Violence.
This was me.
My reason for existence.
To brutalize. To curb others into submission under the dominance of my father.
He’d taken away everything I’d ever loved so I forgot the mechanics of it. So I could be his monstrous tool, his enforcer and his heartless servant.
And for years, I’d done it, because that was all I had.
I hadn’t known a soft touch from my siblings since Carter had that arm slung around my shoulders. I hadn’t known love since Bryant ripped it away from me before I was even really a man.
And despite years of hardening my heart, of sharpening my mind, I still couldn’t rid myself of the stupid human compulsion to make my siblings love me again.
So, these two seemingly contrary needs existed in tandem within me.
End Bryant and win back the respect of my sisters and brothers.
Bianca was the key to that.
Taking down the Constantines and Bryant, both of whom had terrorized us for years, would prove to them that I was on my siblings’ side while also securing my personal vendetta against them for ruining my life.
I didn’t care that she was young.
By the time I was seventeen, I’d killed two men and taken countless beatings.
Age was a number tied to the passing of time, not the maturation of the human heart.
And Bianca had taken enough knocks to be considered an old soul.
She was fair game.
Even if she wasn’t, she was my game. My golden fucking ticket to respect and autonomy.
I wouldn’t let anyone—not my friends, not Bianca with those wet, blue velvet eyes, not Brando with his funny kid-candor—get in the way of my mission.
Besides, they were offspring of the man who had tried to ruin my family and started the feud between us in the first place. He was the reason I was indentured to my father. The reason I’d been born into a war that would rage until the day Bryant died and beyond.
Using Bianca Belcante to bring down the Constantine family was the only way to bring my family peace.
To bring me peace.
And after years of fighting, that was all I really wanted.
A hug from Carter.
A kiss from Eva, Sophia, Daphne, and Lisbetta.
Respect from Lucian and Leo.
Harmony for my mother who was driven to drink and do drugs by the past and by her husband.
Freedom from Bryant’s sick, hellish games.
I looked down at the broken locket on my desk, cracked open without ceremony by a single hammer strike. Amid the cracked pieces of silver lay a note.
Two words.
La Paloma.
Dove, in Spanish.
I’d expected something more from the Constantine patriarch who was known for being mysterious and coy, for playing games better than anyone else.
Why the fuck would he leave his daughter a locket filled with such a prosaic word?
“Find out everything you can about Lane Constantine’s association with doves,” I ordered my men.
“And the locket?” Walcott had the guts to ask. “Should I look into having it repaired?”
“Absolutely not,” I snapped as the image of Bianca’s beautiful face made pale and tragic with tears filled my mind’s eye and stirred something latent in my chest, something long dead struggling to resurrect itself. “In fact, frame it broken like this, will you? I’ll give it to her as a gift for her eighteenth birthday.”
I ignored the way they looked at me, embarrassed for them. They were supposed to be my crew of mercenaries and there they were sympathizing with a wisp of a girl.
“So, what’s the plan? Beat her into submission like everyone else who crosses you or your father? Get her to find out where Lane hid millions of dollars and then what? Have her sign over the money to you because she’s afraid for her life?” Walcott asked.
“You’re forgetting the part where he introduces her to society at Lane Constantine’s Memorial Ball in April as his bastard child,” Henrik added mildly.
Ezra just stared at me with his dark eyes, condemnation written there in bold.
“I could hear her crying when I came down the stairs,” Walcott added.
“She won’t have to sign over anything. As her guardian, I will be responsible for her assets until she comes of age, which is why there is a countdown on finding this dirt. She turns eighteen in five months and the Lane Memorial Ball is in a month. I want this sorted out as soon as possible, so I can kick them out of this house.”
The hardened criminals I’d spent years corrupting and crafting in my deviant image all stared at me with identical expressions of disappointment that made my heart burn up in my chest. I rubbed absently at the pain, shocked that I cared what they thought because unlike with my blood kin, I’d never been faced with their disappointment before.
“She’s just a girl,” I reminded them harshly, somehow forgetting to include Brandon in my defense.
I liked Brando even though it ached to look at him and know that if life had gone a different way, my way, I might have known someone similar. It was easy to be good to the kid when he was sweet and funny as hell.