Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

Bianca

Iwoke up the next morning feeling achy and hollow, despair echoing through the empty caverns of my heart as I stared at the blue velvet canopy over my bed. My hand rested over my breastbone in the empty space where Dad’s locket should have lain.

I couldn’t believe Tiernan had ripped it away from me like that.

It ashamed me to admit that before that monstrous act, I’d been intrigued by the scarred and tattooed billionaire. He was a study in contrasts, and as an art lover and sometimes artist, I couldn’t help but feel compelled to understand the intricacies of his duality.

His voice was cultured, East Coast perfection, but the words he spoke were frayed with anger and bitterness, rough where they should have been smooth. The same wrath was mirrored in those serpentine eyes, their narrowed glower under heavy brows. But he had a full mouth, soft and delicate pink like the inside of a seashell. It was incongruous on his harsh features with that long, slicing scar, yet it fit. He wore expensive, impeccably tailored clothing like a classic New York businessman, but his skin was stamped with black tattoos, carving up his flesh in Latin phrases and detailed outlines of random images like the rose on the back of one palm and the full sleeves going up either arm done all in blacks and greys.

He employed a deaf man, a scarred man, and a female lawyer as if equality and acceptance meant something to him yet he called me “little thing” like I was an object and not a girl.

He took in two orphaned children who otherwise would have been condemned to the messy foster care system and potentially separated from each other, but he seemed to hate me. So why would he become our guardian?

My head throbbed as I fought to understand the cruel man who had saved us even though it seemed he sought to destroy us.

I tossed off the silk sheets and swung my feet over the edge of the bed, wiggling my toes on the soft carpet I’d cried into for hours the night before. Dawn had breached the horizon, spilling light as pale as milk across the frosted landscape outside. Brando would be up soon if he wasn’t already and I wanted to be able to spend our first morning in this gothic hellhole together.

When I tried the door, it was blessedly unlocked, which sparked a remnant of rage in my chest. How dare Tiernan steal from me, then lock me in my room like an errant child.

My steps were heavy with anger as I stalked down the long, dark hall filled with priceless art to the stairs. No one had given us a tour of the main floor, so I wandered from large, cluttered room to large, cluttered room, touching my fingers to the marble busts and stacked paintings just to spite Tiernan’s insane rule that we didn’t touch anything.

He had made this our home when he brought us here and I wouldn’t be kept from trying to eke out some comfort in the haunted halls.

I froze in what seemed like the music room, a massive harp and piano gleaming in the light from the beveled windows, because I heard another kind of music.

Brando’s laughter.

My heart unstuck from the web of fear caught between my ribs and began to race. I hurried after the noise, finding myself at the yawning mouth of a staircase descending into the stone-walled basement. A shiver tripped up my spine at the ominous sight, but I didn’t hesitate to run down the stairs, worried about my brother.

I blinked when I emerged into the light at the bottom of the stairs.

A massive room laid with black mats sprawled out in front of me, filled with endless fitness equipment and a small boxing ring. My eyes snagged on Brando’s bright hair where he leaned against the ropes to the ring, shouting his approval as two men boxed within.

One of them was Ezra, his great, hulking body tensed to fight as he faced off with his opponent.

Tiernan.

My mouth went dry as I gaped at the man I was supposed to think of as some kind of father figure. He was barechested, his torso gleaming with a thin sheen of sweat that made him seem like a golden statue come to life. The long hair over the crown of his head was wet and dangling across his brow, catching in his eyelashes as he ducked a powerful punch, then sprung up to deliver his own hit to Ezra’s low left side. There were black boxing gloves on his hands, and black shorts slung precariously low on his narrow hips, revealing the top of his shorn pubic hair and a glimpse of that unknown tattoo.

My God, it should be criminal for such an asshole to be so outrageously sexy.

“Brando, what are you doing down here?” I demanded as I unstuck my feet and went to my little brother, gently untangling his hands from the ropes.

He frowned up at me. “Not now, Anca. Ezra and Tiernanny are fighting and I’ve got money on the match!”

“Excuse me?” I blinked, shocked that Brando even knew what putting money on a match meant.

He grinned at me and held up a fistful of crisp twenty-dollar bills. “Tiernan said it’s my allowance, so I can do what I want with it. I put ten dollars on him ’cause Henrik said Ezra was gonna win.”

