His blink was a slow-motion condemnation of my character. “Yes. I expect little girls to tattle.”
“Oh, you’re here,” my mother called in her breathy tone from somewhere behind me. “Bianca, don’t make the poor man stay out in the cold.”
I hesitated, staring into those fathomless eyes as cold and pale as the Arctic tundra and I wondered what kind of monster my mother was asking me to invite into our home.
“Bianca!” she reprimanded.
I was seventeen, nine months away from freedom, but years ahead of my peers in maturity because I’d stopped being a kid the moment my little brother was diagnosed with epilepsy four years ago. I had been Brando’s primary caregiver since he was born because Aida wasn’t exactly maternal and we didn’t have the money for a nanny the way we did when I was young, yet the law said because she was older, because she had spent a few hours pushing us out of her vagina, she deserved to make life choices for the two lives she barely noticed most days.
Which was why I’d started referring to her as “Aida” instead of “Mom” in my head when I hit puberty and realized I had to take responsibility for Brando and me.
She brought men into our lives without any thought to us.
Men who hit on me. Men who ridiculed Brando for peeing his pants after some of his seizures. Men who treated Aida like pretty garbage, something to own and use without any need for niceties.
It was irritating and deeply unfair.
But I was used to it.
So, I didn’t argue with her even though I wanted to slam the door in the cold, arrogant face of the man at our door because I had that feeling. The kind you get in the base of your belly when you know something is wrong, the kind that raises the hairs on the back of your neck when a storm is an electric beat in the air minutes before it descends.
I shot one more glare at her latest conquest and stepped aside to let him into our home.
Into our lives.
The grin he shot me was a brief, brilliant flash of white teeth between firm lips. It was…triumphant. Mean. The smile of a marauder invited warmly into the village he intended to pillage.
A shiver bit vicious teeth into the base of my back and rattled my spine.
“Aida,” he said, shifting his focus from me to my mother, his entire face suffused with new warmth. “You look beautiful, but I do not know why I am surprised. You always take my breath away.”
I turned to watch him approach her, kissing her suavely on both cheeks, one tattooed hand light on her hip. The inked hands were such a contrast to his otherwise civilized veneer that I couldn’t keep my eyes off them, trying to discern the black ink patterns. The only image clear to me was the outline of an exquisite rose planted in the center of his left hand, the same hand that held a rose for my mother.
Aida blushed like a preteen girl at his praise. “You’re a dangerous man. If you aren’t careful, I’ll develop a complex.”
I snorted before I could curb my reaction, drawing their attention to me.
Aida frowned at me, then quickly affixed a smile to her face, addressing her boyfriend. “You brought me a rose?”
He lifted the single stem between them, twirling it between two fingers so that the lamplight caught the velvet petals and made them shine like blood.
“A perfect rose for a perfect woman.”
I covered my gag with a cough.
My mother didn’t buy it.
“Bianca, be a good girl and come take the rose from Tiernan. Put it in some water for me while I grab my coat,” she directed me as she moved away to gather her things.
I fought against the urge to roll my eyes and nearly lost the battle. Bitterness coated the back of my tongue as I trudged forward to take the rose.
From Tiernan.
Tiernan.
When I looked up the strange name later, I learned it meantlord.
Of course, it did.