Page 20 of The Masked King

“Not unless you were delirious in the night and told him you were back.”

My glass is empty. My erection is shrinking. I’ve got an entire day to get through before I can even think about going back to JADED.

Bianca almost smiles, but her swollen mouth doesn’t quite make it happen. “Thank you, Enzo.”

“For what?” From where I’m sitting, the list is growing.

“You sound like our father.” She sets two cups on the counter and fills them both with steaming black coffee. “He always wanted us to understand what we’d done wrong and what we were apologizing for.”

I shrug. “I was the baby of the family. I never did anything wrong.”

“That’s what everyone let you believe, Enzo.”

Bianca carries the cups to the coffee table and sits down on the couch facing me. Her actions are sluggish, like those of a woman whose bones have grown brittle with old age rather than someone in her late thirties. I have a mental image of her thoroughly wearing her body out by the time she’s forty if she continues this way.

Maybe that’s the plan. Maybe she feels like she has nothing left to live for.

I don’t want that responsibility on my shoulders.

“I’ll find out who did this to you.” I sip my coffee.

“And then what?”

“Then, I’ll let them know that they don’t mess with the Sabatellis and live to talk about it.”

“They didn’t mess with the Sabatellis.” Her swollen lips barely move when she speaks. “I still have my husband’s name, remember. And our brother made it quite clear that I’m no longer part of the family.”

This is what my sister does: she argues every fucking point until she wears you down and then plays the victim. It’s her own peculiar version of gaslighting, and she’s had years of practice.

“Fine. I’ll show them what happens to men who disrespect women.”

She fixes me with a stare from her good eye. “How very noble. Is that why Demi left you. because you think you’re better than every other fucker out there?”

My fingers tense around my coffee cup. “What do you know about Demi?”

She shrugs, giving me a brief glimpse of the graceful woman she was before she got broken by the brute she married. “There’s nothing of hers in your room or your ensuite. She’s either been gone for a while or you dumped her stuff when she walked out.”

My sister is a walking fucking disaster who gets a thrill out of biting the hand that picks her up when she’s down, almost as if she wants to hit rock bottom so that she can blame everyone else for her problems. One day, she’ll push a little too hard and there will be no one left to dry her tears.

But that isn’t what’s bugging me. She can chip away at me all she likes, but it’s the way she spoke about Demi as if she has insider information on what went on between us.

“Why do you care?”

“You’re my baby brother. Despite what Gio thinks of me, I’ve always looked out for you, Enzo. I just want you to be happy.”

I understand it’s difficult for her to express any emotion with her face all disfigured, but it’s the lack of any kind of empathy or feeling in her voice that hardens something inside me. I don’t believe her. Only I don’t know where that leaves me.

“How long will you be staying?” I ask.

She’s been here for less than twelve hours and is already doing her fucking best to make herself unwelcome.

“Until you kick me out, I guess.”

I sit through a dull meeting in Gio’s boardroom later in the day. It requires zero input from me, and I’m jolted back into the room several times when my name captures my attention. Each time, I’m lost in a reverie of Nyx naked on my lap while I stroke her hair and whisper in her ear, “My special baby. You know you’re mine now.”

Fuck! They should rename JADED as MIND GAMES. I might drop it into the suggestion box tonight, maybe earn myself a free visit, or at the very least a glimpse of Nyx in the darkness, just so I know she isn’t a hologram and a voice recording.

I realize what a sucker this makes me. Nyx loaded the bait, promised to make my wildest fantasies come true when what she was really doing was tapping into my dark side, and I swallowed it whole. I bought that baby like it was a lighthouse in the middle of the stormy ocean.