Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

Bianca

“Stop squirming,” Tiernan ordered as he drove through the dense morning traffic on the New York City streets, one hand casually resting on the wheel, his Patek Philippe watch gleaming in the pale light.

I stopped squirming in my seat, but the plaid uniform skirt still itched at my bare thighs beneath it. I tried to tug it down over my knees, but the gray and green fabric remained mid-thigh. When I wriggled again, Tiernan’s free hand lashed out to clamp around my leg.

“Enough,” he ordered, squeezing so tight I wondered if it would leave a bruise.

A dark part of me wished it would.

We’d already dropped Brando off at his all-boys school in his dapper little uniform. It was emotional to watch him join the other kids. He was all excitement, even though it was a totally new school in a new, huge, and strange city. I admired the adaptability of kids. Even though I was only seventeen, I was nervous about the newness of everything, whether or not they’d know immediately that I was an imposter in their wealthy midst.

“Listen,” Tiernan said on an annoyed sigh. “You’ll be fine. McTiernans don’t cower before anyone, least of all a hoard of immature teens.”

“I am a teen,” I reminded him. “And I’m not a McTiernan.”

“For all intents and purposes, you are now,” he corrected, looking over at me at a stoplight. He looked so dashing in the luxe interior of the Aston Martin that I felt the absurd urge to touch him to make sure he was real. “Chin up, Bianca. The elite can smell your fear.”

“You would know,” I muttered, looking out the window even though the view was so much better inside the car.

Yesterday had left a storm of conflict in my soul about the enigmatic man, but I’d resolved myself to remember his overwhelming bad qualities instead of the infinitesimal good ones. He’d barely mourned my mother, demanded absolute obedience from me while simultaneously treating me like dirt, and his intentions taking Brando and me in were more than slightly shady. I couldn’t trust him, shouldn’t let my guard down around him, and I couldn’t waver for a single second or I knew the jerk would take advantage.

He chuckled as we finally swung into the parking lot at Sacred Heart. I pressed my nose to the glass, craning to see the entire massive brick edifice.

“Wow,” I breathed, shocked at the beauty of the grounds and the perfectly appointed students milling around on the front steps with their Prada tie clips, preppy plaids, and expensive shoes. “This is like something straight off Gossip Girl.”

Tiernan ignored me, reaching into the back to grab my new designer bag and dump it into my lap. “Get going.”

“What, you aren’t going to wish me luck on my first day, Daddy?” I asked sweetly, batting my eyelashes.

His mouth flattened and that hand found my thigh again, squeezing hard enough to bruise. “No. I will remind you of the rules. You do not speak about me or the private matters of our home. You do not fuck around. Straight As or I’ll have you pulled out of SHA and put into a school in the fucking ghetto. Is that understood?”

“Crystal clear,” I muttered.

“And, Bianca?” he practically purred in a way that was both sexual and threatening. “No boys.”

“Jealous?” I baited with a mean smile.

“I’m not jealous. Legally you are mine, and I protect what is mine at all costs. You don’t want me to have to remind some teenage boy that your body isn’t theirs to do with as they please.”

A shiver rattled my bones before I could brace for it, alerting Tiernan to my ridiculous arousal over his possessiveness. I watched his eyes flare neon green, then darken.

He leaned close until all I could see were those eyes and all I could smell was his smoke and sin scent. “You don’t want me to have to remind you, either.”

“Threatening a minor?” I tried to counter, but my voice was all breath.

My gaze dropped to his scarred mouth. I wondered what those full lips might feel like capturing mine, how the texture of his scar would feel under my tongue. I swallowed thickly and wrenched myself away, breathing too rapidly.

Tiernan grinned that slow, cruel grin as he leaned back too, insolent with power. “Ezra will pick you up at three-thirty. Good luck, little thing, make Daddy proud.”

I flipped him the finger as I collected my bag and got out of the car, slamming the door on his chuckle.

When I turned around, someone was standing there staring at the Aston with a frown. He was absolutely gorgeous. The blond hair and blue eyes gave him an angelic look, but the broad shoulders and square jaw made him look like an all-American jock.

Before I met Tiernan, this guy would have been exactly who I thought I’d want. A Prince Charming.

