Page 7 of Pretty Pink Poison

Bane: Worried about where I am?

Me: Not like you worry about where I am.

Bane: Bianca, I don’t care about you. My family’s reputation is on the line because you step OUT of line all the damn time. You and that guy were disrespecting our name.

Rafe: I’m fine with men flirting with her, Bane. Play all you want until we’re married, Bianca. I know I do.

Ezra: I’m ready to play at your birthday with that friend of yours, Cora. Invite her next week for me, Bianca.

I hearted Ezra’s message, but Bane and I were quiet after that. Rafe bringing up the marriage was enough to extinguishthe anger from my chest and bring dread instead. But Bane’s words cut me deeper.

He didn’t care. What had happened between us wasn’t a secret love affair. It was a lesson on how to act. It was a lesson I wanted to forget.

And yet when I got back to my room that night, I found a small black box in the middle of my bed.

And when I opened it, one lone eyeball, bloodied and with the same color irises as the dean, stared back at me.

I didn’t scream.

I didn’t even throw it.

Instead, my hands shook as I closed the lid, carried it to my vanity, found a sticky note, and wrote:

Take this away.

I glanced around the room, looking for other signs of him, and sighed before I went to my bathroom and took a shower.

When I came back out, the box was gone.

And in it’s place a sticky note with a response:

He won’t look down your shirt again.

I should have been completely and utterly frightened for my life. He’d broken into my room. He’d mutilated a man for looking at me wrong. And yet, even still, before I went to bed that night, I touched myself roughly, the way Bane had. I imagined Bane between my legs even though it was wrong and sick when I had to marry his brother.

And then I wrote in my diary how much I hated him, hoping I could erase what I really felt instead.

CHAPTER 3

BANE

Doyou ever wonder what people do in the dark of the night when no one’s watching? When the lights are out and they think the whole world is sleeping?

Most people are creatures of habit. They stick with their routine of showering, brushing their teeth, and then trying to find comfort in something they enjoy. Could be a show, a book, a conversation with a loved one. Mundane, repetitive routines.

Figuring out a person and their lifestyle brought me comfort though. The organized way of life made sense above all else. Finding a person’s tics, motives, habits, and routines gave me an understanding of them. I needed people to fit into the box they belonged in.

It’s why Bianca Zarelli was such a fucking nuisance.

I watched her touch herself and scream my name like she loved everything I’d done to her earlier that day, but when she fell asleep, I read what she wrote about me.

I hate him. Hate who he is. Who he’ll always be. And who I am and will always be too.

I’m meant to be his forbidden sister-in-law and yet all I think about is being his girl, his obsession, his freaking slut.

What would it be like to have never met him? Or any made man for that matter? What would it be like to have my own choice in a man rather than be promised to one?

I’m about to be nineteen and want only one birthday wish to come true: