Page 27 of Pretty Pink Poison
He brought in his people under the guise of care. A private nurse on a loop. A stack of testing he authorized a team of health professionals to run. Every morning a courier arrived with whatever was suggested that day. It was humiliating and embarrassing that they asked question after question. One nurse even dissected the fact that I’d miscarried along with my fainting spell. He’d told me he’d find every secret and now he was monitoring every single physical aspect of me. I hated it.
But then, he would come.
He would stand behind them all, quiet and perturbed. He didn’t have time to talk to me, but he had time to dissect my health. And maybe that’s what kept me going, that he was at least there. The way I saw his jaw tick at not being able to figure me out. And when he barked at the physician on the phone—week after week—the way my name left his mouth sounded like some kind of ownership and panic braided together that I clung to. “Fine. But why did she faint? No, that’s not a coincidence,” he’d tell them and then follow up with, “I won’t accept that.”
Routine blood work. Cardiac scans that watched my heart flex and shiver in high definition. Monitors that kept logging,logging, logging. He had them run everything he could order without actually stripping my life open. Each time a result came in fine, he tightened, as if squeezing the envelope of my existence might force the answer out.
Should I have been appreciative that he checked more boxes than my parents ever had? Or should I have been scared for him to find a cause and classify me as defective?
The nurse also came with vitamin boosters, IVs, and electrolyte drips. She was there to maintain my health now too. And then she’d try to nicely pry me for information. I answered her questions the way a prisoner would answer a damn warden; concise and careful. I never told her much.
And I never told Bane anything. Especially not about my gluten intolerance.
I’d learned to be silent from my father the way you learn to flinch at a raised hand—instinct, not choice.
He had that brilliant old-school theory that if I just “toughened up,” and took care of myself, I’d eventually stop fainting or having my gluten intolerance. He acted like my conditions could be bullied into submission, that I could just starve it out, or pray the evil away. It would’ve been hilarious had it not been my life actually on the line.
At least with Bane, it was a check here and there, a vitamin boost, and more checks to try and figure out the problem. But I just didn’t know what would happen once he did.
And truly, I didn’t trust him not to act just like my father. Maybe that was my own fault for waking up in his brother’s bed and creating the fissure between us, but either way, Bane was a man forged in blood, made to destroy anything in his path. Including me. Especially me.
I also didn’t know if he’d ever come to my room if he knew every single thing about me. It was a desperate act but one I wouldn’t let go of.
Still, he told me, “We’ll continue to run tests, Bianca, until I find out for sure.” Those were orders he gave himself more than anyone else. Diagnoses weren’t easily pinned down, though. They were evasive, slippery, and most times you accepted them only when every other test came back clean. I’d heard the doctors tell him as much, but Bane hated uncertainty. He wanted absolutes. He wanted a definitive answer.
I would never be that in more ways than one.
It was infuriating and comforting—comforting because it meant I mattered enough to break his routine; infuriating because I mattered only because I was a puzzle that needed to be solved, and Bane wanted everything figured out all the time.
I saw how his eyes catalogued me at meals now, how he didn’t comment on me pushing around food until he realized how much I was. At one meal, his knife cut into his food with mechanical precision, before saying, “You’re not eating again, Bianca. What would you like instead?”
I wanted to scream at him for hovering, for watching me just a little too closely, for trying to figure out something I wanted to stay hidden, especially when it was only for my health and nothing else. So that time I murmured, “Well, I’m sure you know, some of us women don’t like carbs. I’m watching my figure.” It had been an easy enough excuse in the past, but the man narrowed his eyes before dragging his gaze over every inch of me.
It seared through my clothes, heating every part of my body. “You don’t need to watch your figure with me or anyone ever.” I didn’t know if that was a slight at the fact that we would never be together again or a compliment.
And that’s how our relationship went. He never asked how I was doing or inquired about the lifestyle I was living at his resorts. I was summoned randomly to attend a dinner or meal or be flown to a new resort while Bane was on business. He’d giveme orders to stay healthy but never comments or feelings. He’d make sure I knew the rules but never his thoughts.
He even gave me ear buds at one point, saying, “Listen to something else rather than our conversation. And remember, you’re responsible for any story leaked.”
“Responsible as in you’ll punish me?” I tried to tap into the Bane I used to know.
His gaze sizzled, but then he grabbed my chin roughly to turn me toward his security. “Responsible as in Pepe will punish you.” Pepe was the man who’d dragged out the murdered men night after night.
Then he shoved my face away and left me with my thoughts. My mind ran away with the echoes of my mother’s own brand of bedtime story. The thoughts spun webs of doubt and fear in my head.
He wasn’t my masked man or the boy I had once known. He was Bane Black, a man who now hated me.
That night, I was put up in a penthouse suite, thankfully alone again, and I did what any girl raised by the syndicate would: I went on the freaking hunt.
I wasn’t going to be a victim, I told myself. I was a damn fighter. The first weapon was a kitchen knife, and I tucked it beneath my pillow with the handle angled just right. But knives only buy you a few seconds unless you’re really prepared, and I had more than enough time to do that.
Turns out, luxury resorts took convenience to a whole new level if you thought of the right places. I asked security if they could get me some calming herbs from the spa and a few sleeping aids so I could relax. I knew chamomile, valerian, and lavender could tranq a horse into a nap if used right from the dabbling our friends did at the academy. I’d swiped a syringe from a vitamin boost one day. Easy enough.
By the end of another week, I had everything I needed to crush up and mix with the vodka from the minibar. One pull from the syringe and I was ready with that baby under my pillow too.
One stab of that, just one, and my makeshift cocktail would slip straight into the bloodstream. Maybe it’d kill him too if he dared try to take advantage of me in the night. Or anyone for that matter. I didn’t trust Pepe or any of the security here. Not when I was technically an ally on paper and in contract but a sort of enemy and liability in truth to them all. And definitely not after the stories my mother told me. I wouldn’t willingly give it up to anyone ever again.
I even smiled up at the chandelier of my penthouse that night so proud of the twisted DIY project Pinterest would never approve.
