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One
Bianca did another lap around her brother Raphael’s living room in an attempt to outrun her mother.
She loved her mother, she really did, but Francesca was just too much on a holiday. Even on a minor holiday, like Halloween, she could get quite spikey. Though she normally saved the bulk of her Francesca nastiness for Thanksgiving and Christmas, using Halloween as a warmup for her passive-aggressive meddling was not unheard of, and she’d already asked Bianca twice if she was dating anyoneof consequence. What the hell did that even mean? Bianca wasn’t twenty-four yet. Who was she supposed to be dating, the French foreign minister?
She went back to the Halloween-themed canapés and champagne discreetly offered in the dining room area of her brother’s enormous open-plan penthouse, which was at the top of the newest and flashiest skyscraper in the heart of the oldest section of Boston. Bianca was pretty sure he owned the building, or at least their family’s company, Arc A Enterprises, did. So, technically, it was owned by her Uncle Gabriel, and her brothers Raphael, aka Rafe, and Cassiel. And herself, she supposed. Arc A was in part hers, but in name only because she didn’t have a job there. Bianca still had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. Her mother took Bianca’s indecision as some kind of white flag and had decided that Bianca should just get married and start having more Loring babies.
Bianca liked babies. But she wanted to be of service to the world, too, because making babies and going out for lunch for the rest of her life just wasn’t going to cut it for her.
“You can’t run from her forever,” her brother Cassiel said in her ear, knowing full well what Bianca was up to. “She does way too much cardio. Besides. You have to get in there and protect Abbe. She’s new.”
Bianca caught Cassiel’s warm smile as he watched Rafe with his arm around Abbe, glowing instead of glowering for the first time pretty much ever. “Youlikeher,” Bianca said, eyes flashing tauntingly.
Cassiel nodded as if admitting a fault. “What can I say, he picked a good one.”
Bianca studied her mercurial brother. “I told you, you wouldn’t find any dirt on her no matter how deep you dug.”
“Not onespeck,” he said as if still shocked about that. “Frigging all-girls schools and only three real boyfriends in her entire life. And she savesanimalsfor ajob!”
Bianca nodded, throwing an arm over her brother’s shoulder. “She’s a peach. I’m definitely keeping her, even if Rafe screws it up.”
Cassiel nodded, but a worried frown was creasing his brow.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Hell, I’m thinking Abbe might be too good for us.”
“Oh, definitely,” Bianca agreed. “So we better not scare her off. It’d kill Rafe.”
Cassiel looked at his little sister out of the corner of his eyes. “That’s why you have to get back in there and fight the good fight.”
Bianca sighed heavily. “Fine. But only for another ten minutes. Then I’m out of here.” She bent down to pet Daisy, Rafe’s dog, who was wearing a Zorro costume. She looked adorable in her little cape.
Cassiel took in Bianca’s costume. She was the only one of them dressed for Halloween. This year she was Pris from the originalBlade Runner. Not the all-white doll costume, but the first outfit that Pris wore when she was hiding in the garbage out in front of J. F. Sebastian’s dilapidated building—with the black micro mini dress, the garter-style stockings, the white wig, and the black spray-painted line across her eyes. Bianca looked amazing, even though she knew that there were going to be very few people who got it. That was the story of Bianca’s life.
“Where are you off to tonight?” Cassiel asked, taking in her punk-inspired Halloween costume. He, of course, had no idea who she was. Bianca’s interests had always been obscure.
“Pbbt,” she replied, blowing air through her lips. “As if you don’t already know.”
Cassiel was seven years older than she was, and Rafe was ten years older. The large age gap made it easy for them to get along. They hadn’t grown up fighting over things, or their parent’s attention, but since their father had died when Bianca was twelve, it created another dynamic between them. Rafe and Cass acted like dual dads and they insisted on treating her like she was still a little kid. Rafe had a whole suite of rooms set aside for her in his penthouse like she was still going to be coming home to stay with him on break from college. She had her own place in Boston, and she wasn’t going to be living with either of her brothers ever again if she could help it. Still, Rafe treated her like she was his daughter.
And Cassiel was worse in many ways. Over the past few years, Bianca had realized that Cassiel’s job as the Head of Marketing and Public Relations for Arc A Enterprises was just code for abig scary guy who knows everything about everybody and who controls the way the press sees the family and the company.Basically, he handled all potential shitstorms that could come their family’s way, and he wasn’t very forthcoming about how he did that. Part PR, part security, part fixer, all Bianca really knew was that Cass had a team of men and women who were constantly present both in real life and online, but who never said very much.
On special occasions when the family was going to be at a large event, Cassiel’s team acted openly as drivers and bodyguards, but most of the time they would just fade into the background. The disappearing part was more unnerving than the bodyguard part because Bianca suspected they were stillthere, watching everything that could potentially affect the family, she just couldn’t see them. Of course, her brother Cassiel knew who she was going to be hanging out with that night, and Bianca’s overstated eye-roll let him know that she knew he knew.
“So, my next question is, why are you still hanging out with Eden Ronson?” he asked.
Okay. Bianca knew Eden was a trainwreck. She drank too much, did drugs, went through men faster than packs of chewing gum, and was always in some sort of crisis that usually involved Bianca having to get on a jet and rescue her from a skeevy dude in Dubai. But they’d been friends since they were girls, and Bianca wasn’t the kind of person to quit on a friend, no matter how fantastically they tried to screw up their lives.
Bianca held up her palm in a “talk to the hand gesture” to her brother as she walked away and joined their mother, who was doing her best to whittle away at Abbe’s self-esteem while seeming to pay her compliments.
“It’s just so nice to see young people doing what little they can to help the community,” Francesca was saying.
Her mom was in amood. Bianca visibly cringed, but Abbe smiled and nodded. “Well, you know, we all need to pull together to get anything done these days. In fact, we could use someone like you at the shelter if you ever found the time.”
Bianca saw Rafe’s eyes widen slightly in fearful surprise, and she stepped into damage control mode.
“Mom, seriously, we should go to Furry Faces together,” Bianca said, hating the fact that this meant she might have to spend more time with her exhausting mother. “I mean, when was the last time you had a pet?”