I looked up and over at the man who was lifting weights in the corner of the room. He looked like a real-life Mr. Clean, his bald head shining under the lights, muscles bulging as he curled some impossible weight.

“Get him!” Brando yelled in excitement, leaning into the rope so heavily, he almost fell through.

I carted him upright, my eyes swinging back to the action in the ring. Tiernan’s face was a stone edifice, utterly impassible but for the burning eyes that tracked every movement Ezra made and calculated the best plan of attack. I watched as he let Ezra come at him, swinging punch after brutal punch that Tiernan was forced to duck or block. It was hard not to wince, thinking that it was only a matter of time before one of those heavy blows landed.

It seemed clear he was outmatched by the bigger man.

But then, a tiny, curling little grin claimed that scarred mouth, and a second later, Tiernan sprung into action.

My mouth dropped open and my breath arrested in my lungs as I watched him finally attack his opponent. He flew around the ring, weaving and lunging gracefully, so light on his feet he seemed to float even while his arms lashed out powerfully to deliver hit after hit against Ezra, most of them landing despite the other man’s attempts to block him. Regardless of my hatred for him, it was impossible not to note how glorious he was like that, spinning and darting violently, sinuously around the ring, so formidable, so self-assured. The entire time, that little, menacing grin furled the left side of his mouth.

Joy.

That’s what it was.

The first time I’d seen it truly expressed on Tiernan’s face.

That, even more than the gorgeousness of his lean, corded muscles flexing under all that golden, tattooed skin held me utterly in thrall.

It ended quickly, Tiernan’s leg darting out to trip Ezra’s weight into an unsteady stagger and then the punishing move, taking the large man to his back on the ground. Tiernan pinned his arms to the floor with his knees and cocked his right arm back to finish him off.

“Stop!” I cried out, unable to bear watching the kind, gentle man who’d saved Brando and me from the CPS agent get knocked out.

Tiernan paused, his chest heaving, sweat dripping off the tip of his strong nose, the ends of his wet hair. I could see his muscles quivering with the effort to harness his momentum. Finally, he turned his head so that those blazing pale eyes found mine.

“Afraid of a little violence, little girl?” he asked, cocking one eyebrow.

“Afraid the wrong man is winning,” I countered, raising my own brow haughtily.

Henrik’s laughter floated over to us, but I was too mired in Tiernan’s sticky gaze to look over at him as he spoke.

“If the right man always won, Tiernan would be dead already,” he joked, arriving at Brando’s side.

“Technically, Tiernan won,” Brando argued with him, holding out his empty palm. “Cough it up, mister.”

Henrik laughed again, and even Tiernan’s lips twitched, but he still stared at me as if he could burn a hole through my skull.

“You shouldn’t fight in front of a seven-year-old,” I admonished. “You’ll give him the wrong idea.”

Tiernan gave me one last lingering look, then sprung up from the ground, tore off his right glove with his teeth, and then offered his hand to help Ezra up.

“Violence is a natural part of life,” he lectured me, his tone bored and condescending. “It is better to be armed for war than to be naïve enough to think adversity will never reach you.”

“We’ve done nothing to warrant adversity,” I argued.

A short, gruff bark of laughter. “No one is wholly innocent, little thing. Least of all you.”

“Tiernan’s going to teach me how to fight like Iron Man,” Brando told me, tugging on my hand so I’d watch him put his little fists up. “No one will make fun of me for peeing my pants sometimes, ever again.”

“We don’t fight people with violence,” I reminded him, furious that Tiernan’s influence was already corrupting my sweet little guy. “We fight them with grace. We condemn them by rising above their primitive behavior.”

“Violence is considerably more fun,” Tiernan told Brando with a wink that made him laugh. “And lasting.”

“Aggression is a dumb man’s way of expressing the words he wishes he could say,” I countered, feeling my own aggression mount. “Of course, someone like you wouldn’t understand that.”

Something dark moved across Tiernan’s face, something black and vicious that made me shiver with regret. I wished fervently I could take the words back but he was already moving toward me, lifting the rope to create a gap.

“Get in here,” he ordered.

I glared at him, lifting my chin in stubborn reaction. “What? Taking my locket wasn’t enough, you’re going to beat me up, now?”

“Get. In. Here,” he ground out between his teeth, a muscle jumping in the square cut of his jaw. “Now.”

