Page 28 of Pretty Pink Poison
I slept with the lamp on. I learned the hotel’s night sounds: elevator doors pinging, the padding of footsteps down the hall, the hum of wealth. I kept waiting for my door to fly open, for angry men to filter in, for a price to be collected.
Yet, no one but the nurse would come to my penthouse. She and Bane.
Honestly, for the rest of the first month, I only engaged with him when he felt it was necessary… which was practically never. He never went out of his way to acknowledge me when I was in the same area as him and only asked the most necessary questions when forced to like, “Why aren’t you eating again?”
I felt a flicker of irritation start to twist in my chest, a low burn that made me want to snap.
I could have lifted my shirt to show him the fucking rash from the gluten I consumed, but I didn’t think he would care.
“Because I don’t want the food or your attention when I’m not eating it.”
“Too bad, baby girl. You’re getting both. So get used to it.”
CHAPTER 10
BIANCA
I didn’t exactly get usedto anything, but I learned to adapt. I stopped trying to impress anyone and pulled villain T-shirts from my third suitcase. I wore them every day and didn’t engage or act cordial with anyone.
I started taking my time when the nurse knocked on the door, I left the locks undone for Pepe, and I left a mess everywhere to show that if Bane was going to treat me like a burden, I was going to act like one.
In the first month, I braced for his wrath or anger but all I got was apathy. No desire. No remnants of heat. I didn’t know whether to feel relief or frustration in that.
By the second month, I got irritable and antsy. He had his security detail, Pepe, on me and my room every day that we didn’t speak, and the man was clear that he wasn’t there to cater to me. I wasn’t allowed to leave, either, unless Bane summoned me.
My friends and family abandoned communication. I was now a Black and therefore too much of a liability to engage with.
I lost weight with the constant gluten meals I had to avoid, and I grew less and less healthy.
Bane noticed—but not in the way I wanted. The nurse would come two or three times a day and Bane would stand there, on the edge of the penthouse, cataloguing the mess of my room while she checked my blood sugar and noted numbers down on a chart that she pointed to and showed him.
Now, he’d glare at me and say, “You better do what she says.” It was a command, not a concern for my health or well-being, and I learned to loathe it.
I was good at keeping myself inside the lines for my family, but with Bane I wanted to act out, wanted to beat him at his own game of apathy, and wanted to prove I didn’t care what he said or commanded.
And I tried. I read books. I watched TV. I laid in bed and cried.
I downloaded the Oracle App on my new phone and started leaving journal entries in that too. They were absent ramblings, considering I wasn’t sure who would catalogue them but it felt like I had a friend to talk to a bit when the app pushed an AI bot to respond.
My knife migrated from pillow to nightstand. The syringe somehow ended up in the bathroom cabinet.
I was only summoned for specific dinners or to travel and always told to wear my ear buds. The private planes had rules: I sat away from him, buckled and quiet while he read reports.
I still saw his tendencies when I looked for them, the way he folded papers, lined up pens, the way he checked seat belts more than once and yanked mine three times before flights took off.
Maybe that should have felt like mercy. It didn’t. It felt like being erased—like my edges were being sanded down, piece by piece, until there’d be nothing left but a shadow where I’d been.
So the night I was asked to dinner after we’d had lunch together felt almost surreal, like stepping onto a stage after months in the dark. And I was told my father would be there. Mystomach knotted with something between nerves, excitement, and resentment.
I chose a woven dress the way my mother would have wanted—soft blue silk that clung to my shoulders before falling demurely to my knees. It buttoned high at the neck, cinched at the waist, pleated at my hips to fan out and skim my thighs. Classy. Subtle. Controlled.
Not at all how I’d been within my penthouse with my villain T-shirts and bare feet, wandering like a ghost among the expensive furniture. Those shirts had been my quiet rebellion, my middle finger to the invisible cage. Tonight, there would be no rebellion—just the costume.
I even pulled out some of my old heels, the kind my father liked, polished and severe. The click of them on the marble floor felt foreign, like someone else’s life.
I opened the Oracle app and murmured, “Oracle, I get to see my family. Pick a lip gloss for me. Rose gold or pink?”
It told me rose gold, and I swiped it over my lips, layered my lashes with mascara, added just enough highlighter to catch the light. Contouring my cheekbones became a ritual of war paint, my brush strokes precise and careful. Putting on a mask of perfection took time, and I wasn’t about to showcase cracks to any of them.
