Page 128 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
When we left the gallery behind, stepping into the icy cold late-October evening, I finally took my phone out and read the five notifications I had there.
Tiernan:You do not amuse me. Who are you with?
Tiernan:Bianca Belcante, if you do not respond in the next five minutes, you will be punished.
Tiernan:I see you are feeling particularly childish today. Fine. I’ve enabled tracking on your phone. Ezra will be at The Met in thirty minutes. If you are with anyone inappropriate, your punishment will be furthered. And, Bianca? You do not want to test what I am capable of.
Tiernan:That’s it. Ezra is no longer coming for you. I am. Be out front of The Met in twenty minutes.
He didn’t have to type out the “or else…” because it was implicit in his tone even over text.
Elias looked at my grimace and winced in sympathy. “Everything okay?”
“No,” I said honestly, anger sweeping through me like a tornado, sucking up every positive thought I might have harbored about Tiernan. “My guardian is a possessive, over-protective, bossyjerk.”
Gabriella laughed. “Tell us how you really feel.”
I smiled at her, but the ends of my lips were mangled with irritation. Who did Tiernan think he was? I might have been only seventeen, but I’d been independent for years. Aida never checked in with me. If anything, I checked in onherand on Brando. I was responsible, a sixty-year-old soul in the body of a teen. I had never done drugs, had a single sip of booze, or even kissed a boy unless you counted Quinn Masters forcing himself on me in that locker room incident.
I didn’t need Tiernan to baby me.
I didn’twanthim to.
All the crackling electric irritation beneath my skin amped even higher as I stood there and stewed. He’d ruined a perfectly lovely afternoon with his alpha-male bullshit and I wanted to ruinhis.
An idea crystalized in my mind and a slow, wicked grin overtook my face.
“Hey, do you have to be home right away?” I asked my new friends as I dug into my backpack and counted the wad of hundreds Tiernan had handed me that morning. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now…”
***
It hurt.
There was no way around the pain. A tattoo on any part of the body was bound to hurt, but one etched into the delicate skin of the wrist was especially painful. A small part of me nestled into the deepest, darkest folds of my being might have enjoyed the teeth-clenching hurt, the buzz of it zigging through me until all my nerves danced, but I’d gotten good at ignoring it.
Elias and Gabriella sat beside me in solidarity, chatting about mundane school gossip and the upcoming Lane Constantine Memorial Ball as the man with a dyed-green fauxhawk bent over my wrist with his vibrating tattoo gun.
I was underage, but Tiernan had given me two thousand dollars in bills and I’d put them to good use to convince the man with the tattoo shop on the outskirts of the Upper East Side to ink me. I’d also turned off my phone so Tiernan, the asshole, couldn’t find me.
“I’m actually supposed to go to that,” I admitted to Elias as he spoke about the ball the Constantines were holding at The Met next month to celebrate Lane’s life on the anniversary of his death.
He blinked. “You are?”
“Yeah.”
He and Gabriella exchanged looks as I gritted my teeth against the sting. It looked like the guy was almost done, but my whole forearm was on fire from the pain. A bead of sweat dripped down the edge of my hairline into the shell of my ear.
“How did you get an invite? Not to sound elitist, but it’s one of the most illustrious events in the city. I thought you were new here?”
“I am, but I’m staying with the McTiernan family,” I explained. “They’re pretty well off.”
Elias frowned, eyes unfocused as he searched for something in his memories. “McTiernans, I’ve definitely heard of them. I’ll have to ask Aunt Caroline or my mom. It’s going to bother me I can’t remember who they are.”
I shrugged. “Whoever they might be to your family, I’m nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Gabriella said kindly, squeezing my free hand. “You spend enough time in the ‘right’ circles, you realize that most people are just out to get something from you. It’s refreshing to meet someone who doesn’t give a crap about our family names.”
When I blinked at her, she laughed and added, “My name is Gabriella Zappa. My dad is Enea Zappa, the head of Zappa Shipping International.”