Instead, I found myself inconceivably aroused by the villain.

“Hey,” I said with a big smile. “Do you have a car fetish or something?”

The guy blinked and his frown disappeared to be replaced with a genuine smile as he laughed. “Not at all. I drive a beat-up Toyota.”

I arched a brow, taking in his school uniform and the wealthy students all around us. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Scholarship kid,” he admitted with a charming shrug.

“New kid,” I countered, offering my hand. “Bianca Belcante, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Belcante? I could have sworn that was a Morelli who dropped you off,” he admitted with an uneasy laugh.

“God, no!” I shuddered at the thought. “I may be new to New York, but even I know enough to never get involved with one of those.”

“So, it was your boyfriend who dropped you off?” he asked with a sly smile.

“No, my, uh, my guardian.” It was difficult to label exactly what Tiernan was to me.

“Cool. Well, I’m Elias Constantine.” He took my hand in a firm grip and tugged me a little closer, his eyes sparkling. “It’s nice to meet a fellow fish out of water.”

“Constantine?” I echoed, my heart stalling. “As in Bishop’s Landing Constantines?”

“The same. But I should warn you, I come from the poor side of the family and I have absolutely zero pull with Caroline.”

A Constantine.

An actual, in-the-flesh Constantine.

I blinked at him dazedly, surprised I hadn’t guessed right off. He had the classic good looks and breeding of someone in Dad’s family. It was only upon closer inspection that I could detect the wear in his uniform, the generic sneakers, and old cloth backpack.

“Was Lane Constantine your father?” I asked, wondering madly if I could be meeting one of my half-brothers.

“No, no, poor side, remember?” His smile was slightly crooked and all the more charming for it. “Please don’t tell me you’re one of those people who’s obsessed with my family.”

I was, of course. I’d been curious about Dad’s family my entire life. Once, I’d caught Dad talking to Winston, his eldest, over video chat and I’d ached for him to introduce us. It took more years than I was willing to admit for me to understand I would never meet the Constantines of Bishop’s Landing.

To understand I would always be hidden away, pulled out when it was convenient and always in secret.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said, somewhat stiltedly. “The only thing I’m interested in is making friends.”

“Well, I think I can help with that.” He offered me his arm like an old-fashioned gentleman as the bell rang to signal the start of homeroom. “May I escort you to your first class?”

I beamed at him, threading my arm through his. “By all means, kind sir. Lead the way.”

*     *     *

Elias was officiallyone of the coolest, kindest people I’d ever met. He introduced me to his posse of attractive teammates on the varsity soccer squad, but it was one of his good friends, Gabriella, who I instantly adored because she was bubbly and sweet as hell. When I left my last class before lunch, Elias was leaning against the lockers outside the room waiting for me, and while we waited in line at the gourmet cafeteria, he invited me to hang out after school.

I was torn. I wanted to be home with Brando after his first day, after his episode yesterday—even though he seemed fully recovered. But I also recognized the offer for the social opportunity it was. Elias was a different breed of teenage boy than I’d ever known before. He was confident almost to the point of arrogance, but with a self-deprecating humor that balanced it beautifully. His guy friends made a few cracks at my looks and where I’d come from, but Elias put an end to that with a few unimpressed glares. I had a feeling he was much less like the stereotypical jock than he presented to the world of Sacred Heart and I was curious to get to know him better, especially because he was the first connection to Dad’s family I’d had in years. It was too good to give up.

So, I texted Ezra to ask if it was okay and he promised to be on standby for when I wanted to go home. I asked how Brando was doing and he assured me my little brother couldn’t stop babbling on about how awesome his new school was.

“Boyfriend?” Elias asked, jerking his chin at my phone as I smiled down at it.

I laughed a little too loudly, probably, as if the idea of having a boyfriend was absurd. “No, my little brother. It was his first day at a new school too. I just wanted to check in.”

“Cute,” he said approvingly as we walked down the street with Gabriella. “I’m super close with my sister, Harlow, too.”

“Only child,” Gabriella said with a dramatic sigh. “You guys are lucky.”

