearing her retell her torture that night. For her and for myself, and for us. For the mother who was sending off her only daughter to the sons of men who’d raped her willingly and without hesitation.
“Bane will be no better. You’re a woman, and you’re his for five years now.” My mind fought the idea at first.
I wanted to believe we had something more between us, that Bane would never hurt a person that way even if his father and uncles had.
But then I walked into the resort to meet him and he nodded at me before one of his details walked over to pat me down, to take my phone from me, and search my bags.
“You don’t communicate with anyone but me or your security unless they’re in this phone and have been vetted.
” He handed me a new phone and didn’t wait to hear any of my own requests.
The first month, I learned the routine was that I would basically be confined to my penthouse except for dinner and potential travel.
In that time, I learned his bark was every bit as lethal as his bite and he didn’t care to hide it.
During that month, I saw more than one man look at him wrong, and Bane would have him dragged out screaming and pleading for his life.
The first time I heard a shot on the other side of the doors, I jumped. That was the only time he met my gaze that night, and all he said was, “Eat.”
I remember staring down at my plate and blinking rapidly. My father and mother were cruel, and so were many of the men in the syndicate and mob, but I’d never been that close to an actual murder. “Bane, I don’t know if I can eat,” I whispered.
I heard him crack his knuckles like he was releasing irritation. “The dining not up to your standards, Ms. Zarelli?”
“That’s not what I said.” I finally met his eyes and glared at him. I took a breath and reminded myself that if I was going to endure this for five years, I had to learn not to back down. I swallowed the fear and responded, “Maybe I don’t especially care for the ambiance.”
Bane was about to eat the morsel of food on his fork, but he set it down and stared at it before a small smirk played on his lips. Then he looked around the table at the other men there, the ones he hadn’t introduced me to. “How’s the food, Benson?”
A man sitting diagonal of me said quickly, “So good. Could eat a second and third helping.”
“And how do you feel about the ambiance, Oli?”
Yet another man didn’t help me at all and instead said, “It’s fantastic.”
What a bunch of suck-ups.
I jumped when Bane said my name. “Bianca, where do you think you are?”
“In the Black Diamond,” I answered, knowing then he was playing chess and I was going to have to keep up.
He took a linen napkin to wipe his mouth and then set that down too. “Yes. Did you know leaders of other countries have eaten at this very table?”
“I know our syndicate’s history, Bane.”
“Then, you know that they all accepted the ambiance.”
“Does that mean I’m required to?”
He hummed and it felt like all the men that were standing near the doorways, the staff, our tablemates all shifted back.
I should have been doing the same, but the way he commanded a room and instilled a fear in most everyone had me reacting to him in a way I was embarrassed about.
My thighs clenched together, and my heart rate sped up.
And then he said to me, “Bianca, I don’t know what you’ve been used to at home, but I assure you, if you don’t eat now, you won’t eat at all. ”
I glanced at the food. A part of me wanted to defy him, to push him to see if he would break like I was already broken.
He looked at me like I was nothing now, like we hadn’t had something before, like I’d betrayed him, because in his mind I had.
It was that thought that settled in my bones and made me concede. I knew the gluten on my plate wouldn’t sit well but I could only push back so much for now. Plus, I knew what it was to go hungry. My father’s punishment tactics were creative enough for that in the past.
So, I ate a little, not sure when I’d be offered another meal and considered how we were so far from where we once were.
Fields and oceans of doubt and a mountain of what he felt was betrayal seemed to separate us.
The space between us felt too big to overcome as the seconds ticked by on a grandfather clock in the corner of the beautiful private dinner space.
It was at the top of the resort near his penthouse suite and no one seemed to have access except Bane and his guests.
I tried, really tried, to take another bite of the food, but I couldn’t. I stood abruptly and murmured, “I think I’m done.”
I still remembered the way the room tilted, the way my vision seemed to home in on just him, how all of the air in that space seemed to disappear. One second, I was steady; the next, my knees gave, and the carpet rose up like a wave.
One heartbeat later he was there, a hand at the back of my head, hauling me into his arms.
“Pink,” he rasped. “What the hell?”
“Crap,” was all I said. No more and no less. He searched my face for answers, his gaze narrowed on me like he knew I knew something he didn’t.
He was right of course. I didn’t share it with anyone though.
My father called anything medical “frailty.” Bane would have been worried before.
