The Villain

by Shen, L. J.

  Kill picked his new cards when I reached my peak. I wrapped my fingers around his thick wrist under the table as I angled him where I wanted him and began riding his hand in a wave-like motion. My climax shook me to the core. Every muscle in my body clenched, my breath stopped, and my mouth fell open, an earthquake rocking me head-to-toe.

  “My Gosh, Pers, you sure everything’s okay? You look in pain,” Ash lamented behind my eyelids. I blinked, drugged and satisfied.

  “Another cramp. Sorry.” I knew my cheeks were flushed. Kill threw a card in a pile, drew another one with frigid disinterest. His hand retreated from between my legs, outside my panties.

  He stopped to wipe my juices on my thigh, rearranging my dress above the smears of my climax.

  “I better walk a little, stretch my limbs.” I shot up to my feet. “Anyone want anything from the kitchen?”

  “Cognac,” Kill said, not withdrawing his eyes from his cards.

  “Guinness,” Hunter gruffed.

  “Cyanide.” Sam raised his hand. “Make it a double. This game is boring me to death.”

  “That’s because you don’t enjoy money and always fold early.” Hunter snorted. “Why do you do that?”

  “I don’t play to win or lose,” Sam explained.

  “Then why do you play?”

  “To study my opponents, find their weakness, and use it against them.”

  “Ah.” Hunter nodded. “Remind me to never get on your bad side.”

  “You got my baby sister pregnant,” Sam scowled. “A little late for that.”

  I locked myself inside the kitchen to steady my breath and wipe away any suspicious stains. I came back with a tray and distributed the drinks. Afterward, I loitered around the room, studying the artwork on the walls. Rustic paintings of the woods, lakes, and snowstorms. One of them drew my attention. It was of a moonlit cabin, but there was a thick, big cloud in its backdrop.

  Aunt Tilda?

  “Flower Girl,” Cillian clipped, using my nickname in front of everyone. All heads looked up in unison as though he’d spoken in another language. He pointed at my seat. I whipped my head from the painting.

  “Show your sister which side you’re on.”

  “You sure? It wouldn’t be yours.” I put on a sarcastic smile, but I was honest. Belle was my sister. I’d always have her back.

  Belle laughed. “Ouch.”

  My husband moved the remainder of his chips to the center of the table, unfazed.

  “All in.”

  Sailor and Belle looked at each other. Over the course of the evening, the games were pretty even, with Cillian, Sailor, and Belle ending up with about the same amount of chips.

  Hunter, Devon, and Sam all folded, too entertained by the prospect of seeing Kill going against two women who wanted him dead to interfere.

  “Me too.” Sailor pushed forward her pile of chips, turning to Belle. “You?”

  “Goes without saying.” Belle dumped all her chips, rubbing her palms together.

  Sailor was the first to put her cards down. “Say hello to my two pairs.”

  Belle patted Sailor’s shoulder smugly, revealing her own cards.

  “That’s all nice and dandy, but you’re formally invited to my second full house in a row. Gee, I wonder what I’ll do with all this money.” She smiled at my husband, tapping her lips. “I’m thinking a vacation in the Bahamas or maybe get a new car. Whaddaya think, Fitzpatrick? Will I look good in a Mercedes?”

  Please don’t tell my sister she’d look good in a coffin, I inwardly prayed.

  It was such a Cillian thing to say.

  Kill’s face remained blank. He dropped his cards lazily, revealing a hand that made everyone in the room suck in a breath.

  “Royal flush!” Belle bristled, jumping up. “There is a one in a half-million chance of getting a royal flush, and you’re not that damn lucky. You tampered with the cards. Admit it.”

  It was Kill’s turn to stand. He didn’t collect the chips, just stared at Belle with a look that made me realize he never liked her. Whatever made him look at her every time we were in the same room together was not lust. He told me he never wanted her, and I finally believed him. Kill was cruel, decadent, and bad to the bone, but lying and cheating were beneath him.

  “If you’re going to throw around accusations, you better back them up with some facts.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “How the hell would I do that?” She laughed bitterly. “Fine. Whatever. Just so we’re clear, I think you’re the most corrupted man on the planet.”

  “Just so we’re clear,” he mimicked her tone, causing stifled giggles to rise from the table, “I don’t care. Keep the change. And to your question of what to do with said money, I suggest you buy some common sense. In the meantime, I remind you that you’ve agreed not to interfere with my marriage. No brainwashing my wife or giving her a piece of your mind about me. She’s a big girl and can make her own decisions. Same goes to you.” He snapped his fingers at Sailor.

  With that, he walked away, leaving the room.

  The men were the first to chuckle and get up, trickling back into their rooms.

  We women sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, digesting.

  “What just happened?” Aisling asked, finally.

  “I think,” Belle rolled one of the poker chips between her fingers, “Pers just managed to put the first chip in Satan’s icicle heart.”

