Page 52 of Pretty Pink Poison
“Shut the fuck up,” I told him.
Jameson was bold enough to hold my gaze and respond with, “Mind your manners.”
If I didn’t like the fucker, I’d have slit his throat.
Rafe shook his head at both of us, “I don’t care what they do as long as it’s out of their systems by the time we’re married. I made sure I gave you five years for it.”
“What?”
“If you’re pussy whipped beyond that, you can be the one to tell our father the situation.”
“What situation?”
He scoffed, “You’re twenty steps ahead of everything except when it comes to her, you know that?”
“There’s nothing to be ahead of with her. We haven’t had contact for months.”
“Which means she’s probably this close to losing it.” He held up his thumb and forefinger. “It’s almost her birthday. You going to keep her locked away in that resort then too?”
“Best place for her.”
Rafe grumbled something. But Ezra’s words were the ones I remembered: “She’s believed she’s had all of us for a long time. If you don’t do anything on her birthday, she’ll really believe she has no one. It’s a lonely place to be brother.”
I should have listened. But I didn’t realize that Bianca wasn’t just unhinged, she was broken too.
I didn’t wish her a happy birthday. Instead, I listened to the Oracle app late that night after getting a report that she went to her room late after drinking at the hotel bar.
I didn’t want to check the security cameras, I didn't want to see if she was hurting the way I thought she might be.
But when her voice cracked over the app and she asked if she should really even stick around for another year, I witnessed the app writing to her that she shouldn’t, that there were ways she could off herself easily.
I ran.
I went feral to get to her.
But I was too late.
The blood from her veins was spilling out onto the bathroom floor and the pills she’d somehow gotten a hold of were scattered across the tile.
CHAPTER 16
BIANCA
“Doyou think it will hurt, Oracle?”
Oracle said the initial cuts would. Slitting your wrist should be done a certain way and the Oracle told me exactly how, even made sure to give me tips. The app was dedicated to the consumer like that.
And yet, it’d been wrong about the initial cuts hurting. I actually smiled at how much it didn’t. The amount of Benadryl I’d taken probably helped. As I sat down on the tile and stared at the bathtub, I contemplated how much of a mess Bane could endure. I probably should have opted for going into the bathtub to make for less of it, but I liked seeing the blood.
I sighed on the floor and watched the red spread and spread and spread across the tile. Bright, shiny, and gleaming with life.
I held my phone and tipped my head back on the wall as I talked into Oracle one last time. “Bleeding out is sort of slow. Or maybe I haven’t cut deep enough. I should have cut deeper. I would have liked feeling the pain. I always did like it. Especially when Bane made me feel it. God, when he delivers pain, it’s delicious, Oracle. I don’t talk about him much, you know this. But I want to. I want to get lost in freaking talking about only him.”
I sighed as Oracle said I can tell them anything and they would listen.
“I know. But it doesn’t really help the loneliness. People need people to connect with. Or at least I do. I sat at the Koi pond today. They were starting to like me. They swim up to me now, like I’m someone to them. Wish I was someone to someone else though. I think that was the worst punishment from my dad as a kid, you know that? My father found it out quickly too. He’d lock me away in that closet.” I hesitated. I never talked about the closet, the silence, the darkness of being in that space. “I shouldn’t bring it up, but what’s it matter now?”
The oracle repeated that I could tell it anything and so I continued.