Neither Elias nor I protested the fact as we walked three in a row along the sidewalk on our way to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. When I’d mentioned that I just moved to New York, both Elias and Gabriella had insisted we visit a local attraction to start me on my path to becoming a real New Yorker.

They didn’t know I’d been born two hours away in a small town to a father who owned more than half of Manhattan. They didn’t know even with that, or maybe because of it, I’d never set foot on the island.

They were just nice kids who were eager to show the new girl around.

So, I told them about my dreams of visiting The Met, and even though they seemed surprised, they agreed to go with me. I guessed most teenagers would want to see the Empire State Building or Fifth Avenue, maybe the Statue of Liberty or Central Park.

I couldn’t wait to see the famed gallery. The place my father had always promised to take me even though I realized now, it had been an empty pledge.

“I have to confess,” Elias admitted shooting me an appraising look out the corner of his eye. “I was staring at your car because I thought for a second you’d been dropped off by Leo Morelli.”

“Leo Morelli?” I asked, a genuine, almost nervous laugh bubbling up my throat.

If only he knew how absurd a claim that was. A Morelli taking in a Constantine bastard was too Shakespearean to be believed.

He shrugged a shoulder, a playful grin on his lips. It hit me, not for the first time, that Elias was stunning.

“Must’ve been a trick of the light or maybe he’s just been on my mind. He, uh, married into the family recently.”

“Into the Constantine family?” I gasped before I could curb my tone. I hoped it was general enough knowledge about the feud between the two families for me to have reacted that way. The truth was, I’d been taught about the Morellis from a young age by Lane Constantine himself.

His expression was conflicted as he nodded, tugging down his beanie so it covered his ears from the cold wind. “Yeah. It’s a…complicated story, but Leo ended up getting involved with my cousin, Haley.”

“The Beast of Bishop’s Landing married your cousin,” I murmured in shock.

I’d done enough research about the Constantines over the years to know a little about the Morelli family. I knew Lucian, the eldest son, ran Morelli Holdings and that Leo was a big presence in the city’s real estate scene with his own billion-dollar company. I knew Caroline had once dated Bryant, the patriarch, before settling down with Dad and that had been where the rivalry began. There were seven Morelli children to the six (legitimate) Constantine children, but I didn’t know anything about the younger siblings on either side.

I couldn’t imagine either family approving of a cross-rivalry relationship.

“Apparently, he’s not as bad as they made him sound,” Elias said, but he didn’t sound convinced. In fact, the look of disgust on his face spoke volumes of his own regard for the family.

I must have made a similar face, because he laughed and slung an arm around my shoulders in comradery as we trekked down the final block to the museum. He smelled spicy and rich, like expensive cologne. “Don’t worry about it. I doubt you’ll ever have to meet him even if we become the best of friends.”

I grinned at him, aware that I might give myself away if I poked too much into his family dynamic. “Well, that’s something, then. The Morellis scare me even though I don’t know much about them.”

“They should,” Elias agreed. “They’re ruthless sons of bitches for the most part.”

“Saint likes them well enough,” Gabriella said with a little blush.

Elias knocked her with an elbow. “Yeah, and whatever Saint says goes, right, Gabs?”

“Shut it,” she insisted, but her flush darkened her olive-toned cheeks. “He’s a good man.”

“Who is Saint?” I asked, a little distracted as we stopped at the wide stairs leading up to The Met.

It was just as gorgeous in person as in photographs. A banner declared that they had a special Van Gogh exhibit going on, but I was more excited about the possibility of seeing Picasso and Matisse.

“You’ll meet him later, maybe,” Gabriella said shyly. “He’ll probably pick me up.”

“It’s weird as hell,” Elias muttered to me. “He’s like…old.”

“He’s only thirty-one,” she countered, hitting him with her tiny fist. “And you dated Evelyn Mathieson last year when she was a senior!”

A year older than Tiernan.

So, in my eyes, not old.

“He’s in business with my dad,” she continued to explain as we tromped up the stairs and got in line to buy tickets. “He, uh, he’s a family friend. A good one.”

Elias rolled his eyes at her obvious crush, but his smile was only kind. “You’re into old men, Gabs, it’s cool.”

“Hey, even you said he was hot!” she protested.

