Page 22 of Shattered Sinner
12
BIANCA
"Hey," Tristan said as he stood up to greet the hostess and me. "You look beautiful."
"Thank you," I replied, feeling a bit flustered. I hoped my face didn’t turn the same color as my dress. My nervousness increased tenfold as a result of his compliment.
It was awkward because I, in no way, had any romantic feelings toward him, but I also couldn’t voice that at this time. Tristan moved around as I took my seat and helped me push myself closer to the table. It was obvious that he was rolling out all the stops, making me feel even more weird.
“Your waiter will be here momentarily, and if you need anything, please don’t hesitate to let us know.”
I nodded and eyed the menu until the hostess left. As we each looked through our menus, I could feel the weight of this situation hanging over us like a dark cloud. I tried to distract myself by focusing on the menu hard, but my mind kept thinking about the conversation we were about to have.
“This has to be one of the strangest things you’ve ever done, huh?”
Tristan’s words took me by surprise and forced me to look up at him. I tilted my head to the side as if I was trying to understand what he was saying. He’d temporarily left me speechless, but when my brain caught up, I blurted out the first thing I could think of.
“I didn’t imagine being involved in a fake engagement or marriage at my age, so yes, this is one of the strangest things I’ve ever done.”
“All because of these silly photos, right? You know if those photos do surface, I can keep them from getting out. I have a stake in the media game and can make sure they never see the light of day. My connections within the industry would ensure that no one would want to touch them for fear of repercussions. No one wants to get on my bad side."
I stared at him for a moment, shocked and unsure of how to proceed. “B-but in return, you want us to go the whole nine yards with this engagement and marriage.”
Tristan shrugged but added nothing more. His ambivalence washed away any sense of relief that I had. I needed to know his ulterior motives.
Before I could ask him, our waiter came to our table, a bright smile on his face. “Good evening, can I take your order?” he asked.
“Yes, that would be great,” I said, quickly looking over the menu one more time. “I’ll have the Spaghetti alla Carbonara, please. And just a water for me.”
“Fantastic. And for you, sir?”
“I’ll have the Bistecca alla Fiorentina, medium rare, and a glass of your finest red wine,” he ordered, handing his menu back to the waiter.
“Great. I’ll get those in for you.” The waiter grabbed our menus, his eyes moving between Tristan and me as if he sensed the tension hanging in the air. He quickly left and we were alone once again.
I tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear and asked, "Back to what we were talking about earlier?”
Tristan nodded and said, “Sure. After all, this was what we were coming here to discuss.”
“While I thank you for offering to make all of this go away, I don’t understand why. What do you get out of this except a marriage to someone who isn’t halfway through college yet?”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Bianca. I have my reasons. I think our partnership will be a very lucrative one.” The intensity in his gaze made me want to run out of this restaurant and never look back.
I'd told myself multiple times since my father announced this ruse that there was no way this was happening, and this confirmed it. There was no way things would work out between the two of us, and I refused to be a pawn in whatever game he was playing. Before I could say something else, interrogating him further about his intentions, he cleared his throat and spoke once more.
"Now that we’ve talked about the heavy things, we should focus on something else. How are things going with school?”
We fell into a somewhat awkward conversation about some friendly topics, but I found myself wishing that I could leave. Thankfully, I was eventually saved when our waiter arrived with our dishes. While we ate our meal, I found myself relaxing slightly, trying to shove down the red flags that had been thrown up during the conversation we’d had earlier in the night. My guard was still up around him, but I felt myself laughing more than I thought I would. Tristan was charming and funny, but I was still convinced that it was all an attempt to disarm my defenses, and I refused to let him complete the job.
An idea popped into my head while we’d taken a break from talking to eat, and I couldn’t shove it to the back of my mind and let it fester there without asking it out loud. I finished chewing a bit of my food and placed my fork down. “I don’t think I can move on from the reason why we’re here tonight. I still want to discuss more in depth about what this whole arrangement would look like.”
I tried to mask any contempt I had for all of this in order to not give my real feelings away.
“What else did you want to talk about?” I didn’t know Tristan well at all, but he didn’t seem annoyed by my desire to go back to the main topic at hand.
“What else is my father getting out of this?”
“What do you mean what else is he getting out of this?”