So worried he would have stalked me to every hospital visit and back.
But the Bane in front of me now, I didn’t know.
I didn’t know if he would feel the same as my father.
I was already an inconvenience to him. And having a weakness was never what a made man wanted to hear if you were under their care.
I wouldn’t tell him that sometimes I got lightheaded, that I’d fainted one or two times before. Instead, I murmured, “I’m fine. I just need to go to the bathroom.” He was about to say no, but I cut him off with whispering, “Please.”
That plea had him frowning and maybe it was the vulnerability we both wanted from each other so badly that caused him to help me up and not dismiss my request for once.
Before letting me go, though, he held me around the waist with one arm while he lifted my chin with the other hand and turned my face side to side. “You okay? You feel lightheaded?”
“No. Not anymore.” I tried to wave off his concern. “Guess I got overwhelmed.” I chuckled, looking away from him as I lied. “I just … this has all been a lot.” I knew that wasn’t the reason I fainted. But he nodded and stepped back to let me rush off. He had other guests to attend to anyway.
The bathroom at the jewel-box restaurant within the resort was exquisite—floor-to-ceiling marble lined the walls, gilt sconces casted a warm light over art deco mirrors, and a row of carved mahogany vanities were topped with crystal decanters of hand soap.
Everything gleamed: polished brass taps, fresh orchids at every basin, plush towels embroidered with the restaurant’s crest. Even the private stalls were hidden behind mirrored doors, each with its own chandelier.
I didn’t walk over to one of the private doorways to use a toilet though.
I stood in front of the mirror instead, staring at my reflection before closing my eyes and breathing in deep, trying to calm the sting in my chest and the tremor in my hands.
“No one cares about it, Bianca,” I whispered to myself.
“They all probably went back to eating. It was barely a blip on their radar, and they won’t even look your way if it happens again. So get over it.”
“Actually,” a voice cut through the air, “I’m going to notice every single time you fall, Bianca.”
I jumped and my head whipped to the doorway. He was there.
Bane leaned against the frame like sin carved out of steel—broad shoulders filling the space, one ankle crossed over the other, dark suit immaculate except for his loosened tie.
His pale eyes burned under the low gold light, fixed just on me.
He looked like he belonged to this place and like he could burn it down in the same breath.
Yup. I should have gone into a private bathroom stall. Damn it. “What are you doing in here?” My tone held accusation.
“Making sure you don’t faint while you’re ‘going to the bathroom,’” he said, putting the last part in quotes, one brow cocked. “Why are you in here when you don’t really have to go?”
It was a habit to hide, truly. It wasn’t something I wanted to get any sort of empathy or attention for—not after my father had declared my frailty as a weakness.
It was something the syndicate couldn’t see.
It was something my father punished me for if there was a hint of it anywhere.
And when I was told I had a gluten intolerance on top of fainting, my father practically raged.
Bane thought he knew everything about me, but he didn’t know any of that.
I kept it all buried away, locked deep in my heart where no one would see it as the weakness my father told me it was.
I wouldn’t tell a soul if I didn’t need to.
My father used it against me, and I wouldn’t give Bane more of an upper hand than he already had.
That was part of the reason my heart fell as I saw him in the bathroom doorway. His gaze locked on me as he asked again, softer this time, “Why did you run away to hide in here?”
What could I say without giving him the whole truth? I looked down at the marble, my reflection blurred in the polished surface. “I just didn’t want to disturb the table…”
“If they’re disturbed by you, baby girl, they’ll be destroyed by me.” His voice was low, deadly quiet, but it rolled through the room like thunder. “You don’t hide from anyone here. It’s not what we do in this family nor what you should ever do again. You understand?”
The sentiment was sweet. Yet, the truth wasn’t.
“Why would you care?”
His jaw muscle popped three times before he answered, “If you’re to be a part of our family, you need to act like it.”
I nodded at him, hoping the conversation would end there but he asked, “Anything else you need to tell me about what happened out there?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“We may never be what we once were, but I’m still me, Bianca. I can still tell when you’re hiding something, and I can still find out exactly what it is even if you won’t disclose it.”
I gulped, “There’s nothing to hide.”
He brushed a hand over his mouth where I saw a ghost of a smirk and then he murmured, “Fine then, Pink. I’ll play. Let’s see how well you hide a secret.”