Chapter 30
BANE
How the hell was I going to live without her?
I couldn’t find her. There were very few people in the world who could hide from me. They didn’t have the means, the places, or the intelligence to outrun me.
Yet, the Hardys and my brothers did.
Rafe had finally begun to pay attention to his fiancée it seemed, because she disappeared into his SUV and then was gone, stolen from me in the night. I called him within an hour. “What the fuck do you mean she doesn’t want to see me and you’re not going to allow it either? Where the fuck are you?”
I’d told Pepe to follow her, but he got orders to stop if she was with Rafe. You didn’t follow other Black men. That had always been an agreement I’d had with my brothers that I was now completely regretting.
“Bane, listen to yourself. You’re talking to me this way. I’m her—”
“I don’t give a fuck who I’m talking to because before you’re anyone else, you’re my brother, Rafe.
” They weren’t ever words I thought I would say.
I put our business before everything else, our ties, our partnerships, and our alliances.
But maybe my business was my family first as I sat there staring at each skull on the shelves lining my office.
I heard him breathing calmly, as if my admission didn’t change a thing. “Well, damn. When did you figure that one out?”
“Very recently.” I winced, thinking Rafe probably had been mature enough to always know it.
“Should have talked to your Oracle much sooner. Bet they would have told you that early on.”
“I don’t talk to the Oracle. I only listen.”
“Rather than listening to other people’s entries,” Rafe hummed. “You should talk yourself. The therapists on there are top tier.”
“I know they are.” I opened my laptop to see if I could hack his SUV or something. “We hire the best.”
“And we condemn the worst,” he finished the silent promise we’d all made when we bought the app that had given us an outlet and the ultimate bargaining chip for the world.
“We know everyone’s secrets but our own.” I slammed the laptop shut knowing it would be impossible. “Just tell me where you are.”
“Pink and I have an understanding,” he started, and I knew I wouldn’t like where this was going. “She wants to move the wedding up. Three months to put together a small ceremony will do it.”
“The fuck? No,” I immediately told him. “Why?”
“Maybe because we both talked to one another tonight. We talked rather than just listened. You can’t solve everything by putting together and fixing everyone else’s problems, Bane. Especially when they haven’t asked you to.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Have you tried focusing on your own shit? Tried letting her go so that you can figure out what the hell you need instead?”
“I don’t need anything.” I punched my desk. “I just need her back here.”
He waited for a beat and said, “Want to tell me why?”
“Not at the moment.” I’d already admitted too much to him today.
“Then I can’t tell you where we are.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“Not if Pink kills you first.”
And then he hung up on me.
I got up to pace my office, sat back down, called Pepe who gave me the run around on not telling me where they were, hung up on him, and pulled up Oracles to see Bianca had left an entry.
I wanted to click on it, to open it, to listen, to try to figure her out. Every instinct screamed at me to listen, to invade her thoughts, to control her just enough to keep her safe.
But something my brother said rang true. I didn’t ever listen to myself or let her go enough. I’d watched that woman for most of my life, obsessively, protectively, selfishly. And look where it got us.
Maybe she didn’t need me in the way I imagined she did.
Maybe I’d been more of a destruction than a salvation, more danger than a shield.
I’d wanted to give her everything—every experience, every touch, every memory that would erase the fucked-up ones she got from her parents.
But I’d fallen for her along the way, and I’d given up pieces of myself without realizing how much of me I’d lost in the process.
My mind, my control, my restraint … all surrendered to her chaos.
And without myself, I wasn’t in control. I was spiraling in a way that would have me ruining her and every single one of us if I didn’t stop.
For once, I didn’t press the button to listen to her entry. I let it sit, dark and silent.
I would wait. Breathe. Hold myself in check. Because if I couldn’t master my own obsession, I’d never let her go … or ever hope to get her back without destroying everything between us.
She ghosted me for a whole month and a half after she left.
The absence of her gnawed at me every second of every day. We were going on 3.5 million seconds or forty something days, but when Olive invited us over to see her newborn, I had hope she’d make an appearance.
I went to that damn cookout with the intention of seeing her.
