Enemy of my Enemy

𝕿𝖜𝖊𝖑𝖛𝖊

Briare took the recorder in his hand and crushed it in his fist.

Bianca felt like someone had reached into her lungs and had pulled out all the air that was supposed to be in there. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel. Had her father just abandoned her? Had this been a show of trust in her strength? Had the phone call been a way of giving himself an excuse for leaving her completely alone and vulnerable?

"Not what I was expecting," Grayson said, his lips twitching upwards into a faint ghost of a laugh.

Not what I was expecting. How many times had Grayson repeated this to himself before Reyes had arrived with Bianca in tow?

"Of course, I never would've gotten to where I am without having a couple hundred backup plans in place." Grayson sounded almost cheerful. Almost.

Briare walked around his desk until he was standing in front of her. He casually leaned against the desk whilst accepting a phone Reyes handed to him- Her phone. Bianca's phone.

"Remember Arizona?" Grayson nodded to his men.

Instantly, all seven guards rushed forward, dragging her out of her chair and onto the ground and kicking her and punching her and ramming her in the stomach with a broken off chair leg- Through the chaos, she heard the faint beep indicating that Grayson was- No, Reyes was- recording her with her phone. "Stop-" she tried to choke out, but when no one appeared to hear her, she raked her claws at the pairs of legs surrounding her. Each time a burst of pain erupted in her body, a surge of anger barreled its way out and countered the agony she should be feeling.

But they wouldn't stop. And she was beginning to see stars now. There was no way she was going to just take the beating like some sick animal- But she realized she needed to be smart about this. Briare wasn't going to let them beat her to death. She was the only leverage he had against the Blackburn Pack.

So when? she wondered. Exactly when is he going to get them to stop? When she passed out? Should she fake unconsciousness, then start attacking them again once they'd backed away from her? Or would it be sometime else? She went over the words her father had spoken.

But if I couldn't put a dent in her for eighteen years...

Briare wanted to disprove this statement. What would the term 'put a dent in' entail? Bianca drew blood from one of the guards, then realized the answer was right there in front of her.

She needed to stop fighting back. That was the answer. Even in her father's worst moments, she'd always needed to have the last word. The last punch. The last, I wish you were dead!

With great effort, Bianca temporarily tucked her pride away and stopped trying to claw the guards to death. Laying down in a sideways position, she tucked her knees to her chest and covered her hands with her head.

She heard the video recording stop. The guards backed away. Bianca kept her eyes shut and her head down, even when she could feel Grayson's eyes on her crumpled form.

Bianca hated Grayson Briare more than ever now, but nowhere nearly as much as she hated her father. She knew, thanks to several of her traumatic childhood encounters with her father's prisoners, that Grayson could have done a lot worse to her. But he hadn't. That man who called himself her family, on the other hand, was a backstabbing piece of shit who should be found on the side of the street with his fucking head chopped off-

"Bianca?"

Though her eyes were still closed, she could tell Grayson was right above her. He didn't sound worried about her, but he didn't sound completely cold, either.

Her hands shot upwards to throttle him. Taken by surprise, he started gasping for air right around the time she sat straight up and pinned him to the ground. She climbed on top of him, her knees digging into his chest, and continued squeezing, squeezing until his face was blue and the veins in his eyes were perfectly visible.

Reyes pulled her off of him and held her down. With blood trickling out of her mouth, forehead, nose, and basically everywhere else, she flipped her hair behind her shoulders and smiled.

"This was a cute idea, but it won't work, you know," she said, her mocking tone somehow still intact. "The least you could've done was beat me yourself, but having a couple of your goons do nothing but throw a few punches at me?" Bianca shook her head. "He won't care. Hell, I wouldn't even blame him."

"Anything you'd like to suggest?" Grayson snarled, wiping his blood off his face with the back of his hand.

Bianca remained silent, though she had a list of answers she could give Grayson if she wished so. Hanging her upside down from the ceiling and cutting her open might make Lorenzo rethink his decision, just a little bit. Grayson could have his men chop off her limbs and force feed them to her. And of course, there was always the poetic option of decorating her face with a battalion of scars- They'd go well with the one Lorenzo had already put on her.

"Take her away," Grayson said to Reyes, who pulled Bianca to her feet. The world swayed a little around her, but she didn't mind. Already, her wounds were closing up. Poor Grayson really would have to try harder- Break a few bones, at least.

Amusement at Grayson's softness quickly turned into confusion once she was back out in the halls. The problem wasn't that Grayson was soft, because- Well, Bianca hadn't actually seen him in action before, but his reputation alone told her that he was more than willing to do whatever it took for power. So why hadn't he resorted to such tactics yet? What was keeping him from, as her father had put it, giving her all her had?

They locked her back in her room, and by the time she was getting ready to sleep, she came to the conclusion that today hadn't been a bad day at all. Today's events had done a lot to break the unendurable monotony that had been driving her insane, and thanks to her supernatural abilities, she had gotten away from the entire ordeal unscathed.

She half expected guards to come bursting in on her at night- Maybe everything that had happened this evening had been an attempt to throw her off her guard. Maybe, like Lorenzo, Grayson liked having his fun with his prisoners in the complete dead of night.

But no. Nothing happened. In fact, nothing happened for the next seventeen hours. In other words, they stopped bringing her food. Bianca would rather have gotten one of her bones splintered instead of being forced to skip so many meals. She did find a pack of vitamin gummies in the bathroom cupboard, but that only lasted her an hour.

Finally, she snapped. Fuck Grayson Briare and Roman Reyes and her goddamn father- If she was going to be tortured at some point in the near future, then fine. But she was not going to sit in here and wait silently and patiently while the rest of the world took time making the decisions that was going to end up deciding her fate.

And also, she was hungry.

"Briare!" she screamed, pounding on her bedroom door. "Fuck you, Briare, let me out!" She gave the door two more punches before resorting to getting down on the floor and using both her feet to kick it. "Open- The- Fucking- Door-"

To her immense surprise, the door swung open. Not expecting this at all, Bianca couldn't stop her next kick from shooting forward, and her platform boots collided straight into someone's legs... Grayson's legs.

Bianca could do nothing but gape at him. She'd thought one of the guards would answer her, or maybe even Reyes. But Grayson? And so quickly, at that?

"Were you just standing out there the whole time?" Bianca sputtered, unable to think of another reason as to how Grayson had managed to appear before her a mere ten seconds since she'd started screeching his name.

Grayson stepped over her, looking irritated out of his mind. The door swung shut behind him. Bianca hastily stood up and tried to look as dignified as she could- Which wasn't an easy feat at all, seeing as he'd just seen her throwing what could only be called a tantrum on the ground.

"Well? What is it?" He stared at her expectantly, and it took Bianca a moment to remember she'd been the one to call him in here. "You wanted my attention, Blackburn. Now, you have it."