Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream 1)

“Oh,” Caroline said with a cat-like grin. “I assumed it was because she is friends with Elias.”

“That too,” he agreed easily. “But Bianca, what’s brought you to tears in the middle of The Met?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I didn’t trust them, I didn’t know them, even though Dad had always spoken well of his wife. Even if wanted to though, I couldn’t have found the right words to explain the broken mess of my heart.

“Boy trouble?” Caroline asked coolly. “She is a teenager after all.”

I laughed weakly and nodded, because it was true, in a way.

Tiernan wasn’t a boy, but he was a man.

A monstrous one just like he’d warned me he was.

“I’m sorry,” the man said crouching so that we were on eye level. He bore a passing resemblance to my father, which could have explained why I let him reach out and take one of my hands warmly in his. “Elias is here with me, why don’t you come with me and we’ll find him. It looks like you could use a friend.”

“I could use a place to stay,” I blurted out, snot trailing from my nose.

“Hmm. I think we can find space for you at the Compound.” He looked back over his shoulder at Caroline who sighed wearily at their silent communication.

She studied me with sharp eyes, cutting into me like a scalpel, dissecting me as I sat on the floor of The Met in a thousand-dollar dress. I didn’t know what she sought, how pathetic I might seem to a woman so full of beauty and grace. Shame and trembling sorrow coursed through me, but I let her see it. All of it and all of me. I prostrated myself on the Constantine altar and hoped its matriarch would take pity on me. It was a poor choice, to turn to a woman who would hate me if she knew who my parents were, just because my dad had said she was a good woman. But I was out of good choices.

It was the devil I knew or the devil I didn’t.

At this point, the devil I knew, Tiernan Morelli, could go straight back to hell.

“Well,” Caroline said finally. “You better get up and come with me. If we are going to present you to polite company, I can’t have you looking like a broken dove.”

I flinched at the reference, but she only arched an eyebrow at me, unsympathetic but helpful.

“I…” I sucked in a deep breath, rooting for my voice where it had dropped into my stomach. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“Nonsense,” Caroline said, eyes flashing as she came forward beside the crouching man and deigned to give me her manicured hand to help me to my feet. “You’re a friend of this family, Bianca. You’ll come with me.”

“Why would you help me?” I asked.

I’d learned the hard way things that looked too good to be true, often were.

She cocked her head to one side and smiled, this time large enough to see her perfectly straight, white teeth. “Because, my dear, no friend of the Constantine family will ever be left out in the cold. Not while I’m head of this family.”

Her words reverberated through me, striking chord after chord until I thrummed with new hope.

I hesitated then placed my hand in hers.

Her smile widened.

For the third time in my life, I was changing course. I knew if I accepted Caroline’s help, I’d never see Tiernan again. She’d help me get Brando and we’d leave Lion Court for good. The haunted house would go back to being the echoing home of a monster and Brando and I would be where we belonged.

With Dad’s family.

Everything I’d always hoped for was literally at my fingertips.

So why did it feel like heartbreak when I slid my hand into Caroline’s and she clutched it tight?

* * *