Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

Tiernan Morelli

Ineed yourhelp.

I sat in my windowless office at Iniquity three stories beneath the teeming city streets with Bianca Belcante’s sweet, lightly southern-accented voice ringing against the walls from the speaker on my desk.

I need your help.

The words were simple, yet the meaning was profound.

Mostly because I realized no one in my entire thirty years on this planet had ever asked me for help. I was the third brother of four in my eight-sibling family. My younger siblings went to Lucian for advice or Leo for protection. Not me.

I wasn’t the kind of man you went to for help unless it involved violence or retribution.

Morellis weren’t shiny and clean and we didn’t pretend to be like our rivals, the Constantine family.

How fucking dull.

The Morellis liked their cracks and fissures, their sins and the inevitable repentance that followed. The grit and the shadows, the slightly broken.

Their imperfections made them a dark force in New York City’s high society.

But even for the Morellis, there was a line.

And the third son of Bryant and Sarah Morelli, Tiernan Morelli was not just slightly broken.

He was irreparably damaged.

The black sheep.

The dark horse.

As insignificant to the family as he was dangerous to them because they didn’t understand him. They couldn’t.

How could the smart Morellis relate to a deeply dyslexic man?

How could the gorgeous Morellis look such a scarred man in the face?

How could the blue blood Morellis accept a man who was born under a cloud of suspicion the family had spent years trying to hide from society?

I was an other and in a family like the Morellis, there was no room for lack of conformity, no space for individuality. You were one of them or you weren’t.

I’d spent the last thirty years of my life trying to prove myself to them. To my father, Bryant, who still tried to rule the family from the shadows even though technically my eldest brother, Lucian, had taken over the company last year. And maybe, in a twisted way, to Lucian and Leo, my older siblings. We had no relationship. Is that because I was forced to do the unthinkable by Bryant on my twelfth birthday? Or because, even before that, there had always been whispers about me, a tension surrounding my presence in the family all because of the shade of my eyes? Whatever the reason, we weren’t close. I tried not to care—and failed.

Not Morelli brown. Not even my mother’s McTiernan grey.

But a bright, pale green like sun-bleached jade.

Those eyes had set me apart immediately, but my other imperfections had only solidified the divide.

So, I did what I could to make myself valuable to the family.

Lucian ran the family empire, Morelli Holdings.

Leo ran his own subsidiary in real estate. They were successful, and more importantly, legitimate businessmen.

And me?

I was the one Bryant went to when the dirty work needed to be done. The one who controlled the shadier interest of our family, with a few of my own healthy ventures on the side.

If my family didn’t want me in the light, they were more than happy to have me control the shadows. In the dark, I ruled over New York City just as surely as my father and brothers did their own domains. I might have drawn the short straw in their eyes, but I loved the underbelly of the city, the violence and craftiness of criminals called out to my own scarred heart.

I understood their avarice and drive. I felt the same bitterness and hatred in my veins, but I used it to fuel my own success.

There was no line I was too afraid to cross, no limit to my greed for power and acceptance.

So, when Bianca Belcante’s sweet, young voice called to me for help, the words didn’t so much resonate in the empty chambers of my hollow heart as they did in the deep, dark center of my gut.

This was an opportunity.

I’d spent three excruciating months seducing Aida Belcante and I had been this fucking close to getting her to move to New York with me. To starting phase two of my plan to bring the Constantine family to their fucking knees for all of the crème de la crème of society to witness.

Because Aida wasn’t just some pretty, vapid little trinket I was playing around with for fun.

I didn’t have fun.

I had purpose.

And my purpose with the older woman was simple.

As soon as Ricardo Stavos, the private investigator on retainer with our law firm, Lombardi & Ghorbani, came back to me with evidence of her association to the Constantine family, I’d known what I would do.

Use Lane Constantine’s mistress against his widower, Caroline Constantine, and her entire pathetic brood. Because if there was one thing that bitch hated, it was public humiliation.

Aida’s death could have derailed my plans, but then there was her daughter, responsible, martyr-inclined, little Bianca begging me for help.

She was placing herself, wrapped up pretty with a bow like a fucking birthday present, in my lap.

So, I’d take it.

She was only seventeen and her brother only seven.

They had no next of kin so far as I could tell, so both children would go into foster care, probably separated because kids often were in those cases, especially with such a big age gap between them.

I’d sweep in on my white fucking steed and scoop them up for myself. It wouldn’t be hard. When you had more money than Croesus and connections in every corner of the police force, politics, and business, getting custodianship of two brats would be a piece of cake.

I had no fucking idea what I’d do with two kids, but I could worry about that later. They were pawns in a game that started before they were born. And I would control them. Time was of the essence if I was going to strike before the Constantines found out Lane’s dirty little secret and used her toward their own ends.

Caroline could sniff out potential family scandal from across the fucking country.

“Of course,” I told Bianca, already pulling up my lawyer’s info to text her about the situation. “I’ll help you, little girl. But you should know, I’ll expect to be paid back.”

There was a choked noise through the phone, a sound of pain and shock, but also indignation. A smile played at the edge of my mouth. I enjoyed making her sputter and flush, her olive tanned skin crimson at the cheeks and throat.

There was no artifice in Bianca. No grace or learned charms. She ate Lucky Charms cereal and read Marvel comics with her little brother on Friday nights. She argued passionately about climate change, nearly biting off my head for using a private jet and single-use plastics without understanding that environmentalism didn’t have enough economic merit to change the ways of the big dicks with big money who ran the world. She lost her train of thought looking at the way the dawn broke over the horizon and turned the clouds mottled pink and she sighed over the images of paintings she looked up in library art books. She wore oversized shirts that skimmed the tops of her thighs and chest-baring sports tops around a man who could eat her for breakfast as if she were safe in my company.

