Page 40 of Pretty Pink Poison

“Bianca…” His voice roughened. “Can you let it go?”

It. Him. The bathroom. The table. All of it tangled together in ways I wasn’t sure I could unravel. Yet the way he looked at me so raw, it made me pause.

I exhaled hard. “Fine. At least you invited me down. How many times have you met with my family since I’ve been here?”

“Enough,” he answered gruffly.

“And not once did they call to tell me. So,” I shrugged, trying to get rid of the pain. “I guess I should thank you for the invite tonight.”

He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Even with what happened to your cousin?”

God, I’d hated Kraw since the moment I’d met him. He was sleazy enough to make a pass at me a time or two even though I was related to him. “You really keeping his skull?”

“You’ve been in my office. I intend to keep every single one of the people who wrong me.”

“Did he really wrong you tonight?”

“Along with you.”

“I don’t need you to defend my honor, Bane.”

He hummed like he wanted to say more but didn’t. Instead he jumped subjects. “Your father’s a prick.”

Wasn’t news to me but I think the months of him not talking to me and my not having anyone around that I knew hit harder when he said it out loud. My heart squeezed as I glanced away, trying to hide the emotion welling up in my throat. “And yet I was the one who you told to leave after the bathroom.”

“Don’t you think that was for the best?”

“I think you get to choose who to eat with and you didn’t choose me. Isn’t it your call if I stay at a dinner you're hosting, not his?”

He hummed and rocked back on his heels as he thought about that. Then he gave me a lopsided grin. It made him look his age, young, approachable, almost charming. “Do you really want to eat dinner with me?”

“No,” I said immediately, embarrassed that a small flutter still started in my stomach at his flirtation. “I just… I wouldn’t have minded feeling like I meant something after months of feeling like I don’t.”

“Interesting.” He dragged out that word before continuing. “If it’s any consolation, if I hadn’t told you to go back to your room and you went back out there, he would be dead and so would Jameson.”

“What?”

“I told you to leave, Bianca, because if your father kept talking to you the way he was, I would have killed him. And I’m still considering blowing Jameson’s head off for the way he looked at you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do. You never told me your father talked to you that way.” He glanced away like he was actually embarrassed. Bane never got embarrassed.

“Does it matter?”

“What the fuck, Bianca?” He pushed off the doorframe, stepped into my space, and growled, “Yes, it matters. It wasn’t even in your diary years ago!”

“So? I didn’t put everything in there… and obviously for good reason.”

He pulled at his hair as he paced away from me. “That’s where you’re supposed to put all your thoughts and inner turmoil.”

“Well, I might have if you hadn’t been reading it.” I scoffed.

He looked downright furious as he ground out the nickname he used when I pissed him off, “Fuck me, pretty pink poison, you think our family allows anyone to talk to us the way your father talked to you down there? Do you know what he said after you’d went back to your room?”

He shook his head and my anxiety spiked. It reminded me that I still cared about what Bane thought, that I didn’t want him to see me as less than or weak or a burden like my father always said.

“Look, I’m sure it was a half-truth and mostly an exaggeration. My father is the man the syndicate made him to be. What would you have me do?”