Chapter Thirty-Five
Bianca
Tank’s voice is still echoing in my ears—“What’s wrong?”—but all I can hear is Detective Liam Carter’s voice, confirming what I already feared:
Caleb Morgan is a patched member of the Twisted Devils MC.
Tank is in an outlaw biker gang.
A gang suspected of going to war with my brother’s empire.
A gang just as steeped in blood, in crime, in violence.
Tank is a killer. A vicious, cold-blooded killer.
I lead him outside behind the venue, rage and disbelief tearing at every nerve in my body. The fundraiser’s still alive inside—music, laughter, warmth. Everything I need. Everything that is essential to keeping my dream, my Safe House, alive.
And I’m breaking in half out here in the cold.
He tries to talk to me on the way out. I don’t hear the words. My vision’s swimming. I trip over the curb and he catches me.
I shove him off.
I trip again. He grabs my arm to steady me.
I rip away like he burned me.
Every gentle gesture just twists the knife deeper.
Every touch leaves my skin crawling, knowing how much blood must stain his hands.
“Don’t you fucking touch me.”
Something changes in his voice. It turns into something curious, but something cold. “What is it?”
Under the chilly night sky, my breath trembles with fury as I whip around to face him. "I know," I spit, the words tearing through me like shrapnel. The accusation shreds my voice, turning it raw, broken. “I know. I know everything. Why the fuck did you have to lie to me? Why, Tank? Why?”
I see the flinch ripple through him, the stiffening of muscles beneath his jacket as he braces. His jaw is taut, clenched so tight I imagine it might shatter. His eyes shutter, something flickers and dies.
“What is it you think you know?
I can almost hear a door slamming shut inside him.
And I recognize that sound, that finality. I've heard it slam shut in my brother a thousand times, seen it in the hollow eyes of his men, in the set of their jaws. It's the look of someone who has learned to replace guilt with numbness. I see it all now on Tank. The loving, bearded baker vanishes, replaced by the soldier, by the outlaw, by the killer. It’s a face I know too well. A face I’ve lived in fear of my whole life. A face I thought I could finally leave behind.
“I know enough,” I say, the words barely there. My defiance feels paper thin against his steel. “I know enough about who you are to know I’m done with you.”
He draws in a breath, slow and deliberate. It sounds steady on the surface, but I hear the tempest underneath. Rage, yes. And something I don’t want to recognize, something that sounds dangerously like pain, like heartbreak, something I refuse to believe he’s capable of feeling. “It’s not what you think.”
My hands are fists, nails driving into my palms, punishing me for my stupidity, for my blindness. For letting him in.
“I trusted you,” I scream. “I trusted you and I loved you because I thought you were fucking different. I thought you had a heart. But in the end, what? You were just fucking using me? Just using me like all the others? Fuck you, Tank. Fuck you.”
“Bianca, I love you,” he says, the audacity of it searing through me. “It’s true I’m a dangerous man. I’ve done bad things. But I’m here tonight because —”
I hit him. Hard.
My fist cracks against his cheek, and pain ricochets up my arm, sharp and real. He doesn’t flinch.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I scream, sobbing now, not even able to stop it, the tears hot and unstoppable. Humiliating. “You lied to me. You were using me. Just like every other man who’s ever touched my life.”
“I lied to you? I’m not the only one who lied here, Bianca.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You think I don’t know who you’re related to?”
“That doesn’t matter,” I snap, my voice cracking like a whip in the chilly night.
“Like fuck it doesn’t matter. You’re Bianca Moretti. I know who you are, I know what your brother does, and I know what you do to help your brother and his fucking sick empire. This whole charity is just a fucking front for him to use. You help him, you fucking aid him in spreading his fucking cancer to this whole fucking city.”
My world blackens, my heart hardens, and I hit him again. “You don’t know a fucking thing.”
