Page 69 of Tank
Tank is a killer. A vicious, cold-blooded killer.
I lead him outside behind the venue, rage and disbelief tearing at every nerve in my body. The fundraiser’s still alive inside—music, laughter, warmth. Everything I need. Everything that is essential to keeping my dream, my Safe House, alive.
And I’m breaking in half out here in the cold.
He tries to talk to me on the way out. I don’t hear the words. My vision’s swimming. I trip over the curb and he catches me.
I shove him off.
I trip again. He grabs my arm to steady me.
I rip away like he burned me.
Every gentle gesture just twists the knife deeper.
Every touch leaves my skin crawling, knowing how much blood must stain his hands.
“Don’t you fucking touch me.”
Something changes in his voice. It turns into something curious, but something cold. “What is it?”
Under the chilly night sky, my breath trembles with fury as I whip around to face him. "I know," I spit, the words tearing through me like shrapnel. The accusation shreds my voice, turning it raw, broken. “I know. I know everything. Why the fuck did you have to lie to me? Why, Tank? Why?”
I see the flinch ripple through him, the stiffening of muscles beneath his jacket as he braces. His jaw is taut, clenched so tight I imagine it might shatter. His eyes shutter, something flickers and dies.
“What is it you think you know?
I can almost hear a door slamming shut inside him.
And I recognize that sound, that finality. I've heard it slam shut in my brother a thousand times, seen it in the hollow eyes of his men, in the set of their jaws. It's the look of someone who has learned to replace guilt with numbness. I see it all now on Tank. The loving, bearded baker vanishes, replaced by the soldier, by the outlaw, by the killer. It’s a face I know too well. A face I’ve lived in fear of my whole life. A face I thought I could finally leave behind.
“I know enough,” I say, the words barely there. My defiance feels paper thin against his steel. “I know enough about who you are to know I’m done with you.”
He draws in a breath, slow and deliberate. It sounds steady on the surface, but I hear the tempest underneath. Rage, yes. And something I don’t want to recognize, something that sounds dangerously like pain, like heartbreak, something I refuse to believe he’s capable of feeling. “It’s not what you think.”
My hands are fists, nails driving into my palms, punishing me for my stupidity, for my blindness. For letting him in.
“I trusted you,” I scream. “I trusted you and I loved you because I thought you were fucking different. I thought you had a heart. But in the end, what? You were just fucking using me? Just using me like all the others? Fuck you, Tank. Fuck you.”
“Bianca, I love you,” he says, the audacity of it searing through me. “It’s true I’m a dangerous man. I’ve done bad things. But I’m here tonight because —”
I hit him. Hard.
My fist cracks against his cheek, and pain ricochets up my arm, sharp and real. He doesn’t flinch.
“Get the fuck out of here,” I scream, sobbing now, not even able to stop it, the tears hot and unstoppable. Humiliating. “You lied to me. You were using me. Just like every other man who’s ever touched my life.”
“I lied to you? I’m not the only one who lied here, Bianca.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You think I don’t know who you’re related to?”
“That doesn’t matter,” I snap, my voice cracking like a whip in the chilly night.
“Like fuck it doesn’t matter. You’re Bianca Moretti. I know who you are, I know what your brother does, and I know what you do to help your brother and his fucking sick empire. This whole charity is just a fucking front for him to use. You help him, you fucking aid him in spreading his fucking cancer to this whole fucking city.”
My world blackens, my heart hardens, and I hit him again. “You don’t know a fucking thing.”
