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“Did Jesse catch you sneaking out?”
She laughed mirthlessly and threw her hands up.
“Do you think I’d be here if he had?” she challenged. Immediately, her face registered contrition. “I’m sorry. I didn’t— No, he didn’t catch me. It’s… it’s worse than that.”
I sat back, perched on the edge of the desk, legs spread open. I caught her sneaking a glance between my thighs, and I swallowed a grin. She had no idea what was lurking in there.
Stop it. She can never know what’s lurking in there.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” I pressed. “Or are you going to make me guess?”
She grunted and sat back, darting her eyes away, but I cocked my head toward her, restricting her line of sight. There was nowhere for her to look but at me, those wide, brown eyes melting onto my face, making my cock harder with every blink.
“He’s set a date for the wedding. Two weeks,” she mumbled.
The information struck me with physical force, although I didn’t know why. I had always understood what Jesse was about. His interest in Bianca was no shock to me. Yet hearing that he truly intended to keep her as his own made a fire rage in my gut. I wanted to rip Jesse’s throat out with my bare hands.
“No,” I heard myself say as I stood. “It’s going to be okay.”
Bianca tipped her head back as I drew closer, shaking her head. “It’s not going to be okay!” she fired out, throwing her hands up. “You don’t understand at all!”
“I do,” I murmured, crouching down beside her.
My hand fell on her filthy, faded jeans, the feel of her slender thigh beneath my fingers sending shivers through me.
Easy, Atlas. Down, boy…
My own internal warning was useless. I made no move to adjust my fingers.
“I get it,” I insisted. “Jesse is a pig. His collection of virgins is disgusting.”
“He murdered my mother to get my sister and me.”
I recoiled, my hands falling back at the revelation. My mind’s eye saw Bianca pinned and unclothed beneath Jesse’s body, unable to escape. Again, my reaction was visceral.
“What?!”
Bianca shook her head, the golden strands falling over her face.
“Not him—not exactly,” she floundered. “I mean…”
She inhaled and cocked her head back to look at me.
“My sister and I are anomalies in the enchanted world. Children are rare, as you know, and twins are pretty much unheard of. My father sold us to him,” she said.
“You said as much,” I sighed, repulsed at the idea that such men existed in the world. And twins? No wonder Jesse had such a fascination.
No matter how hard I tried to rid the city of dirt, it always seemed to find its way back through somehow.
“No, you don’t know what he did,” she insisted. “My mom—she knew what my dad was, what he was all about. He had always been a drinker, a gambler, more interested in his own pleasures than caring for his family. She knew that, eventually, he would try to sell us or use us in some way for his own financial gain. She took my sister and me and ran.”
I ground my teeth, repulsed by the idea that men were still able to sell their children in this day and age, but outside of Covale City, I had little say in the way matters were run.
Bianca took a deep, shuddering breath, and I felt my own withdraw into my body.
“We ran—even when we didn’t know why we were running,” she went on, blinking rapidly. “Dahlia begged her to stop, to give Dad a chance, that he wasn’t so bad, that he loved us…” Her voice cracked. “But Mom, she knew.” Gooseflesh prickled my arms. “Even if she did get careless.”
“Careless how?” I growled, sensing where this story was going.