How the fuck can he think of accusing me of helping my brother? After everything I’ve been through, after the way Tank set my heart up to feel on the verge of being whole, of being loved, of being me , to accuse me of helping my brother — of being like my brother — hurts as much, if not more, than any of the lies Tank has told me.
I swing again. Hit him. “Get the fuck away from me. I fucking hate you, and I would rather fucking die than see you again.”
He takes a step back. Hurt flashes across his face, quick and bright, but he tucks it away before it can land. I still see it, lingering in his eyes, so intense it makes my stomach turn to think I might have reached him. How did this soulless killer fool me so well? How did I ever think he was different? I feel sick, sick that I fell for him, sick that I let myself trust him, sick that I pulled him into the most intimate parts of my life. Sick that I let him into my bed. Sick that I gave him a piece of my heart. How did I not see this coming? How did I not learn my lesson? This is what trust gets you.
“I’m leaving,” he mutters, and then tosses it over his shoulder as he turns away. “And I’m letting you keep the pastry. You’re welcome.”
And then he’s gone.
The void he leaves swallows me whole, crushing in its emptiness. Caleb “Tank” Morgan is gone, and I’m left behind in the alley to pick up the shards of myself. I’m sobbing like a child, falling apart in the shadows, my body wracked with humiliation and grief, with anger and hurt. I'm a mess of shattered dreams, of broken hopes. I’m alone. Alone. And like everything else tonight, there’s no one to blame but me. I saw danger, and I ran right into its arms.
I’m alone.
I’m alone, and there’s no one to blame but me.
I’m still crumpled there when the door behind me creaks open.
Vanessa steps outside, a shaft of light spilling around her, and concern shades her face. “Bianca? What happened?”
I shake my head, my throat too raw to form proper words, my voice a whisper. “He’s gone. I broke up with him. I just... I couldn’t keep lying to myself.” I’m choking on my guilt, on the shame of this failure, this betrayal of everything I should have learned by now.
Vanessa kneels beside me, wraps her arms around me, and I sob into her shoulder. Her kindness makes it worse, somehow. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it. I trusted another dangerous man. Again.
Why can’t I learn?
Why do I always make this mistake?
Why do I keep falling for the same damned lies?
Where is my strength when I need it most?
Vanessa lets me cry, holding me as if I haven’t ruined everything, as if I’m not the colossal failure I feel like. She just waits, her patience unwavering, and finally she whispers, a gentle question. “You wanna walk? Just a few minutes. Clear your head?”
I nod.
We step off into the quiet side street beside the venue, arms linked. Just two tired women, trying to catch their breath.
We don’t make it far.
Two dark SUVs pull up beside us, gliding like predatory shadows. Their engines rumble low and ominous, vibrating through the cold air and through the marrow of my bones. I know them instantly. I could smell their cologne from a mile away, the noxious stench of greed and violence, even through the thick, tinted glass of their windows.
The front window rolls down, and my brother’s face appears, oily and grinning, a grotesque specter of power and betrayal. A lifetime of threats and coercion is carved into the sneer he delivers.
“Hey sis,” he says smoothly. “It’s time we talked.”
I grit my teeth and scream, the sound ripping from me like I wish it could rip through him. “Get fucked, you ratfucking bastard!”
He chuckles like it’s cute. “I always admired your mouth. And your tenacity. You always liked to do things the hard way.”
The doors open. Men pour out. My brother’s soldiers. Clubs in their hands. Burlap sacks. Vanessa screams. I swing at the nearest thug. It doesn’t do much. More bodies join the rush, a tide we can’t fight, and Vanessa’s cries pierce the air, desperate and gutting. Someone hits me in the ribs, then the side of the head. Pain blossoms, feral and searing, and my vision goes dark as a bag slams down over my face. I hear Vanessa’s voice, a ragged echo, before a new darkness overtakes me, before the crack of a club to my skull sends me hurtling into nothingness.
Then nothing.
My last thought isn’t even a thought, just the feeling of being ripped out of my body as the crack of a club to my skull sends me into blackness.