Page 86 of Pretty Pink Poison
I wasn’t strongerthan he thought.
Not at all.
I was downright weak when it came to thinking Bane had considered another woman to be the mother of his children.
And, although the ballroom was extravagant, beautiful, and perfectly on point for the Oracles with fortune tellers in corners, drinks that smoked on trays, and dancers within ornately built confessionals, I didn’t care. It was a lavish play on where you went to confess your darkest secrets and everyone seemed to think it was brilliant, but I only thought of one thing in my future.
My secret was that I was in love with Bane. Utterly, desperately in love with him, and if Bane planned on leaving me out of his life, I’d become the stalker he showed me how to be.
My attention didn’t fall on the decor or the announcer or even the drinks and food Rafe mentioned he could get for me.
Instead, I watched Bane leave me behind with Rafe only to find Sabine with her beautiful golden stick-straight hair and long legs and kiss her on her stupidly perfect high cheekbone.
Rafe and I stared at him for far too long before he said, “After years of living in this resort together, you two haven’t figured it out yet, huh?”
“What should I respond to that?” I asked, grabbing a flute of champagne from one of the waiters in black and white walking by. “I’m to be your wife, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know. Are you?” he asked me like it was a damn riddle, but when I asked him what he meant by it, he didn’t elaborate. Instead he ushered me over to our table. It was large enough to have more than ten around it, and when we took ourseats, I saw his father and mother, Ezra with someone, and Bane and Sabine sitting down. They’d invited another couple to share the table with us, and as I sat, Rafe whispered to me it was the previous Oracle owner.
Bane asked Yuri his take on AI and Yuri grumbled something about how he was an innovator.
I didn’t care. I stopped listening to men talk long ago. I didn’t even need my earbuds anymore to know it was all nonsense anyway. I saw it in Bane’s relaxed shoulders but his burning gaze, in the way his hand didn’t flex but his forearm veins were showing. His jaw wasn’t clenched but his mouth was slightly open, like he was controlling his breathing so he could be poised and ready.
It didn’t matter what any of them said at the table. That man Bane stared at was about to die.
And maybe he deserved it. I didn’t know. Like I said, I wasn’t listening at all. Not until Bane repeated, “Bianca, what do you think?”
“Think? About what?”
“What do you think about the Oracle app Yuri owned before I took over.”
“Oh.” I smiled slow before I answered him, “Maybe it was a little like dating Yuri. He told me what I wanted to hear.”
Yuri didn’t hide how he looked down my dress, shameless even while he was on his date. “I could do that again for a night or two while Rafe takes my fiancée, no?”
So easily these men would swap wives then? Is that what I would be in the future?
Bane didn’t let his brother respond. Instead, he continued asking questions. “And, Bianca, do you remember what I told you about men coming on to you when you’re going to marry my brother?”
The rage I felt from him now was almost palpable. And I was feeding it rather than settling it down. “Something along the lines of you’d kill them. But poor Vinny. You didn’t kill him for me, did you?”
“He’s the smallest skull in my office,” he said before he pulled the gun and aimed it at Yuri’s chest.
“What the fuck?” Yuri bellowed and ten more men pulled their guns.
They were much too late though. Bane had already emptied a round into Yuri’s chest. The blood spread beautifully over his white shirt as he gasped and teetered to the floor, choking on his own blood.
A few people gasped, others stared, no one screamed. Not even his date. She only jumped back instead of forward to try to help him. She was no Jackie Kennedy, that’s for sure.
“Veil,” Bane’s father grumbled and men in black suits filed in around the body so that we didn’t have to look any further. “Bane, I appreciate that you put three bullets in his chest, but at the dinner table?” His father questioned without so much as a look back at the man being cleaned up by waiters. Yuri was being dragged out when a cartel leader hurried to our table to lean over and whisper something in Mr. Black’s ear. He nodded and sighed. “Not tonight. Don’t ruin the meal.”
As if Bane hadn’t already done that.
Yet they were already mopping the blood from the floor quickly.
Bane stood. “A lesson for those who think the Oracles can be duplicated or recreated without repercussions.” Then he sat down and looked around our table. “Pink, no more online boyfriends except the Oracles now, huh?”
That got a chuckle from our table, but I wasn’t laughing. Heat had erupted through my body. I licked my lips as I held Bane’sgaze, but my attention flew to the hand Sabine laid on his after his comment.
