I wanted to keep her for myself, hoard her in my cave-like home for my pleasure alone like a dragon hiding treasure.
But I didn’t deserve that.
Her goodness, her beauty, her warmth.
Even if I did, I had a plan with so many roots it was impossible to imagine digging it out of myself now.
I wrenched myself away from her, staring over her shoulder so I wouldn’t get lost in those dilated eyes, those open, swollen lips.
“Come.”
She came, following after me as I led her the rest of the way up the stairs, through the main lobby and up more stairs, following the din of the party. I accepted a glass of champagne an insistent server thrust upon me, but I didn’t follow him into the crowded hall. Bianca hesitated when I pulled her to the right instead of left down the hall toward the event, but she didn’t say a word.
Her trust burned in me.
When we entered the room where the Picasso hung, she tensed beside me and I knew she’d seen it before. I headed straight to the painting, the glean of Lane Constantine’s name glowing in the light from above the frame. She numbly accepted my untouched flute of champagne and set it alongside hers on the ground beside us.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I took my knife from my pocket and flipped it open. If I took the frame off the wall, it would trigger an alarm, so I held the frame in one hand and stabbed through the canvas at its edge with the other.
“Tiernan!” she cried, trying to pull on my arm. “What the fuck are you doing? That’s my—” She hesitated, catching herself before the reveal.
“Your father’s painting?” I asked quietly as I worked the top right edge away, then carefully followed the seam to the bottom right corner. When I peeled it back, I saw it.
Not a will.
That would have been too easy.
But a small key, taped to the lining fabric between the painted canvas and the frame support.
“What the hell?” Bianca whispered, her lax hands falling from my arm.
I plucked the key from the tape and pocketed it before turning to face her. My heart was racing, adrenaline like a drug overdose in my veins.
“Your dad left you something, Bianca,” I explained, reaching out to grab her shoulders when she took a step away. “Lane Constantine left you and Brandon a lot of money.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, more breath than sound. “How do you know my father?”
“He knows that son of a bitch because he once tried to destroy our entire family.”
That voice.
It sounded like a crater opening in the ground about to swallow me whole.
It signaled the end of this charade with Bianca, the end of the game I played against my own father.
Bryant had arrived.
Bianca swirled to face him, then instinctively took a step back, away from him and into me as if I would protect her.
Bitter humor clogged my throat.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him flatly.
Dressed in one of his perfectly tailored tuxedos, Bryant looked every inch the business magnate, the exemplary gentleman. It was his mouth that gave him away, hooked through one side in a grin as crooked as his morals.
He was going to enjoy this.