Tiernan regarded me with the vaguely amused arrogance of someone who was used to winning. He found my resilience trite, almost funny.
Why did I bother? his gaze seemed to ask.
I sighed internally, wishing for the millionth time that my dad were there. He always knew what to do and he’d always looked out for us, even when he shouldn’t have.
But he wasn’t there.
Aida wasn’t there.
I was alone with a kid who relied on me and I was the only one who could make the decision to go with Tiernan or kick up such a fuss, they’d let us go our separate ways.
“Probationary,” I agreed slowly, glaring at my new guardian. “If we don’t kill you in three months, we’ll see about longer-term accommodations.”
Satisfaction softened the hard edges of his mouth and made his eyes glow. “Excellent. This way, then.”
He gestured for us to precede him, waiting until Elena took Brando’s hand and moved by with Ezra before his hand clasped around my wrist.
“If you want to survive the next few months, you better stop manhandling me,” I warned him, jerking at his hold to no avail.
“If you want to survive the next few months, little girl,” he practically purred, his voice smooth and sinuous but the intent entirely predatory. “It would be best if you remember that you owe me. And the price?” He was so tall that he had to duck down to get close to me, our noses almost touching. “Your obedience.”
“Obedience?” I echoed, knocked off-kilter by the demand.
Obedience to him? To what end?
His white, square teeth were all I could see as he grinned, wide and unabashed. “Obedience. Short of calling me Daddy, you’ll do everything I say just like you would your father.”
“Don’t dishonor his memory by even suggesting that,” I spat, wrenching out of his hold even though it burned my skin like a match to paper. “You’ll never replace him.”
“I wouldn’t want to,” he promised, as if my father had been a scumbag and not one of the best men this country had ever seen. “The only thing I want, Bianca, is the pretty sound of the words, ‘yes, sir’ from your lips every time I give you an order. Maybe you don’t understand this, but—” He bent even closer, his breath hot on my face. I could count the thick, long lashes curling up over those eerie eyes. “I effectively own you now. And I intend to enjoy it.”
A growl worked through my throat, an unconscious expression of the rage curdling my blood. My hand rose without thought and whipped against Tiernan’s unmarred cheek. The connection sent painful sparks shooting through my palm, but I didn’t regret it.
At least, until Tiernan righted his head and pinned me with those amphibian eyes filled with cold disapproval.
“I’ll give you that because your mother just passed away and you’re young and obviously overwrought. But if you ever raise a hand to me again, I’ll have you over my knee so fast your head will spin.”
“You wouldn’t fucking dare,” I hissed, moving so close, the toes of my shoes pushed against his loafers.
“Care to find out right now? I’ll bend you over a fucking tombstone and spank you until you cry pretty tears.”
“I hate you,” I told him through my swollen throat. There were tears in my eyes but I couldn’t tell if they were from rage or sorrow. “You’re a monster.”
His laugh clanged like crashing symbols. “A monster who is your new daddy. Now, get in the car.”
“Fuck you.” I’d never been a fan of curse words, but there was something about Tiernan that provoked me to swear like a sailor. They were the only words that came close enough to expressing the seething mass of toxic emotions he concocted in my heart.
He chuckled under his breath as I turned on my heel and stormed toward the lone car waiting on the road off to the left of the gravesite. I paused before the hole in the earth harboring my mother’s casket, sadness seeping through the cracks in my fury.
“Bye, Mom,” I whispered brokenly, raising my shaking fingers to my lips as if I could drop a kiss right into the ground to rest with her forevermore.
“Here.”
I almost didn’t turn around, but something soft bumped my elbow. When I looked down, Tiernan was holding out a bloodred rose to me, obviously plucked from the arrangement beside the large photo of her.
Deja vu hit me so hard my mind reeled. I wondered hatefully if Aida would have died if I’d refused to take that first rose from him even though I knew that wasn’t true. She’d had a brain aneurism that burst in her sleep. She’d been there one moment and gone the next.
It wasn’t his fault as much as I wanted it to be.
I took the rose, surprised when thorns didn’t prick my skin. Still, I felt the phantom pain in my hand, echoed tenfold in my soul. I raised the bloom to my mouth, kissed the fragrant, furled center and then dropped it into the gaping earth to lie on top of my mom.