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Chapter 4
“Cara mia,”I whispered, brushing my fingertips across Bianca’s cheek, soaking in her beauty, in awe of the young woman who made me feel alive in every way. Her love saved me at the lowest point of my life, and without her courage and kindness, I would never have met Craven or survived long enough to seek retribution for my past.
Rubio DeMarco’s death marked the first soul brought to justice for the crimes against my family, but he wouldn’t be the last. I swore to end his line, and I meant it. No one would stop me from fulfilling that oath. Or the one I swore to my father as I picked myself up from the ruins of our ancestral home. Salvador Russo and the men on his payroll would pay the ultimate price for my father’s death and my suffering.
None of that mattered now as I pressed two fingers against Bianca’s throat, immediately calmed by the consistent fluttering of her pulse, thrumming strong enough to prove her will to survive rivaled my own.
To see her like this, unconscious and wounded, rekindled the rage I battled within. Whoever harmed her would bleed. I would enjoy their screams. And the monster within, the Phantom, would revel in the blood that spilled.
As a human anatomy scholar, I knewmia Biancawould recover from her injuries. Craven had used his knowledge to do what he could for her in my absence. I trusted him more than any doctor. His loyalty to both Bianca and me went far beyond simple obligation. We’d formed a family unit over the years. A trust that I had not experienced in my life aside from my club brothers.
“Her injuries?” I asked, knowing he tended to her before I arrived.
Craven stood on the opposite side of my bed, frowning when our gaze met and locked. “I would normally never dare to touch her, but under the circumstances, I had no choice.”
“She’ll forgive you.”
He pursed his lips before responding. “A slight concussion. Dislocated shoulder already reset before her arrival. A gash to the left thigh poorly stitched that I repaired. A deep laceration on her head sealed with surgical staples. I found multiple bruises, a hematoma on her abdomen, and other minor wounds. Before she passed out, she said she’d been in an accident. A cab, I believe.”
A cab? How the fuck did this happen? She should have reached hernonnoat the address he sent via text.
A cold shiver ghosted my spine as I realized I let her leave and placed her in additional danger. Fuck!
I tugged at my hair and winced. The skin on the left side of my face pulled tight on the puckered, distorted flesh. I resisted the urge to lift my hand and scratch at the offending area.
“Do not blame yourself for this,” Craven urged.
“How can I not?” I asked with bitterness. “I should have forced her to stay with me.”
“Against her will?” Craven scoffed. “No. That is not who you are.”
The old man believed his lie, but I didn’t. I already knew the Phantom was capable of anything. That persona never fully receded. Back here at the Huber Estate, enclosed within its haunting walls, I regressed into the monster stalking its lonely bones.
A cloaked specter who yearned for death, violence, and bloodshed but also craved the love of an innocent, beautiful soul. Love in its most tragic form. Bianca became the remedy for the empty, painful ache in my heart. She soothed the vengeful ghosts that lined the pathway of the dark beast within.
“Bianca,” I whispered, reverently murmuring her name, the feel of it breathing over my tongue as velvety soft and intoxicating as the rose petals from the single rose tied with black ribbon I placed in her room on numerous occasions. The same roses grown in the garden behind the cemetery where we first met, with deep purple spilling from the edges of the petals, slowly bleeding into a dark red center.
She was as sweet and intoxicating as those fragile, fragrant blooms. And far too susceptible to the harsh reality of her family’s vicious business practices. Darkness swirled around her and threatened to douse her light.
The one comfort I could count on was her fierce nature and fighting spirit. The Italian princess who dared to live life on her own terms. Bianca defied her grandfather and fell in love with a demon of the night—a disfigured, scarred monster who wanted to devour every ounce of her innocence.
And yet, she tamed me with one glance. A single word spoken in her soft, sensual voice, and I dropped to my knees, eager to please her. The beauty and her beast. The phantom and his angel. Two lonely people with one shared soul. One broken, the other caged, both longing to be free.
Her family condemned her to her fate as unjustly as mine had been ripped away from me.