Instead, I was surrounded by her friends, who were also my friends, technically, but they loved her more.
It was fucking obvious when I got more than one side-eye from Olive.
I couldn’t shake the irritation, the empty spot beside me where she should have been, the thought of arguing over whose face the baby looked more like.
The woman was a force of nature, a storm that could wreck every part of me no matter how tirelessly I worked to build up all my walls.
Even while I attempted to erase her from my thoughts, her absence presented itself everywhere.
I’d think of how she balanced my mundane workload throughout the day by banging on my door for more Koi pellets to be purchased, how she insisted I watch trash TV late in the night, how she messed up her space to give me something to do when I was itching for distraction.
She smoothed out the rough edges I didn’t even realize were visible to the public.
She made my obsession tolerable, my control seem natural instead of suffocating.
I felt it acutely now, a hollow ache where comfort had been obvious only when she was present.
I tried to keep myself busy. Mornings were for reviewing Black Diamond assets and tracking shipments.
Afternoons were spent auditing accounts, checking security logs, reviewing surveillance, and sometimes running simulations of potential threats—not just to the syndicate, but to her.
Evenings, I trained, pushed my body, sharpened my mind, calculated contingencies for everything.
Anything to avoid the gnawing thought that she was out there, living, breathing, thriving with him.
With anyone other than me.
I ate, nodded at small talk with Jameson, who kept yammering about some Oracles strategy. I considered if I could listen to one of his entries and find a reason to slit his throat. The fucker still aggravated the hell out of me.
I hated how easily he fit in with everyone around, how Bianca loved him and his daughter, how I even could endure him most of the time especially considering he had snide remarks to say about Bianca every chance he got.
I would have put up with him forever if he hadn’t said, “Pink’s sad as hell to miss today, huh?”
“You’re talking to her?” I whipped around to ask him.
Franny was the man’s only saving grace as he nodded with a small smirk on his face, “What? You aren’t?”
“What exactly did she say to you?”
He rocked back on his heels. “Hmm … I think she mentioned missing Franny … and me. Pretty sure she wants to visit soon. And I’ll have her stay at my place any time she wants.”
I couldn’t deal with his jokes at that point. I spun away and went to call my brother to tell him the hell off for keeping her from me.
Rafe answered on the second ring but only to say, “Glad you called. I have news. We’re moving the wedding up.”
It was like he’d stabbed me right in the heart and then waited for a response.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t form a sentence, could barely even stand.
And then he had the gall to ask, “You still there?”
“I want her location. Right. Fucking now.”
“In two days we’ll be home, and so will most of the people who matter. Old friends and colleagues. We’re inviting everyone today. We’ll have you at the estate too. Let’s not involve everyone though. I don’t need her friends here when they won’t really matter.”
All that mattered to Pink were her friends. What the fuck did he know anyway?
I was going to kill him. And then kill her for hiding away from me to pull this.
“Give her the phone. I want to talk to her.”
He tsked and said I was being ridiculous.
“If you don’t tell me where you both are, I’ll utilize every damn resource I have to find you now.”
He relayed what I’d said to Pink who must have been near him and then I heard her say, “Well, hang up on him then. That reminds me, I have to call Olive to apologize for not being there. We’re not having them at the wedding, right?
Make sure Bane knows not to tell them. I just want this out of the way, and I’ll be able to talk to them after. ”
My brother just agreed like it was fine her best friends wouldn’t be there.
“See you soon, brother.”
And then he hung up.
I felt the pieces of my world falling apart rapidly and realized as they were that I had no real control over them.
Why? Because Pink was my world and I couldn’t change that.
I went to stand in the doorway of Olive’s just to hear her voice as my reality sank in. She sounded so close and still so fucking far away. “Well I just … Right now, I don’t fit anywhere near that man who’s visiting your house.”
Kee sighed with her baby in her arms. “Pink, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Bane, but come stay with me. We can figure it out together.”
“I’m not coming home,” she said, her voice almost muffled now like she was moving. She felt far away, disconnected because she’d embraced the facade I knew she hated. “Tell him to quit looking for me.”