  “And it hurt him.” Sailor laughed. “Like a bitch.”

  Devon: We need to buy time. Sit down with Arrowsmith and compromise.

  Me: Wrong number.

  Devon: You pay me to give you solid advice. My advice is to sign a backroom sweetheart deal and figure out your long-term plan after you dismantle this ticking bomb.

  Me: The only backroom thing Arrowsmith will be getting from me is going to send him into anal reconstructive surgery.

  He broke me once. This time, I’d be doing the breaking.

  Devon: I respect that you loathe him, Kill, but we were young lads. Throw him a fat donation, make him feel pretty, and move on with your life. You could lose your CEO title, millions of dollars, and face jail time if you tamper with this trial.

  Me: He was a monster who shaped me into becoming a better monster. Now we are both carnivorous beasts. It is time to see who can shed more blood.

  I tossed my phone onto the leather seat, frowning out the Escalade’s window.

  Andrew Arrowsmith wasn’t going to rest until he saw me filing for bankruptcy.

  It wasn’t about the money. Never was for me.

  It was becoming better than my father at being a CEO because he was better than his father.

  Back when my great-great-great-great-grandfather incorporated Royal Pipelines, you could shoot a bullet in the ground and oil would spill. By the time my father inherited the company, he had to do some serious fracking and squeeze the natural resources available to him to continue the monstrous growth of our company.

  Me? I didn’t want to simply increase our capital. I wanted to triple it. To go down in history as the best CEO the company had ever known.

  I had Sam digging up dirt on Andrew as I decided which angle I wanted to attack him from. In the meantime, I made sure Green Living threw a lot of money into the lawsuit, losing their pants and their funds quickly.

  For all I cared, by the time I was finished, Andrew wouldn’t have a job, a company, or a roof over his head.

  The Escalade came to a halt in front of my wife’s apartment building. I fired her a text to come downstairs, scrolling over the unanswered message from earlier, supplemented with a picture of the sky.

  Flower Girl: Look outside. Auntie Tilda came out to say hello this morning. ☺

  Auntie Tilda was a pain in the ass and was responsible for my wife’s unfortunate name. Persephone was only marginally better than Tree and Tinder.

  I continued ignoring my wife’s daily texts. It was bad enough I’d spent the last week haunted by the memory of the poker
night on my ranch. The game was a bore, punctuated by mind-numbing commentary from Sailor and Emmabelle, who became two of my least favorite things about Boston. My wife, however, was another story. No matter how much I tried to deny it, she pleased me.

  In the way she looked at me.

  In the way she smiled at me.

  In the way she called me hubs as though this was real and not a life sentence born from the crappy cards she’d been dealt by her previous husband.

  She’d already gotten her debt paid, her divorce granted, and the means to live like a Kardashian. She didn’t have to pretend to tolerate me but still had the courtesy to do so.

  My eyelids dropped as I tried to bleach out the memory of her clinging to my hand under the table, riding my fist, her thighs clutched around my knuckles in a vise grip. She burned like a blood-red rose, her petals curling and twisting around the flame, and I was glad I couldn’t watch her openly while we were in company because I had no doubt I’d have come in my pants.

  I wanted to purge my wife out of my system. To relocate her somewhere far away—maybe to her parents’ new house in the suburbs. To pluck her from obscurity only when the mood struck me on special occasions.

  She was dazzling, kinetic. Too loud, too much. Marrying her was the worst and best decision I’d ever made.

  “Power-napping, huh?” Persephone’s throaty voice filled the Escalade. “I read somewhere that catnaps are more effective than eight hours of sleep. Did you know that?”

  She scooted next to me, wrapped in a gown that clung to her curves like I would if I wasn’t a hundred and one shades of messed up.

  I produced a cigar from a box next to me, lighting it up. “Nice number.”

  “Is that a compliment I’m hearing?” She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead, teasingly checking my temperature. “Nope. No fever.”

  “Your beauty was never in question,” I puffed.

  “What is, then?”

  “Its ability to disarm me.”

  She shot me a look that said she wasn’t happy with me. A look that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I couldn’t stand. She produced something from her Valentino clutch. A piece of paper. She unfolded it. A ten-dollar note rolled out of it. Also a pen. She handed me all three.

  “This is for you, by the way.”

  “What am I looking at?” I scanned the paper in her hand without taking it.

  “I saw this on a TV show. Billions. It’s a contract in which you sell your soul to me.”

  I really should’ve made her take a drug test before I put a ring on her finger.

  The amount of nonsense spewing out of that pretty mouth could keep the entire Senate busy for a century.

  Then again, deep down, I knew even if the results came back saying she was hooked on meth, cocaine, heroin, and every homeless dick downtown, I still would have married her, and that was a problem.

  A huge problem.

  “Sign it.” She released the ten-dollar bill in my lap like I was a B-grade pole dancer. I didn’t make a move to pick it up.

