Page 92 of Pretty Pink Poison
“I thought it was you,” I whispered.
“How could that be, baby girl?” He frowned and his eyes scanned over my face, looking for answers and clues.
I stepped back, shaking my head at him, knowing I couldn’t say it to him out loud. “Don’t follow me. This is for the best.”
He didn’t.
He let me go because he knew as well as I did we couldn’t keep breaking one another down without any resolution. We’d gone too far. I’d seen the pain on his face this time as he made love to me, and it was as beautiful as it was tragic.
He may have hidden the pain behind the mask, but it was still just as brutal as the pain I endured.
We had to let each other go, and with that, I would let go of my secret. I called Oracle. And I confessed into the night…
CHAPTER 29
PINK
Rafe had retiredto the casino and saw me passing through with tears in my eyes as I hung up from my Oracle call. He grabbed my elbow to stop me and said, “Bianca,” He sighed, “Crying over him again?”
“Isn’t that always how it goes?”
“It shouldn’t. I think it’s time you and I have a conversation.”I stared at the man who’d taken so much from me and wondered if he even knew the turmoil one night of his loss of self control had cost me.
And maybe I’d had enough. Maybe I knew my life would never be the same without the love of my life in it and so I tempted the future Don to lash out at me by lashing out first. “You want to talk rather than screw me, Rafe?”
He frowned at my accusation, one I’d never thrown in his face, but I was off kilter, not able to hold anything in anymore. He nodded cautiously, “If you’ll talk, I’m happy to.”
He glanced around and rolled up the cuffs of his white long sleeve before grabbing his suit jacket from the bar stool. Then, he waved me toward an exit, “Let’s talk privately, though. My brother’s ears are everywhere here.”
It was probably time I went off with Rafe anyway. The stay at Bane’s resort had reached its end in more ways than one. It might have felt like I was walking the plank but I let Rafe usher me out to his black SUV.
We got in and I wondered if this was where my story would completely end. Maybe he’d throw me off a bridge or have his driver dispose of me. And even still, I couldn’t hold on to the question any longer. “You wore a mask that night in your room. Tell me how you knew to do that.”
“What?” His face scrunched in confusion as he motioned to his driver to pull away from the casino and then he raised a partition. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“When we slept together, you wore a mask and—”
“Slept together?” He narrowed his icy blue eyes at me before he told me, “My car isn’t bugged, Pink. We don’t have to keep up the façade here.”
“Façade?” I tilted my head and waited a beat. “So, you’d like me to say you raped me then?”
His eyes widened and he reared back, “Raped? I—” So many expressions flew across his face and then he took a breath before saying slowly, “Bianca, Ifoundyou in my room. I hadn’t stayed there. Are you… Did you think I…?”
Rafe was never a man who was at a loss of words. And as the color drained from his face, I think he saw the color drain from mine also.
The sounds of the city passed us by while the silence of our thoughts filled the vehicle.
Years I’d thought it was him. For years, I thought Bane had disclosed what we’d done together.
“It wasn’t you,” I whispered, not with question in my voice because I saw how sick he looked.
“Jesus fucking Christ. In my house?” His voice held malice now. “Someone did that to you in my fucking room?”
“I thought it was you. For years,” I murmured, my mind spinning now, my body unravelling in relief that it wasn’t him but tightening up at still not knowing the whole truth. A soul wanted to catch the truth, and my heart galloped like it wanted to find it.
Rafe shook his head and then ran a hand through his hair, his expression taut with disbelief as he murmured, “I’d only just come upstairs from letting Angela have her way with me, Bianca. Her and I hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and she’d been more than happy to screw me every which way all night. I didn’t even know you were up there, didn’t realize someone—” He stopped, his voice breaking. “You can call and confirm, but I swear on the family I wasn’t there, Pink.Fuck.”
I didn’t need to. As the pieces fell into place, as I stared at the man who grew up next door to me along with his brothers, it made awful, perfect sense.