Fear clutched at my heart, but I shook it off, deciding Tiernan wouldn’t hurt me in front of witnesses and my little brother. I ducked beneath the rope and stepped over the bottom one, entering the ring in my baggy old Picasso tee and sleep shorts. Ezra moved to the corner, giving us space without questioning Tiernan’s motives.

“You worked at a diner in Texas,” Tiernan began to speak as he bullied me with his proximity into the middle of the floor, then began to slowly circle me. “Did you ever get hit on by the patrons?”

“Yes,” I said, because of course, I did. That was par for the course with serving as a relatively attractive young woman.

“Did anyone touch you?” he asked, his voice hissing, flicking with venom like a snake’s.

I gasped as one of his hands lashed out to pinch at my bottom. The sharp sting made me gasp. Reflexively, I swatted my hand behind me to knock him away, but he’d already circled in front of me again.

“Did any of them try to steal a kiss?” he growled, lunging forward so quickly I stumbled back in shock.

He caught me with a fierce hand in my hair, yanking it back to expose my neck. I thought—wickedly, wildly, heart pounding with fear and something far darker—that he might land a kiss there.

He didn’t.

Instead, his teeth sunk into the junction of my neck and shoulder, biting down hard, then pulling at the skin so his teeth raked over my flesh. The bright pain mellowed into a tingly burn at the site of impact. Farther down my body, that burn echoed between my legs. A shameful blush seeped through my cheeks down to my chest as Tiernan danced away on light feet.

“Fuck off!” I lashed out, slashing my hand through the air.

“Did they?” he demanded, voice ringing out through the cavernous gym.

No one else existed outside the ring as he stalked toward me, ferocity stamped in every inch of his beautifully carved face.

“Did they take what they wanted uninvited?” he continued to snarl. “Did they make you feel like the scared, silly little girl that you are? Defenseless and alone?”

He’d cornered me against the ropes, his weaponized body looming over me, a dead end I was desperate to escape from. I watched in horror as his right arm reared back as if to hit me.

Despite everything, I’d never believed Tiernan would hurt me and the idea of it felt like a colossal betrayal.

“Violence isn’t the answer,” he agreed, throwing his cocked arm toward my face. I closed my eyes and braced for impact, terror in every atom of my body. When the pain didn’t land, I opened my eyes to stare at his dark face, at the open palm that hovered briefly over my cheek before softly, light as a whisper of breath, tracing the curve of my cheek down to my chin which he curled his fingers around. He held me still while those sun-bleached jade eyes burned into mine. “But sometimes, it’s the only response someone is able to understand.”

I blinked at him, chest heaving, blood roaring through my ears. I felt off-balance, not because of the threat his tall, honed body represented against mine, not because he’d scared me so totally I’d been one second away from crying.

I was off-balance because he’d proven his point so eloquently.

What if I’d been ready for that Morelli thug to come for me as a girl? What if I’d been armed with defensive skills when Quinn Waterstone tried to force me to my knees in the girl’s locker room one day after school?

What if peace was my mother tongue, but violence was my second language?

I’d be safer, surer certainly than I’d ever felt before.

A sigh shuddered out of me. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be rather melodramatic?”

Tiernan blinked at me, his mouth softening with shock at my reaction. Around us, someone laughed and I remembered that we weren’t alone. My eyes sought out Brando who was looking at us with wide eyes.

“You okay, bud?” I asked him calmly even though Tiernan’s body was still humming an inch away from my own, his warmth beating against me like waves against the shore, luring me particle of sand by particle of sand farther under his control.

Brando swallowed visibly, then shrugged. “Tiernan’s right, you know. That’s why superheroes fight, to save people from bad guys. I bet if someone tried to hurt us now, Tiernan wouldn’t let them. Right?”

Tiernan didn’t look at my brother, he continued to stare at me, something subtle working behind his eyes. Abruptly, he dropped his grip on my face and stepped away, swinging to face Brando with a tiny smile.

“Better than that, I’m going to teach you to save yourselves,” he promised.

“Cool!” he cried out, fist-pumping into the air before he scrambled to enter the ring himself.

Henrik held the ropes for him and I watched as my little brother jumped into the ring and launched himself at Tiernan. Our startled guardian reacted instinctively, catching Brando in the air and planting him on his hip. He looked shocked and vaguely horrified to be holding a kid in his arms, but Brando didn’t seem to notice. He was already showing his new idol how he could make a fist and asking whether or not he could learn to do Iron Man’s signature flying punch.

