7: BANE’S POV

The leather of my chair creaked as I leaned back and let out a long sigh.

The silence of my study feeling like a terrible weight against my chest.

My knuckles were still stained with the faint, metallic scent of blood despite the proper soap scrubbing I’d given them.

They also hurt a bit but that’s what the whiskey and the pain killers were for.

Getting rid of the pain that stayed with me after I inflicted it on others.

This time it was rival I had inflicted pain on.

He was some arrogant prick from the Moretti line but now he was gone.

I had personally watched the life flicker out of his eyes, a hollow victory that left nothing but a bitter aftertaste.

It was always the same.

The adrenaline of the kill would spike, and then the drop would follow, leaving me in this gray, depressing head space where my heart felt like an empty cavern.

I was thirty-eight years old, the head of my very own empire, and I felt like a ghost haunting my own life.

There was no release for this, no way for me to ease the pressure building behind my ribs.

Just the cold, empty reality that is my life.

I pressed my fingers to my temples, the flickering fire in the hearth doing little to warm the chill in my bones.

Then, a thought flickered through my head.

A pale face with big, terrified eyes the color of a stormy sea.

‘The princess.’

How did I forget about her?

I reached for the intercom on my desk. A guard on the other side connected and answered.

“Yes, boss?”

"Bring her to me," I commanded, my tired voice sounding foreign even to my own ears.

Minutes later, the heavy doors groaned open.

Amaya stepped inside, flanked by two of my men.

She looked small. Even more so In the vastness of the room.

She was wearing a simple, dark dress that clung to her curves, her pale skin practically glowing against the fabric.

It’s hard to explain what I felt seeing her.

It was a sharp, sudden jolt in my gut that I hadn't felt in years.

It wasn't just desire; it was an unexpected pull, a magnetic shift that centered my entire focus on the woman trembling ten feet away from me.

My pulse, usually a steady, icy rhythm, hammered once against my throat.

What was this?

Why was I feeling this way?

Should I be feeling this way?

I kept my expression cold and distant.

I didn't let a single muscle in my face betray the chaos she was causing in my blood.

“Leave us” I said to the guards and they obeyed.

It was just Amaya and I. We both said nothing while I simply stared, cataloging her every detail.

The way her collarbones looked like fragile glass. The slight tremor in her lower lip. The way her hair caught the firelight.

So beautiful.

"You're shaking, princess," I said, my voice dropping an octave.

She didn't answer, her gaze fixed firmly on the floor.

"Look at me." I commanded.

She lifted her head, and the raw vulnerability there almost made me reach out.

I considered it but Instead, I stood up and walked toward the grand piano sitting in the shadowed corner of the room.

It was a masterpiece of ebony and ivory, a relic of a mother who had loved music more than she loved her son.

"Sit," I gestured to the bench. "Play."

She blinked, confusion momentarily overriding her fear.

“What?”

“My people tell me you used to play the Piano”

"Yes,” She replied and added, “I... I haven't played in a long time”

"I didn't ask for a history of your hobbies. I told you to play."

She slid onto the bench, her movements stiff.

She hovered her hands over the keys for a long moment before she began.

It wasn't a happy song.

It was something melancholic, a classical piece that wept through the room.

It sounded like she was crying through it.

I leaned against the mahogany pillar, watching her.

From this angle, I could see the graceful curve of her neck and the way her lashes cast long, feathered shadows against her cheeks.

She looked like peace, and I was a man of war.

Her fingers danced over the ivory, and for the first time that night, the hollow ache in my chest began to recede, replaced by a dark, possessive heat.

I wanted to see that skin flushed.

I wanted to hear her make sounds that had nothing to do with music and everything to do with me.

But I remained still.

I’ve always been a man that valued his self control, I was not about to lose that now because of this strange girl.

The final note of the piano echoed into the rafters, fading into a silence that felt intimate in an odd way.

Amaya kept her head bowed, her chest heaving slightly as she waited for my judgment.

I felt the urge to go to her, to tilt her head back and taste the fear and the music on her lips.

The hunger was so sudden, so sharp, it disgusted me.

I wasn't going to let my loins dictate my movements.

I pushed off the pillar, my face returning to the mask of cold indifference that had kept me alive for nearly four decades.

"Adequate," I said finally.

She looked up, her eyes searching mine for something but whatever it was, she didn’t find it.

She looked away then.

"Go back to your room," I said comfy, turning my back to her. "I have work to do. Do not let me see you again tonight."

I heard the soft rustle of her dress as she stood, then her frantic footsteps as she hurried toward the door.

Only when the click of the lock signaled her departure did I let out the breath I had been holding.

I looked at the piano keys she had touched, then at my own hands.

They were shaking.