Elias went very still for less than a heartbeat, then chuckled, the sound a little forced. He avoided my eyes as he stepped up to buy his ticket and I wondered if he was hiding his sexuality or if he was just embarrassed to have said something like that.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as I paid for my ticket from the wad of hundred-dollar bills Tiernan had passed me at breakfast that morning.

Tiernan:Why aren’t you home?

I rolled my eyes as I followed Gabriella and Elias up the stairs to the second floor, fingers flying.

Bianca:I wasn’t aware I had to check in with you every hour. I’m out with friends.

There was a slight pause.

Tiernan:Boys?

Bianca:Yes. The entire Sacred Heart soccer team. They invited me to play with them… ;)

I laughed at myself as I put the phone back in my bag and skipped up to Elias and Gabriella, threading my arms through both of theirs.

“What do you want to see first?” Elias asked. “The family donated a Picasso years ago. I think it’s just around the corner here. Are you into Picasso?”

My heart stopped.

A Picasso?

Dad had always talked about his art collection. It was something he’d first started accruing because wealthy people had expensive art, but when I got old enough to find a passion for it, he started to buy paintings I loved. He’d always said one day, they’d be mine.

Instead, he’d died in an inexplicable accident and left Aida, Brando, and me a sum total of nothing.

“Yeah, I like Picasso,” I whispered, letting Elias lead us blindly through the corridors until we entered a large white room filled with cool light and warm, brightly colored paintings.

My eyes fell on it immediately.

The painting Dad had bought for my twelfth birthday, just a few months before he died.

Child with a Dovewas one of Picasso’s early Blue Stage paintings depicting a young girl in a blue dress cradling a dove to her chest. Dad said he would hang it in his office at the Constantine Compound so I’d always be with him even when I was far away in Texas.

My feet took me to the painting without conscious direction from my brain, Gabriella and Elias trailing behind me.

Beneath the ornate frame a small gold plaque read “Donated by Lane Constantine.”

My fingers twitched as I lifted them to the cold metal, as if touching his name might connect me to him for just a brief moment.

“Is he your favorite?” Elias asked, tugging on a lock of my hair playfully. “You look awestruck.”

I jerked away, hand falling to my side, breath short in my lungs. “Yeah, you could say that. My, uh, my dad used to call me his dove.”

“That’s really sweet.” Gabriella stepped closer, squeezed my shoulder in sympathy. “You do kind of have that energy.”

I grinned, trying to shake off the melancholy that shrouded me. “Only until you piss me off.”

They laughed, distracted for a moment that I used to take a photo of the painting on my phone. I could have stood there for hours staring at the painting that connected me to my dad as much as my stolen locket had, but my new friends wanted to move on. It was clear neither of them cared about art much, but they humored me as we drifted around the museum.

My phone buzzed in my bag, but I ignored it for the rest of the hour. Tiernan may have been my guardian, but he wasn’t my goddamn keeper.

When we left the gallery behind, stepping into the icy cold late-October evening, I finally took my phone out and read the five notifications I had there.

Tiernan:You do not amuse me. Who are you with?

Tiernan:Bianca Belcante, if you do not respond in the next five minutes, you will be punished.

Tiernan:I see you are feeling particularly childish today. Fine. I’ve enabled tracking on your phone. Ezra will be at The Met in thirty minutes. If you are with anyone inappropriate, your punishment will be furthered. And, Bianca? You do not want to test what I am capable of.

Tiernan:That’s it. Ezra is no longer coming for you. I am. Be out front of The Met in twenty minutes.

He didn’t have to type out the “or else…” because it was implicit in his tone even over text.

Elias looked at my grimace and winced in sympathy. “Everything okay?”

“No,” I said honestly, anger sweeping through me like a tornado, sucking up every positive thought I might have harbored about Tiernan. “My guardian is a possessive, over-protective, bossy jerk.”

Gabriella laughed. “Tell us how you really feel.”

I smiled at her, but the ends of my lips were mangled with irritation. Who did Tiernan think he was? I might have been only seventeen, but I’d been independent for years. Aida never checked in with me. If anything, I checked in on her and on Brando. I was responsible, a sixty-year-old soul in the body of a teen. I had never done drugs, had a single sip of booze, or even kissed a boy unless you counted Quinn Masters forcing himself on me in that locker room incident.