I watched him unfurl like a flower in the light of Tiernan’s male influence and ached knowing I would never be able to give that to him. That he would never be able to get that from our dad.

Conflict raged war in my chest as I watched the cruel adult soften slightly the longer he held the child, his mouth curling up in the corner as it did when Brando pretended to punch him in the chin.

He wasn’t a good man. I knew this. Had evidence of it in the way he’d stolen my locket, threatened me, antagonized me, and didn’t even seem to mourn my mother.

But he was the only man we had.

And I was loath to admit there was some insane logic to his mad, cruel view of the world. If Brando and I were going to be the wards of a man like Tiernan in the kind of world he lived in, we needed all the help we could get to protect ourselves. I’d rather learn to protect us myself than ever count on anyone ever again.

As if sensing my resolve, Tiernan’s gaze snapped to mine and he lifted one dark brow in question.

I bit my lip, but inclined my head. “I’ll let you teach me.”

His eyes sparkled at my choice of words. “I’ll let you learn from me.”

“Tiernan?”

I turned to look at the female voice that called out from the bottom of the stairs and nearly gasped at the sight of the beautiful woman standing there.

“Tilda.” I didn’t have to look at Tiernan to hear the scowl in his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I hadn’t heard from you,” she said distractedly, her pale gaze sweeping over the scene. I watched as she reached up to tug at a lock of auburn hair before she tucked it back behind her ear, a kind of nervous tic. “What the hell are children doing here?”

Tiernan sighed gustily behind me, so I looked back to watch him hand off Brando to Ezra unceremoniously. Brando didn’t mind, already turning to talk about fighting strategy with the deaf man, speaking slowly so he could read his lips.

“I’ve taken on two wards,” he explained as he jumped over the ropes with one hand and landed lightly on the black mats, making his way to the well-dressed woman.

Tilda blinked as she accepted a kiss on the cheek from him. “Wards? You?”

“Trust me, he wasn’t our first choice,” I intoned.

Tilda frowned at me curiously before directing the look to Tiernan. “I feel as though I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. The cousin I know would never take in two random orphans.”

“They aren’t random,” he offered obliquely. “And I’m not happy that you just strolled into Lion Court. You know how I feel about privacy.”

Finally, she seemed to relax, rolling her eyes at him. “Oh, come off it. Walcott let me in and he wouldn’t have if you were doing any of your underground shenanigans. Now, are you going to introduce me?”

“Tilda is my cousin,” he called over his shoulder to us as he moved to where his shirt and phone lay on a stool.

“His favorite cousin,” she amended with a wide smile that made her pale, freckled face glow. She walked to the boxing ring and extended her hand through the ropes to me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Welcome to the family, I suppose.”

“Bianca,” I replied, accepting her hand, noticing it was smooth and perfumed unlike my calloused, chipped-polish fingers. “My brother over there with Ezra is Brandon.”

“Actually, now that you’re here, you might as well be useful,” Tiernan said blandly without looking up from his phone, fingers flying over the keys. From my angle, I could count the black tally marks marring the skin between his shoulders. Thirteen of them. I wondered with some apprehension what they might represent. “Take Bianca and Brando shopping for me, will you? Bianca starts school at Sacred Heart Academy on Monday and Brando is going to St Michael’s Prep.”

“Oh,” Tilda cried, clapping her hands. “Yes, of course, I can help! Are you ready to go now?” She seemed to realize I was wearing an oversized tee and Brando was wearing his Spiderman pajamas. “Well, obviously not. I’ll give you ten minutes to freshen up and Ezra can take us into the city. I have an appointment at four I cannot miss, so we better get cracking.”

I bugged my eyes out at her enthusiasm, but she was already turning around to chat to Ezra about the itinerary.

“I don’t need new clothes,” I told Tiernan, stalking over to him. “We don’t need anything more from you.”

“Don’t be pathetic, Bianca,” he tsked. “You have no money but mine. No house but this house. No family but my own. You’ll take what I give you and be happy.”

“I like my clothes,” I argued, somewhat childishly, but I didn’t care. Even if I stuck out like a sore thumb at some fancy school, at least I would be remaining true to myself.

A down-on-her-luck Belcante always held their head high no matter what.

