Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream 1)

I was as dead to society as I was emotionally.

But here I was feeling.

Here I was feeling something when I had a plan to re-enter society for the first time in decades to introduce Bianca Belcante as my ward and the bastard child of Lane Constantine. I had the DNA test proof in my top drawer, the original birth certificate Lane had been too much of an idiot to burn.

I still hadn’t found any sign of a hidden will other than that letter he’d written in perfect script to Aida when Brando was born, promising to look after them for the rest of their natural born lives. I’d discovered it in a silver jewelry box on Aida’s nightstand in Texas, hidden beneath expensive gifts from Lane she’d been too avaricious to sell to pay for Brando’s medical issues or Bianca’s college fund. There were tearstains on the page, his or Aida’s, I wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter. The whole letter reeked of love and sincerity.

I needed that damn codicil in order to steal one of the Constantines’ most lucrative companies out from under them, but I found myself wanting it for other reasons.

I wanted it for Bianca and Brando. They deserved to know their father hadn’t intended to leave them destitute and alone, that he’d had a plan for them. That he cherished them.

Every child deserved to know if their parents loved them or not.

It was easier once you did, either way.

More than that, there was some small part of me that wanted to be the one to find that adjusted will, to hand it over to them like some kind of hero. So Brando would look at me like he did today when I gave him Picasso, as if I hung the moon and the fucking stars. As if I was his personal Superman. So Bianca would get that look in her eye she had sometimes when she thought I wasn’t looking, the same look she got when she studied the Picasso in the hall down from her room. Admiration and adoration.

Pathetic.

Ridiculous.

I knew what kind of man I was, and it had nothing to do with princesses in locked towers and noble fucking steeds.

I was the shadow king of New York City.

It was dangerous to play at being anything else.

But Bianca made me feel human and what an idiot I was for indulging such weakness.

I pulled up my online bank account on a remote server, the one I hid in Switzerland under a shell company within a shell company. The one I used to harbor the millions of dollars I made for Bryant, because of Bryant over the last twelve years.

I didn’t need his fortune.

I didn’t need his love.

But all these years I stayed by his side, out of fear and duty, but something more. Something Bianca and Brando’s presence had made me aware of.

In a fucked-up way, I was closer to Bryant than my siblings. His enforcer. His knight moving across the board at his behest. He might not have loved me or respected me like the others, but he did trust me.

That had been enough.

Despite his villainy, the many ways he’d stolen from me through my life, first my siblings, then Grace and my future as a different kind of man, I’d stayed with him because he was all I knew.

And after what I did to Carter, what I let happen to Grace, I thought I deserved that.

I was good for one thing, one purpose.

Destruction.

“It’s late.”

I looked up at Henrik in the doorway, coming home from a drag show in the city, the only sign of his participation the sky-high heels dangling from his right hand and a pink duffel filled with his alter ego, Henrietta Leone.

When I didn’t respond, he sighed, dropping his things on a Queen Anne sofa before he took a seat across the desk from me.

“You underestimated this,” he said, wearily, rubbing pink-polished fingers over his bald head.

“What?” I humored him, though I wasn’t in the mood.

“Who,” he corrected. “You. Them.”

I scoffed. “They’re kids.”

“Yeah.” Voice soft, eyes softer. “They’re kids, T.”

A muscle spasmed in my jaw as I clenched it too tightly together, teeth grinding. “Bianca’s seventeen with the personality of a forty-year-old soccer mom.”

This was true. She was responsible, maternal, formidable if anyone dared to fuck with her baby brother. She cared about recycling and the planet, about whether or not Leonardo da Vinci really did paint his initials into the eyes of every portrait and if Picasso and Matisse had more than a platonic friendship. Teenagers were supposed to care about hair and makeup, trends and popularity, boys.

But Bianca had all my money to play with and spent it on a minor rebellion in getting a tattoo just to fuck with me. She didn’t care about fashion or designers if continuing to wear old, oversized Greenpeace tees was any indication, and boys… No. Bianca didn’t care for prepubescent teens with acne scars and damp, fumbling hands.