I didn’t need Tiernan to baby me.

I didn’t want him to.

All the crackling electric irritation beneath my skin amped even higher as I stood there and stewed. He’d ruined a perfectly lovely afternoon with his alpha-male bullshit and I wanted to ruin his.

An idea crystalized in my mind and a slow, wicked grin overtook my face.

“Hey, do you have to be home right away?” I asked my new friends as I dug into my backpack and counted the wad of hundreds Tiernan had handed me that morning. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now…”

*     *     *

It hurt.

There was no way around the pain. A tattoo on any part of the body was bound to hurt, but one etched into the delicate skin of the wrist was especially painful. A small part of me nestled into the deepest, darkest folds of my being might have enjoyed the teeth-clenching hurt, the buzz of it zigging through me until all my nerves danced, but I’d gotten good at ignoring it.

Elias and Gabriella sat beside me in solidarity, chatting about mundane school gossip and the upcoming Lane Constantine Memorial Ball as the man with a dyed-green fauxhawk bent over my wrist with his vibrating tattoo gun.

I was underage, but Tiernan had given me two thousand dollars in bills and I’d put them to good use to convince the man with the tattoo shop on the outskirts of the Upper East Side to ink me. I’d also turned off my phone so Tiernan, the asshole, couldn’t find me.

“I’m actually supposed to go to that,” I admitted to Elias as he spoke about the ball the Constantines were holding at The Met next month to celebrate Lane’s life on the anniversary of his death.

He blinked. “You are?”

“Yeah.”

He and Gabriella exchanged looks as I gritted my teeth against the sting. It looked like the guy was almost done, but my whole forearm was on fire from the pain. A bead of sweat dripped down the edge of my hairline into the shell of my ear.

“How did you get an invite? Not to sound elitist, but it’s one of the most illustrious events in the city. I thought you were new here?”

“I am, but I’m staying with the McTiernan family,” I explained. “They’re pretty well off.”

Elias frowned, eyes unfocused as he searched for something in his memories. “McTiernans, I’ve definitely heard of them. I’ll have to ask Aunt Caroline or my mom. It’s going to bother me I can’t remember who they are.”

I shrugged. “Whoever they might be to your family, I’m nothing.”

“Not nothing,” Gabriella said kindly, squeezing my free hand. “You spend enough time in the ‘right’ circles, you realize that most people are just out to get something from you. It’s refreshing to meet someone who doesn’t give a crap about our family names.”

When I blinked at her, she laughed and added, “My name is Gabriella Zappa. My dad is Enea Zappa, the head of Zappa Shipping International.”

I shrugged because I had no idea who the hell Enea Zappa or his company were.

She laughed again, thick brown hair shifting around her waist as she tossed her head back. “See? You don’t have a clue and that is amazing.”

“It is,” Elias agreed. “When I started at SHA, everyone tried to be my friend as soon as they found out my last name. It took a while for them to realize I have absolutely zero pull with Caroline.”

“Because you’re poor?” I asked, forgetting to be tactful because I was in too much pain.

He shrugged a shoulder, a thin veneer of boredom overlaying a deeper anger that made his jaw tense. “Among other things.”

“That sucks,” I said softly as the tattoo artist pulled away and gently dabbed the blood off my new ink. “I know what it’s like to feel shunned by your own family.”

Elias’s eyes, so much like Lane’s, that pure, unblemished blue of a midsummer sky, were filled with warmth for me and old, stale pain. “Thanks. Sometimes, I think I’d do anything to fit in, but I know nothing will change. Not really.”

“Especially not when your cousin is porking the enemy,” Gabriella teased to lighten the mood.

Elias shoved her off her stool, prompting us to burst into laughter.

“It’s done,” the tattoo artist, Harlan, grunted. “Take a look before I wrap it for you.”

My humor froze in my lungs, little particles of ice that shredded the soft tissue so I found it hard to breathe.

A small, perfectly formed dove in mid-flight spread its wings between my wrist bones. It was a resplendent replication of Picasso’s dove, the same dove my dad referenced in his nickname for me.

Tiernan might have stolen my locket. He might try to crush me under his heel.

