Even if it meant giving up my dreams.
Even if it meant inviting Tiernan into our home for good.
Chapter Three
Bianca
When I woke up, the soft floral scent of Aida’s perfume was in my nose because her hair was across my face. I smiled as I swam out of a deep, restful sleep, my first in weeks. My leg was sprawled across her lower body, one of my hands crossed on top of her belly to rest on Brandon’s head where it lay snuggled into the curve of her hip.
Contentment, rare and beautiful, hummed through me.
I’d wanted to move to New York City since I was a girl and the opportunity to go with my family was almost too good to be true. So, I was wary still of Tiernan and those secrets he proclaimed to want from my mom, but I was also resolved.
We would make the most of the situation as we always did.
I shifted, curling into my mom as I prepared to drift back to sleep. It was a Sunday, and I could afford a little more rest on my one day off this week.
I frowned as I registered how cold Aida was against me. She had poor circulation, but Brando and me were both warm bodies against her beneath the heavy duvet. I cracked an eye open to check on her.
She lay on her back, one arm around Brando, the other thrown over her head. The expression her face was soft and sweet, her beauty so acute it made my chest ache. My eyes closed again as I moved to rest my cheek against her chest.
It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t moving.
No gentle ebb and swell of breath through her chest.
No muted thump of her heart beating behind the cage of her ribs.
Nothing.
Every single atom of my body froze.
I didn’t blink. I didn’t breathe.
As if mimicking the stillness of my mother’s body would make it less alarming.
It didn’t work.
She was too cold, too inert to pass off as anything but what my mind was screaming at me.
Dead.
In the wake of shock, panic flooded my system. I got to my knees in the bed, somehow cognizant enough not to jar Brando awake as I leaned over Aida and checked the pulse at her throat with two fingers.
Nothing.
Her wrist?
Nothing.
A panicked wail lodged in my throat.
Her skin was pale yellow, bleached of warmth. The texture was cold and smooth, like something inanimate. My fingers trembled as I lightly touched her bone-white lips.
I hovered over her, desperation clawing at my insides, anxiety eating at my extremities so that they shook fiercely, vibrating the bed.
For one brutal, endless moment, I didn’t know what to do.
A childish part of me wanted to lie back down and go to sleep, tell myself it was all a bad dream that would be better when I woke up.
Another, untethered part of my soul wanted to rage at Aida, shake her shoulders until she woke. The. Hell. Up! Because we needed her, didn’t she know that? Didn’t she understand that for all the responsibility I took on, I was just a girl and Brando was only a boy?
How could she leave us?
But then Brando stirred slightly in his sleep, tucking the foot-long, plastic Iron Man figurine tighter into the crook of his arm.
My throat closed up around the agony lodged inside. I thought I would choke until I remembered that if I went to pieces, Brando would wake up beside his dead mother and be scarred forever.
I sucked a deep breath into my lungs, wincing at the taste of Aida’s perfume on my tongue.
There was no one but me to deal with this situation.
So, I breathed deeply until my vision stopped swimming and slowly, afraid I’d collapse with the weight of it all, I stood up.
One step at a time, I told myself as I focused on my breath.
In and out.
I rounded the bed.
Then I gently curled my arms around my baby brother and lifted him into my arms. He was sleep heavy, but I welcomed the heft of him, the warmth of him against me. The next breath I took was against his sweetly scented hair.
It grounded me as I carefully carried him out of the bedroom that had become a death chamber overnight and back down the hall to his own room. He barely stirred as I tucked him into his superhero sheets. I pushed his hair out of his face, staring at him with an intensity that made my eyes burn. My fingers found the pulse in his neck before I could stop myself. I needed the resonance of that heartbeat to fuel me on.
I thought of it, of him, as I moved into the kitchen and picked up the landline to call 9-1-1. I tapped the beat out on the Formica countertops as I told them about Aida, then against my thigh as they instructed me to go back into her room to test for her pulse.
I hesitated over her body, fingers outstretched and shaking as I tried to force myself to touch her pale neck again. It was cold and hard, smooth as stone.
The emptiness replaced the tattoo of Brando’s pulse in my chest and echoed through me. I fought against the despair that swelled in my hollow chest, eating up everything inside me until I throbbed with sorrow, but it was a losing battle.
By the time the emergency operator assured me help was on the way, I was curled in the corner of Aida’s room in a tight ball, my wet cheek pressed against the wall.
“Do you have someone you can call?” the female operator asked softly. “A family member?”
A hiccoughed sob exploded from between my lips and tears fell wetly to the ground. I stared at the spot they fell as I fought the sobs back down my throat.
“No,” I whispered coarsely. “It’s just Mom, my little brother, and me. H-he’s only seven.”
“What about a friend?” she offered. “Someone who can come help you.”
I closed my eyes, rolling my forehead back and forth against the wall as I shook my head. We didn’t have close friends. Aida was too busy dating, absorbing the friends of each man she saw until they inevitably broke up and she lost them too. I was too busy at work and school, at home with Brando so I didn’t have anyone close enough I felt I could call with the enormity of this news.
Brando was charming and beautiful. He had lots of friends, but I couldn’t call a seven-year-old for help and I was loath to call any of their parents when I only knew them from school pickup and the odd playdate.
I had never felt so alone in my entire life as I sat there in the corner of Aida’s room, my mother dead in her bed, my brother down the hall due to wake up any time with questions and curiosities I had no answers for.
For one, brief, horrific second, I wished I was dead too.
“Ma’am,” the operator called through the phone where I’d dropped it unknowingly to the floor beside me.
I forced my numb fingers to curl around the plastic phone and bring it to my cheek. “Yes.”
“Is there anyone you can call?” she reiterated. “Even a teacher from school, a friend, or a boyfriend, maybe?”
Boyfriend.
Maybe…
Tiernan.
My head swam as I struggled with the choice. I barely knew the tattooed billionaire with the full mouth and cruel smile. He’d only dated Aida for three months and he didn’t seem like the kind of man to harbor any kind of heart, let alone a sympathetic one. I couldn’t imagine how he would react if I called to say that my mother was dead and…and Brando and I were orphans.
But did I really have a choice?
Aida was gone. Dad was dead. And it seemed my only hope for salvation lay in a man I was certain was a demon in a thousand-dollar suit.