Page 78 of Pretty Pink Poison

For now, he was letting me have my fun without taunting me with his own.

Bane was a good man even if he wasn’t mine.

CHAPTER 25

BANE

She mademe fucking crazy with that man and others too.

Yet, I knew Pink. She would spiral if she wasn’t feeling seen and I felt like all I was seeing was her lately.

I couldn’t sleep with other women, couldn’t even fathom having them touch me. Sabine’s hands on me had made my damn skin crawl.

It was a problem I knew I needed to step back from, needed to get over, needed to address now before I sent her off to my brother.

So, I let her have her fun with others. I had to. If I could stomach her with them, I wouldn’t choke out my brother later…

Hopefully.

And I held my goddamn tongue for a whole year and a half about her going off with that random guy too. Of course I vetted him and watched every second of it but I didn’t kill him.

I was supposed to be her friend, not her lover.

We both knew deep down, though, I was something in between. So, she’d have him in the Vault half the time where I could fucking watch. Where I could torture myself. Where I could remind myself that she wasn’t just mine.

I endured it. I endured just about anything for her.

Dex and Kee got married. Then got pregnant. Olive and Dex’s brother, Dimitri, were about to have a little one too. Everyone was having babies around us, and Bianca gave me a speech about how she might want them too.

“Kee’s ultrasound photo shows the baby looking more like her than him, right?” She showed me a text message, and I stared at the picture for a moment. “Can you believe her and Olive are pregnant?”

I hummed and didn’t say much about either of them having kids but glanced at the screenshot of the ultrasound. “His eyes. Her lips.”

Her face scrunched up as she flipped the screen back and stared like she was trying to see it. “Honestly, I’d say I’m shocked, but you’re grossly detail oriented.”

“Not a bad thing.” I waved her off, hoping she’d go do something around the resort, but she walked around my office, pulling at books and pushing decor around like she had a better interior design eye than the person who’d originally set it there.

The person was me.

I was fucking particular, and she was ruining it.

“What are you doing? Would you stop touching everything?”

“This looks better here.” She moved a rock that I’d used to smash someone’s head in and put it on the shelf above it.

Great.

She was mixing everything up. She picked up a skull on the next shelf and turned it in her hands. “You think people know these are real when they come in here?”

“I don’t care if they do or don’t.” I sighed and closed my laptop, giving in. “You realize I have a meeting here soon?”

“With who?”

“My brothers. Jameson. People. It’s the middle of a workday.”

“Psh. It’s Friday, and don’t you have that Oracle thing tonight?”

“The Oraclethingis a big deal. We’ve planned it for months and have invited just about every conglomerate in to showcase the financial trajectory along with the updates.”