Chapter 13 Bianca
BIANCA
He’d pulled my skirt down before I’d even caught my breath.
No whispered words. Just his deep voice telling me to “take all the time you need” and that I could go back to my room instead of returning to the dinner table.
Then he’d tucked himself back in with a look on his face that made my stomach twist. Disgust. I just didn’t know if it was for me, for himself, or for everything we’d just done.
I didn’t follow him.
I walked back to my room in a haze of embarrassment and confusion, my heels clicking against marble almost robotically.
My skin still buzzed where his hands had been.
My back ached faintly where the wax had seared me, a reminder of how easily pain blurred into pleasure in his presence.
I should have been horrified by what happened in that bathroom.
The blood on my dress, the way I had begged him, the fact that I’d wanted every rough second of it.
But my body had hummed the entire walk back to the elevator.
Even now, my thighs pressed together like they held a secret.
I think I was deranged.
I shut the door to my penthouse suite and leaned against it, palms flat, taking in my surroundings. My room was too perfect. Too clean. I went to the shower to wash everything away, but before I did, I turned my naked body so I could see my back.
Written in hardened wax was:
mine.
I didn’t scrub much after that because I wanted the feel of him to stay.
I grabbed a robe and sat down with sopping-wet hair and turned on my phone speaker to hit play on an audiobook.
My only allowed escape. Bane hadn’t been too strict about that, probably because he saw no danger in stories.
To him, it was just background noise. But for me, they were proof I still had a piece of my world that belonged to me.
I folded up cross-legged on the bed, painting my nails, as a narrator’s voice filled the silence. Each brushstroke of color across my fingertips felt like an attempt at normalcy, like if my nails looked pretty enough, maybe I could believe I wasn’t unraveling.
But my head wouldn’t stop replaying the night.
The way Jameson had smiled at me, all charm and warmth, slipping me attention I tried to want.
The way Angela had tilted her glass toward Bane, eyes fluttering without so much as a hi to me.
The way Rafe hadn’t even looked up. None of it mattered.
Not when Bane came to me like a storm, violent and all-consuming.
A knock jolted me out of my thoughts.
My hand froze mid-brush. My eyes flicked to the door.
It wasn’t time for the nurse—she only came in the mornings. It wasn’t Bane; he never visited me, not like this. I had no friends here, and food wasn’t delivered. I wasn’t even allowed to order it myself.
No one would knock unless something had changed. Unless I’d really crossed a line. Unless my time had come.
My heart lurched.
I’d made a spectacle of myself at dinner.
Maybe Bane had finally realized I was too much for him.
Too much liability. Too much work. And I wasn’t ready the way I wanted to be.
My blade was still in the drawer. My syringe was still hidden in the bathroom cabinet behind a box of tampons.
The chain on the door hung loose because I’d been painting my nails and didn’t want to smudge them fiddling with the latch.
I’d gotten lazy.
But whoever it was, they’d knocked. Someone who wanted to hurt me wouldn’t knock … right?
My heart raced anyway. I scrambled off the bed, nearly smudging the wet polish as I grabbed my syringe and blade. I shoved them both under my pillow, trying to look casual even though my pulse hammered in my throat.
The knock came again, firmer this time.
I smoothed the white robe over my thighs, my hands trembling as I moved toward the door. Fluffy, soft, and blindingly clean, it suddenly felt like a costume instead of comfort. I hesitated, then reached for the handle.
I wasn’t sure if I was about to open the door to my captor, my executioner, or my savior.
And I hated myself for hoping it was all of them. I hoped it was Bane.
When I swung it open to find him at my door with security standing beside him, I whispered his name, “Bane.”
He stood tall as always, but his posture was a bit askew now.
It’d only been about an hour since I’d seen him, but immediately, I smelled the liquor mixed with his signature scent.
His eyes were that piercing icy blue, but the whiskey on his breath undercut with vodka smelled ruthless and cold.
He looked looser with his jacket unbuttoned, his tie crooked, and shirtsleeves pushed to his forearms. “Bianca.” Was all he replied with as he rocked on the heels of his loafers.
“Can I help you both?” My gaze flicked to Pepe beside him.
“Leave us,” Bane ordered, without looking at him.
There was no hesitation. Pepe abandoned me down the hall, leaving us completely alone.
“Your door wasn’t locked.” His accusation hit like a slap. He said it as though we’d been circling this same fight for months, though we hardly spoke.
I matched his clipped tone and stared at my fingers. “I was painting my nails and didn’t want to mess them up.”
“That’s an idiotic, ridiculous excuse.” His growl was sharp, though his anger felt unsteady, wobbling under the alcohol.
“I don’t think so. I already have Pepe around, so I’m sure it’s fine—”
“Lock your door if you don’t want monsters in your bedroom in the middle of the night.”
“I’ll take a monster over the silence any night.” I held his gaze.
Something flickered in his expression, his eyes narrowing. Then it softened as he muttered, “Noted.” He was filing the admission away. His teeth dragged over his bottom lip before he sighed. “That wasn’t the type of dinner I meant for you to have with your father this evening…or with me.”
There it was—the faintest crack in him.
“Is that an apology?” I asked.
“It’s as close as you’re going to get to one.” He glared at me for not censoring my thoughts.
I knew that’s what he wanted, but I was up here all day with them bouncing around in my head, and tonight I couldn’t get the one thought out of my mind: He’d sent me back to my room like he didn’t want me …
even when I’d been ready to give myself to him.
“Are you sorry for the bathroom or the dinner?”
“Sorry for both,” he said finally.
“You regret it then?” I refused to stop, to make this easier for him.
“Bianca …” His voice roughened. “Can you let it go?”
It. Him. The bathroom. The table. All of it tangled together in ways I wasn’t sure I could unravel. Yet the way he looked at me so raw, it made me pause.
I exhaled hard. “Fine. At least you invited me down. How many times have you met with my family since I’ve been here?”
“Enough,” he answered gruffly.
“And not once did they call to tell me. So,” I shrugged, trying to get rid of the pain. “I guess I should thank you for the invite tonight.”
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Even with what happened to your cousin?”
God, I’d hated Kraw since the moment I’d met him. He was sleazy enough to make a pass at me a time or two even though I was related to him. “You really keeping his skull?”
“You’ve been in my office. I intend to keep every single one of the people who wrong me.”
“Did he really wrong you tonight?”
“Along with you.”
“I don’t need you to defend my honor, Bane.”
He hummed like he wanted to say more but didn’t. Instead he jumped subjects. “Your father’s a prick.”
Wasn’t news to me but I think the months of him not talking to me and my not having anyone around that I knew hit harder when he said it out loud.
My heart squeezed as I glanced away, trying to hide the emotion welling up in my throat.
“And yet I was the one who you told to leave after the bathroom.”
“Don’t you think that was for the best?”
“I think you get to choose who to eat with and you didn’t choose me. Isn’t it your call if I stay at a dinner you're hosting, not his?”
He hummed and rocked back on his heels as he thought about that. Then he gave me a lopsided grin. It made him look his age, young, approachable, almost charming. “Do you really want to eat dinner with me?”
“No,” I said immediately, embarrassed that a small flutter still started in my stomach at his flirtation. “I just … I wouldn’t have minded feeling like I meant something after months of feeling like I don’t.”
“Interesting.” He dragged out that word before continuing. “If it’s any consolation, if I hadn’t told you to go back to your room and you went back out there, he would be dead and so would Jameson.”
“What?”
“I told you to leave, Bianca, because if your father kept talking to you the way he was, I would have killed him. And I’m still considering blowing Jameson’s head off for the way he looked at you.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. You never told me your father talked to you that way.” He glanced away like he was actually embarrassed. Bane never got embarrassed.
“Does it matter?”
“What the fuck, Bianca?” He pushed off the doorframe, stepped into my space, and growled, “Yes, it matters. It wasn’t even in your diary years ago!”
“So? I didn’t put everything in there … and obviously for good reason.”
He pulled at his hair as he paced away from me. “That’s where you’re supposed to put all your thoughts and inner turmoil.”
“Well, I might have if you hadn’t been reading it.” I scoffed.
He looked downright furious as he ground out the nickname he used when I pissed him off, “Fuck me, pretty pink poison, you think our family allows anyone to talk to us the way your father talked to you down there? Do you know what he said after you’d went back to your room?”
He shook his head and my anxiety spiked. It reminded me that I still cared about what Bane thought, that I didn’t want him to see me as less than or weak or a burden like my father always said.