Tiernan finally lifted his gaze from his phone to drop it slowly down my body. Heat seared my cheeks as I realized I hadn’t brushed my hair that morning, the heavy mass of it tangled around my head and shoulders, my shirt three times too big and holey at the hem. His eyes lingered on my bare legs, on the ends of my polished toenails as they curled into the mats with my effort not to squirm.

“I don’t like them,” he finally announced. “And what I think matters most.”

“What would you have me in, diamonds and fur?” I demanded. “That’s not me.”

Or, it hadn’t been in over five years.

His jaw clenched and I noticed he hadn’t shaved yet that morning, a dark pelt of short stubble shadowing his lower face, highlighting that incongruently full, beautifully shaped mouth.

“I’d have you in silk,” he murmured, low and intimate just for me to hear as the others talked elsewhere in the room. “The same texture as your skin. I’d have you in sapphires the color of your eyes and cashmere as soft as your hair.”

“Why?” I cleared my throat of the desire that was lodged there. “Why do you even care what I wear?”

“You represent this house now, and I will not have any possession of mine less than perfectly presented.” God, he was cold and hard. I wondered madly if he’d been made instead of born, some automaton stolen from a factory.

“Says the man with the disfiguring scar,” I quipped, almost immediately regretting my words because they were unfair and untrue.

The wicked, long-healed scar bisecting his lower left cheek from ear to chin puckered the skin into any angry line, but it in no way diminished the impact of his blatant handsomeness.

Somehow, it heightened it.

Besides, I didn’t care about his scars or anyone else’s. I knew too well that everyone bore their own wounds whether or not they were visible on the flesh or buried deep beneath it.

Tiernan moved just slightly, a tiny recoil someone else less in tune with his physicality might have missed. But I noticed it. And I knew my barbed words had landed.

“Scarred or not, I am the man in charge of your life,” he reminded me, sneering that beautiful mouth into an ugly, hateful expression. “Remember that when Tilda takes you into the city. If I find out you’ve said anything ugly to her, disrespected her or her authority in any way, you’ll think locking you in your room last night was merely child’s play.”

“You’re so obsessed with being in control, someone might think you were overcompensating for something,” I threw at him.

But he only laughed that long, low chuckle as dark as smoke. “Oh, Bianca, I’m happy to prove that statement false anytime you’d like. For now, do not play games with me you have no hope of winning. Be a good little thing for Tilda and I may just give you that silly locket back.”

*     *     *

Tilda McTiernan wasn’ta thing like her cousin.

Case and point, she laughed when I told her exactly that.

“Well, Tiernan hasn’t had it easy,” she admitted as she tossed yet another dress onto the pile of garments in the arms of the shop employee following us around Bloomingdales in New York City. “I think that should do it for now.”

Dutifully, I followed Tilda to the back of the store where the changing rooms were. Ezra had taken Brando to FAO Schwarz to buy some new toys so that Tilda and I could “take our time” picking out the right outfits for me. The first one she thrust at me was a floor-length gown made of shimmering oyster silk and feathers.

“When am I ever going to wear this?”

She smiled, waving a hand through the air. “Oh, this and that. You never know. Tiernan isn’t exactly Mr. Social, but you might be called to represent the family at some gathering or other. Everyone is expected at Thanksgiving, the Christmas Ball, Bryant’s birthday party, and the like too.”

“And it’s acceptable to wear feathers to some of these occasions?” I asked weakly as one of the feathers tickled my nose, making me sneeze.

Tilda laughed lightly. “Definitely. Trust me, I have an eye for these things. You’ll look like a dove in it. Innocent and beautiful.”

My reluctance evaporated in light of her comment. There was no one left to call me “dove” or “dovey,” now that Aida was gone, but the bird and its symbolism would always mean everything to me.

My father had given me the nickname when I was four. I could still remember him telling me I was his dove not because I was fragile and innocent, but because I brought him peace.

As I slipped into the changing room, Tilda continued to chatter away.

“Of course, Tiernan hates to attend any of our gatherings and you can’t really blame the man. None of his immediate family even talk to him, outside of his parents, and they’re…well, everyone knows what they’re like.”

“I don’t. What do you mean?”

It was too good an opportunity to pass up, prying sweet and pretty Tilda for more information about the guardian who seemed more like my captor at that point. I wanted answers to any of the innumerable mysteries he presented. Maybe if I understood him more, I would be less fascinated with the enigma of him.

