Chapter 29
PINK
Rafe had retired to the casino and saw me passing through with tears in my eyes as I hung up from my Oracle call. He grabbed my elbow to stop me and said, “Bianca,” He sighed, “Crying over him again?”
“Isn’t that always how it goes?”
“It shouldn’t. I think it’s time you and I have a conversation.” I stared at the man who’d taken so much from me and wondered if he even knew the turmoil one night of his loss of self control had cost me.
And maybe I’d had enough. Maybe I knew my life would never be the same without the love of my life in it and so I tempted the future Don to lash out at me by lashing out first. “You want to talk rather than screw me, Rafe?”
He frowned at my accusation, one I’d never thrown in his face, but I was off kilter, not able to hold anything in anymore. He nodded cautiously, “If you’ll talk, I’m happy to.”
He glanced around and rolled up the cuffs of his white long sleeve before grabbing his suit jacket from the bar stool. Then, he waved me toward an exit, “Let’s talk privately, though. My brother’s ears are everywhere here.”
It was probably time I went off with Rafe anyway. The stay at Bane’s resort had reached its end in more ways than one. It might have felt like I was walking the plank but I let Rafe usher me out to his black SUV.
We got in and I wondered if this was where my story would completely end. Maybe he’d throw me off a bridge or have his driver dispose of me. And even still, I couldn’t hold on to the question any longer. “You wore a mask that night in your room. Tell me how you knew to do that.”
“What?” His face scrunched in confusion as he motioned to his driver to pull away from the casino and then he raised a partition. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“When we slept together, you wore a mask and—”
“Slept together?” He narrowed his icy blue eyes at me before he told me, “My car isn’t bugged, Pink. We don’t have to keep up the facade here.”
“Facade?” I tilted my head and waited a beat. “So, you’d like me to say you raped me then?”
His eyes widened and he reared back, “Raped? I—” So many expressions flew across his face and then he took a breath before saying slowly, “Bianca, I found you in my room. I hadn’t stayed there. Are you … Did you think I …?”
Rafe was never a man who was at a loss of words. And as the color drained from his face, I think he saw the color drain from mine also.
The sounds of the city passed us by while the silence of our thoughts filled the vehicle.
Years I’d thought it was him. For years, I thought Bane had disclosed what we’d done together.
“It wasn’t you,” I whispered, not with question in my voice because I saw how sick he looked.
“Jesus fucking Christ. In my house?” His voice held malice now. “Someone did that to you in my fucking room?”
“I thought it was you. For years,” I murmured, my mind spinning now, my body unravelling in relief that it wasn’t him but tightening up at still not knowing the whole truth. A soul wanted to catch the truth, and my heart galloped like it wanted to find it.
Rafe shook his head and then ran a hand through his hair, his expression taut with disbelief as he murmured, “I’d only just come upstairs from letting Angela have her way with me, Bianca.
Her and I hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and she’d been more than happy to screw me every which way all night.
I didn’t even know you were up there, didn’t realize someone—” He stopped, his voice breaking.
“You can call and confirm, but I swear on the family I wasn’t there, Pink. Fuck.”
I didn’t need to. As the pieces fell into place, as I stared at the man who grew up next door to me along with his brothers, it made awful, perfect sense.
“I thought it was Bane at first,” I admitted softly. “He had a mask on the whole time. I was too drunk. I was … I had too much to drink because I was so mad he wasn’t there.”
“Bane hadn’t come because, in his own way, he was avoiding what the inevitable would be. He didn’t ever want you to marry me, and the party symbolized it coming closer.”
“I could barely move by the time he was on top of me. I … I drank too much.” My throat tightened at the memory of it all.
“Or you were drugged. Or you blacked out. None of which is your fault.” Rafe’s voice was sharp with conviction. “Jesus, that’s what you’ve thought of me all these years?” His face had turned almost a sickly green, and his knuckles were white as he gripped his thighs.
“You walked in right as I was cleaning myself up.”
“I thought, well, I figured I was covering for you by saying it was us who slept together rather than some random dumbass who Bane would go after. I didn’t realize we actually should have found the bastard. Christ, I know you’re promised to me, but I wouldn’t fucking rape you.”
“Oh my God,” I wheezed. “You’re not a rapist.” I was starting to hyperventilate.
“Of course I’m not a rapist.” He blinked rapidly as if affronted and disgusted him. “Shit. Are you going to vomit? Please don’t in my car.”
My eyes widened, half horrified and half hysterical. “That’s what you’re worried about right now?”
“Also worried of course about your well-being,” he added quickly, but he was rummaging in a side console next to his seat before he shoved a small trash bin toward me.
It was so absurd that I actually laughed. “Really?” I scoffed, taking it from him and rolling my eyes. “I mean, seriously, Rafe?”
He shrugged and exhaled, long and heavy, getting back to the matter at hand. “All these years I wondered why you hated me after that night.”
I slumped in my chair with the trash can on my lap. “Well, kind of hard to like the person who thought he could take what was going to be his and then have him brag about it to everyone at the party that night.”
“And to think, all this time, I thought we were just keeping you out of trouble with our parents and saving a guy’s head from ending up on your shelf in my brother’s office.”
“My shelf?”
“His skull collection. Don’t act surprised. You don’t know he keeps one shelf just for you?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I know he collects, but for me?”
“Jesus, you two.” He pinched the bridge of his nose like we were immature children and sighed. “He still thinks he can hide what you are to him for the family?”
“I guess.” I glanced out the window into the night, my stomach in knots. “He said he’ll probably marry Sabine once we get married.”
“I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last person on earth, Pink.”
“What?” I frowned at him. “Why the hell not?”
“Because if I did marry you,” he said, smirking despite the heaviness between us, “my brother would find a way to crawl back from the dead, haunt me, and then strangle me in my sleep. I’ll pass.” He leaned back in his chair like a don in the making, like a man who didn’t have to answer to anyone.
“But you’ve … that’s always been the plan!”
He straightened one of his cuff links, not at all bothered. “I let my father think what he wants, and quite frankly, your father deserves to think we took his only daughter before we get rid of him once and for good.”
“You’re getting rid of him?” Why didn’t that make me feel the least bit sad?
“I’m not. But you can bet that my brother will.
Once Bane figures out that he loves you more than the world itself, he’s going to murder every person who’s ever wronged you and that includes your father.
Mark my words. I’m just waiting for him to figure that out himself rather than give him the easy way out. ”
“We might be waiting on that forever. He thinks I chose you, that I slept with you that night willingly.”
“I know. He doesn’t say it, but I see how he wrestles with it. He’ll figure it out.”
Something fragile and real flickered in my chest—a faint, unsteady forgiveness.
“You’re really just waiting for him to do that on his own, aren’t you?” I asked.
Rafe’s smile softened, his voice low, almost gentle. “Yeah. I am. Because there comes a time—and a love—that’s so great that you’re willing to set your family aside and build one of your own. He just hasn’t realized that yet.”
I hated that it made sense, that Rafe saw that when Bane and I hadn’t, and that I wanted it desperately immediately. “You think he’s capable of ever seeing that?”
“With you, Pink? Yeah. He’ll see it. And when he does—God help anyone who stands in his way.”
“I wish he’d hurry up.”
“Want me to help with that?” He lifted an eyebrow. “I think it’s as simple as me moving the wedding up.”