My body clenches. A war rages inside me: the rebelling, riotous, furious part of me battling the traitorous, toxic, cancerous part of me that feels fuckingwarmwhen his cold gaze lands on me.
“This is fucked up and sick,” I hiss.
“Duly noted.”
My eyes lock on his.
Fuck him. He won’t get the better of me. Seeing my body doesn’t mean he owns me. And if he wants to cage me in with him, too bad. Because he won’t be cagingmein withhim. He’ll be caginghimselfin withme.
And I’ll make sure it’s his fucking funeral.
“Fine,” I say, shrugging.
I reach for the zipper of my hoodie, tugging it down and shrugging it off. The skirt is next.
No seductive smiles. No coy winks.
He only gets clinical, detached undressing.
He’s going to regret every fucking second of this.
8
BANE
It’s truly eeriehow similar they always looked.
The perky-goth/death metal Barbie aesthetic aside, the woman standing in front of me lookssomuch like Lark.
It pisses me the fuck off even more.
Like a visceral reminder of what I lost.
Most people have a distorted view of what it means to be "mafia royalty". Social media and mafia-slanted paparazzi shit like The Scarface Report, the TikTok account that’s been blasting our Empire State Building photoshoot nonstop, tend to glamorize it. Yes, as adults, my friends and I—Carmine, Nico, Nero, Roman, and Laz—do have a way of roaming this city like kings.
But it wasn’t always like that.
In middle school, it was hell.
At least, it was if you were me.
I’m not the only one of my friends who went to private school. With the fathers we had, and the power they held? Of coursewe did. But while Carmine, Nico, and Nero as good Catholic boys went to St. Thomas Aquinas, and Roman and Laz ended up at the Pembroke School, Dad thought I’d be best suited to Thornfield Academy.
Not, obviously, because there wasanyoneelse there like me—heir to a criminal empire but also wrestling with what would later be diagnosed as clinical depression—but because my test scores were through the fucking roof.
I think he thought I’d thrive there, with my over-achieving brain. Plus, I think maybe he wanted me to learn outside the echo chamber of mafia-centered private education.
There, I learned for the first time what it meant to bewithoutpower.
On the outside, looking in.
An outcast.
I wasn’t feared or lionized for my last name at Thornfield. I was shunned. Mocked. Bullied by my preppy, old-money, WASPy peers. For being “a criminal”. For the black clothes I usually wore. For the “snake bite” double lip piercing, and the metal bands whose logos I’d draw on the backs of my hands in sharpie.
Don’t get me wrong, I could handle it. But it was a battle every fucking day. Me against the world. Always with my fists up and my lips bloodied.
Until I met Lark Peltier.