“Well, it’s common knowledge in the family, so I don’t suppose I have to keep it secret from you now that you are family,” she mused.

“I won’t tell a soul,” I promised as I shimmied into the slithering material and felt it slide like rainwater down my curves.

I stepped out of the room to do a lame little twirl for Tilda who gasped, covering her mouth with her hand, eyes wide as she took me in.

“Exquisite,” she breathed. “How old did you say you were?”

“I didn’t. I’m seventeen.”

“Ah, you’d better be careful, Tiernan or his dad will have you married for political gain in a nanosecond looking the way you do. Especially in that dress.”

“I’m not even eighteen yet,” I repeated horrified by the idea of being married off like some fifteenth-century bride with zero autonomy.

Tilda shrugged. “The age of consent in New York State is seventeen. Besides, it’s the way of the wealthy, darling. With great money comes great manipulations. If they can use you, they will.” Her eyes narrowed, a shrewd intelligence flashing in their depths. “How did you say Tiernan discovered you?”

“I didn’t.” I took a page from Tiernan’s book and didn’t offer anything further. “You were mentioning something about why he doesn’t go to social gatherings.”

“Oh, he isn’t invited to many,” she assured me. “He’s the black sheep of the family, which is saying something. His older brothers are basically psychopaths and, in my humble opinion, Tiernan is the only one with any heart left after their father tried to beat it out of them.”

“He beat them?” I echoed, frankly shocked by the idea that anyone could hurt Tiernan.

I’d seen him fight in the ring, the powerful grace of his trained body like a weapon arching through the air. Then again, even Tiernan had been a child once just like Brando, young and tender, in need of protection.

“That’s the story,” she murmured as she handed me a blouse and skirt combination, obviously preoccupied with my wardrobe. “That scar on his face? His father gave him that.”

My fingers flew up to my cheek, tracing the path of Tiernan’s angry scar on my own flesh.

Lane Constantine hadn’t been perfect. He was a married man with a family and an entire life separated from Aida, Brando, and me, but he had only ever protected us. Only ever loved us. Even at his most terse, in the weeks leading up to his death, Dad had catered to our needs before his own. An image of him at the dinner table, his cheek pressed to my open chemistry textbook as he slept soundly, having fallen asleep after checking over my homework, flashed into my mind.

If I brought him peace, he brought me safety. I knew no one would ever hurt me or at least, never get away with it so long as my dad was alive.

It seemed Tiernan had grown up with the opposite sentiment in his home.

“A belt,” she continued as she pushed me into the changing room again. “The buckle pierced his cheek and cut it open from ear to mouth. I wasn’t there, but his sister, Sophia, told me you could see his teeth through the gap in his flesh.”

A shiver tore down my vertebrae like a sticky zipper.

“Obviously, he doesn’t see him anymore,” I surmised, needing Tilda to validate it for some unknown reason.

She stared at me for a moment, her lips pursed as if around a sour secret. “He works for him, actually.” When shock broke open my face, dropping my mouth into a wide “O,” she sighed. “When you’ve been abused all your life, it’s the only thing you know. You come to expect it, to believe that you deserve it.”

“But…Tiernan is one of the most arrogant, self-assured people I’ve ever met,” I argued, unable to come to grips with this new knowledge.

“Mmm,” his cousin said, disappointment clear in her pale gaze. “How well do you know him?”

I only stared at her as she gently pushed me a little farther into the dressing room and closed the door in my face. I pressed my forehead to the wood door and closed my eyes against the wave of sickness that overtook me. Tiernan, younger, no silver among the dark hair, no creases beside his pale green eyes, fuller in the face and skinnier through the limbs, cut open by a beating from his own father. I wondered what he had been like before that moment. If, once, he’d been kinder, softer, someone willing to open their heart to new people.

It was almost impossible to imagine him as anything less than what he was now. Cruel, cold, almost almighty with his own arrogance, heartlessness, and wealth.

But knowing this little fact about him, this tiny key in the lock of his many secrets, softened me toward Tiernan dangerously.

I already found him fascinating despite myself.

Attractive beyond what I could bear.

I didn’t need to see any traces of humanity in him. In fact, it almost horrified me that the simple story had impacted me so profoundly.

“He’s still a monster,” I murmured to myself as I tried on yet another outfit for Tilda, but a tiny voice in the back of my mind whispered back, “Monsters aren’t so monstrous when you understand where they came from.”