Page 93 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
“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.
Without answering the operator, I crawled to the bedside table and retrieved Aida’s ancient iPhone. Tiernan was her most recent call.
My sweaty finger left a smear on the glass as I pressed against his name.
Three long, jarring rings later, a rough voice answered.
“Tiernan Morelli speaking.”
I was too grief struck to recognize his last name, to register exactly who he had just proclaimed himself to be, otherwise, none of the nightmares that followed might have ever happened.
Instead, dumb with tragedy, I whispered, “T-Tiernan? It’s Bianca Belcante. We…I mean,” I sucked in a breath like a drowning woman. “I need your help. Will you come?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Tiernan Morelli
Ineed yourhelp.
I sat in my windowless office atIniquitythree stories beneath the teeming city streets with Bianca Belcante’s sweet, lightly southern-accented voice ringing against the walls from the speaker on my desk.
I need your help.
The words were simple, yet the meaning was profound.
Mostly because I realized no one in my entire thirty years on this planet had ever asked me for help. I was the third brother of four in my eight-sibling family. My younger siblings went to Lucian for advice or Leo for protection. Not me.
I wasn’t the kind of man you went to for help unless it involved violence or retribution.
Morellis weren’t shiny and clean and we didn’t pretend to be like our rivals, the Constantine family.
How fucking dull.
The Morellis liked their cracks and fissures, their sins and the inevitable repentance that followed. The grit and the shadows, the slightly broken.
Their imperfections made them a dark force in New York City’s high society.
But even for the Morellis, there was a line.
And the third son of Bryant and Sarah Morelli, Tiernan Morelli was not just slightly broken.
He was irreparably damaged.
The black sheep.
The dark horse.