But he couldn’t take my memories from me.

He couldn’t take the blood and love of Lane Constantine from my body unless he cut me up and bled me dry.

“Go fuck yourself,” I murmured as I stared at the dove.

I didn’t need a tattoo to ensure I’d never forget Dad or who I’d been when he’d been alive, when I’d been his daughter, even if it was only in the shadows.

But it helped.

It helped a lot.

Because what was the point of art if not to give eloquence to the myriad of emotions originating in the human heart that were too immense to be translated into simple words?

“It’s pretty,” Gabriella said, bending forward, her dark head against my light, to peer at the design. “It suits you.”

“Thanks,” I whispered, my heart floundering in my throat.

“Let me see,” Elias murmured, taking my hand gently to extend it for his viewing. His rough tipped thumb smoothed under the irritated skin, his breath hot against me as he bent close to look.

That was how he found us.

A teenage boy bent over my hand like he intended to give it a kiss of admiration.

The bell over the door of the cramped shop tinkled as someone entered. I couldn’t see who it was from down the hall behind a half wall, but I could tell, somehow, by the way the air flattened like a can of old pop, like dead air space after cacophonous static.

Somehow, Tiernan had found me.

Every atom of my body stilled, held suspended in pure, fresh terror.

Click.

Click.

Click.

The sound of expensive shoes stalking down the short hallway on measured steps.

I held my breath, my blood roaring like the waves against Bishop’s Landing in both ears.

When he rounded the corner, I went cold at the cast of Tiernan’s glacial green eyes.

He filled the entire doorway with his dark presence, broad shoulders kissing either edge of the walls. In a black suit with a deep, almost black-red shirt beneath it, those diamond cuff links winking at his wrists as he crossed his arms over his chest, he seemed like some urban reaper come to collect a toll. The shadow of the door cast him almost entirely in shadow, but for the glint of those unnaturally pale green eyes.

“Oh my God,” Gabriella whispered.

She shivered beside me.

Or, I guessed, it could have been me.

“Bianca.” My voice was said like a dropped anchor—heavy, intractable.

I swallowed thickly, arrested by the awful sight of him, so magnificent and terrifying at once.

“Tiernan,” I managed to counter, but the word was stripped bare with unconcealed nerves.

“We are leaving,” he said, not moving an inch yet somehow crowding me. “Now.”

Without thought, I stood from the chair. Gabriella shrunk slightly behind me, but Elias was reluctant to give up my hand. He made to move beside me in a show of solidarity, but I stopped him with a tiny shake of my head.

“You have twenty seconds to meet me at the car.” His voice was quiet and all the more ominous for it.

I opened my mouth to say something, snark at him, try to recover some of my tattered autonomy, but his voice whipped across the space between us and cracked against me painfully. “Not a word.”

Then, he turned to the tattoo artist who was similarly still, frightened maybe and trying to hide it. “Has she paid?” A quick shake of the fauxhawked head. Tiernan pulled a money clip from his pocket, flicked off far too many crisp bills and tossed them on the floor at his feet. “Now, she has. Bianca, ten seconds.”

I was moving before I could fight against the demand. It was some small instinct for self-preservation that propelled me around the corner, Tiernan already beyond it and prowling down the hall out the door into the dark New York night.

“Uh, sorry for him,” I said with a grimace over my shoulder at my friends. “Thanks for the company. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hey!” Elias called, his eyes narrowed, jaw pulsing. I wondered if he was worried about me and decided he was probably the nicest boy I’d met. I loved that he was a Constantine, that he was my impression of my family I’d never know. “Text me when you get home. He looks pissed.” He hesitated, eyes pinned over my shoulder at Tiernan through the glass. “Who did you say he was, again?”

“Tiernan,” I called out as I picked up my pace so I wouldn’t miss my ten-second window. “Tiernan McTiernan.”

If I’d waited a little longer, maybe I would have seen the look of horror on Elias’ face. Maybe I would have questioned him or he would have offered what he knew.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I raced out down the hall and out the door of the dingy tattoo parlor into the bracing cold night, then caught my breath for a second before I opened the door to Tiernan’s black Aston Martin and willingly slid inside a cage with a furious beast.