Clueless and naïve.

She would be even easier to manipulate than Aida.

Despite her youth and naiveté though, there was no doubt Bianca was strong-willed and smart. Aida bragged constantly about her daughter’s good grades, but it went beyond that. Bianca had gumption, something most women lacked when they were faced with my scarred face and cold demeanor.

She wouldn’t be as easy to manipulate as her mother, but something dark and hungry in my gut was excited about that. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to see Bianca’s stubborn chin wobble with tears and her eyes flash as I took her under my wing. Under my control.

Poor little thing thought I was her salvation when all I intended to offer her was ruination.

“I-I don’t have any money,” she pointed out. “Brandon and I…we don’t have anything… Anyone.”

No, but they would.

I’d give them my world on a silver platter and watch raptly as it gobbled them up.

“Hush,” I purred, a dark seed of joy blooming in my gut. “I’ll take care of everything. Did you call the police?”

“They’re on their way. I haven’t told Brando yet. He’s still asleep. I’m worried they’ll try to take him from me.”

“Don’t worry about that. Someone will be there shortly to get you two and take you to a hotel.” I had already texted my associate, Ezra Feck, to pick them up and get them settled. While his official title was my bodyguard, the truth was, he was more of an enforcer. He was also one of the only people I trusted with the enormity of my secrets. Elena Lombardi, my lawyer and the only woman I entrusted with the seedier side of the Morelli buisness, would be there in the next few hours. “I’ll be there when I can.”

“When you can?” she repeatedly dumbly. “My mother—your girlfriend—just died and that’s all you have to say?”

I sighed wearily. “Now is not the time to be childish, Bianca. You need to be strong for your brother.”

“I am strong,” she barked back, a Chihuahua snapping at a Great fucking Dane. “But my mom just died, Tiernan. Are you so cold that doesn’t mean anything to you?”

I stared at the ring on my right hand, the heavy, ornate silver carved around a fat, square sapphire the same color as Bianca’s wide-eyed gaze. It was the McTiernan ring, given to the eldest male child through the generations.

My mother, Sarah, had pushed it onto my broken finger when I was nine after Bryant had taken his fists to me for some forgotten crime. I hadn’t screamed as the metal caught on the protruding bone even though it hurt like hellfire. The look in her eyes held me transfixed, the grey gone to stone with somber intensity.

“You belong to no one but me.” She stroked her hand over my wavy dark hair, then clamped her fingers over the back of my neck to give me a little shake. “Bryant can have the lot of them, but you’remy Tiernan, lord of my house.”

And then later, the ring on my finger, stuck at the base by the swollen mass of flesh around my broken bone above it, my father had cornered me in the hall, his eyes fixed on the silver.

He’d reminded me, as he was prone to, that even if he didn’t want me, didn’t love me, would never be proud of me, I was still his to do with as he pleased.

He’d broken every other finger on my right hand.

If either of my parents died, I wouldn’t go to their funeral.

So…

“No.” My voice was flat, cold. “It doesn’t. Death is a part of life. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you’ll grow up and get smart.”

“You’re a monster,” she whispered, but her voice was stronger than it had been at the start of our call. Hating me gave her resolve, an anchor in her storming torment.

“Undoubtedly,” I agreed as my computer pinged and the guardianship agreement appeared in my inbox. Elena worked quickly. “Yet you asked for my help and you’ll reap what you sow.”

In the background, sirens wailed.

“I didn’t have anyone else to call,” she admitted softly, and I could picture her sitting in some dark corner, the dawn light breaking open across the classically beautiful planes of her face, her eyes dark as wet blue velvet with unshed tears.

Prettier in her sorrow than she’d ever been with her smiles.

Tragedy, I could understand.

“You called the devil you know,” I surmised, standing up from my desk as my man, Henrik Basso stepped through the door and jerked his chin at me. “I have to get back to work, Bianca, but I’ll come for you. And when I do, remember that you asked for this.”

A little pause. A hiccough of hesitation.

Then, voice thrumming with conviction, she said, “Do your worst. Nothing is as bad as this.”

I hung up on my dark chuckle, taking a moment to let it move through me. I didn’t have reason to laugh often and I enjoyed the sensation.

“Sir?” Henrik asked, shock in his eyes even though he knew well enough to keep it out of his face.

I grinned at him, the expression sharp like knife points. “Make it known through the proper channels that I’ll be unreachable for the next few weeks.”

It wouldn’t do to have the rest of my family discover my plan for the Belcante siblings before I could put it into action. Lucian, the cocky asshole, would sweep in and claim victory for himself while Leo, newly in love and soft with it, might try to caution me not to spar with Caroline.

Bryant would try to use the situation to wrestle control of Morelli Holdings back from Lucian, playing Bianca like a trump card against the Constantines and his own family.

Too fucking bad for them.

This was my triumph, not theirs.

I’d show them after years of their derision, their lack of respect, that I deserved the success and power of the Morelli name just as much as they did.

Maybe even more.

“Work?” Henrik asked.

“A pet project. One that requires my avid attention,” I corrected.

There was practically a goddamn skip in my step as I moved out the door onto the floor of the gambling den I operated in midtown for all the wealthy suckers who loved to throw their money at my feet.

After years of searching, employing investigators across the country, planting seeds in the ears of the right people, my patience was finally paying dividends.

The fall of the Constantine family had dropped into my lap in the guise of a pretty, innocent blonde who had no idea the deplorable ways I would use her to bring down my enemies.