  “What’s the problem?” She frowned. “You already told me I can never have your heart and mentioned you don’t believe in souls. That means selling yours to me shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

  The fact she was trying to philosophically challenge me made her cute enough to eat. Then again, I didn’t need much incentive to want to eat her out. Wondering how my wife’s pussy tasted was something I did often.

  I’d licked my fingers after the card game on the ranch. Her scent hitting my system alone had made me painfully hard.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to take any chances.” She withdrew the contract, about to tuck it back into her purse.

  “There’s no such thing as a soul,” I repeated dully.

  “In that case, I’d like to buy yours.”

  “How’d it end on that TV show?” I sat back, twirling the cigar between my fingers.

  “Billions?” She frowned. “The girl—who has a similar set of beliefs and views on the world as you—signed the contract, proving she truly didn’t believe in her soul’s existence.”

  “Amateur mistake.” I clutched my cigar between my teeth to free my hands, adjusting the necklace on my wife’s neck so the clasp wouldn’t show. “First rule in business is supply and demand. You put a price on something in accordance to how other people value it. My set of beliefs is irrelevant. You think souls exist, and therefore I will sign mine over to you for the highest price.”

  “What would that price be?”

  “Your full submission to our arrangement.” I plucked the pen and paper from her hand, tucking them into my breast pocket. “More on that when I figure out what that exactly entails. Subject closed.”

  The need to own, conquer, banish, and discard her made me lose sleep.

  It didn’t even make sense, and sense was the compass I could always count on.

  Persephone made me swear, and nothing made me swear. Yet when we were on that trail, I said the word fuck. Not because I cracked two ribs—which, by the way, happened—or because I was bloodied and wounded, but because she looked scared, and I never wanted to see that emotion on her face again.

  She smoothed her dress, examining me under a thick curtain of lashes.

  “I’m glad we’re going to this charity event. We haven’t gone out as a couple since we got married. Paxton and I used to have date nights all the time. I miss that.”

  “Where did Paxton take you?” The question slipped out before I could shove it back into my throat and choke on it. Which was what I deserved for even thinking about it.

  She blew a lock of sunflower hair that flopped over her eye.

  “We had an annual Disney pass. I love a good fairy tale. We used to go to restaurants, dance clubs, football games. Oh, and have picnics, sometimes. Our dream honeymoon was to go to Namibia, but we were too broke to do it.”

  “Why Namibia?”

  Why ask her more questions?

  “I once saw a picture of the Namibian desert in a journal. The yellow dunes looked like velvet. I became obsessed with lying on one of those perfect dunes and looking up at the sun. It looked like the height of being alive. So poignant. So pure.”

  So stupid.

  She had the good sense to blush.

  I turned back to the view zipping through the window, having heard enough about her previous relationship.

  “We had a good run.”

  An unfamiliar needle pricked my chest. Maybe I was having a heart attack. Spending a night in the ER would still beat Arrowsmith drooling over my wife like a horny tenth grader publicly.

  “A man named Andrew Arrowsmith is going to be at the charity ball. He’s the one filing a lawsuit against Royal Pipelines.” I changed the subject.

  “I know him from TV. He does morning shows and environmental panels.”

  “I expect you to be on your best behavior. He’ll examine us closely, look for cracks in the façade.”

  She flashed me a curious look. “Why do I get the feeling there’s more to this story than a lawsuit?”

  “We go back. We grew up together, went to the same schools for a while. His late father worked for mine.”

  “I’m guessing his departure didn’t include any employee of the year awards.”

  “Athair made him do the walk of shame and blacklisted him from working at any reputable company on the East Coast. Arrowsmith Senior had a knack for embezzling.”

  Persephone crossed her legs. “So this lawsuit is personal?”

  I offered her a curt nod. “Arrowsmith Senior died recently.”

  “Which opened the old wound, making Andrew take the job at Green Living.”

  She caught up quickly. Flower Girl had been a lot smarter than I gave her credit for before I asked her to marry me.

  “How come the media hasn’t picked up on it?” She readjusted my tie. This time, I didn’t move her hand away. “His hidden agenda, I mean. He’s a highly public figure.”

  �
��I haven’t leaked it yet.”

  “Why?”

  “Arrowsmith’s got something on me, too. We’re hanging our sins over each other’s head, waiting to see who blinks first.”

  “Let’s make him flinch then, hubs.”

  “There isn’t a we in this operation. You worry about giving me heirs, and I’ll worry about Arrowsmith.”

  She studied me; her blue eyes tranquil. I could tell she was no longer fearful of me, but I wasn’t sure if that satisfied or annoyed me.

  “I mean it, Flower Girl. Don’t butt into my business.”

  She was still smiling.

  “What are you looking at?” I glowered.

  “You held my hand in yours the entire length of the drive. Since you took the contract from me.”

  Dropping my gaze, I immediately withdrew from her.

  “Haven’t noticed.”

  “You’re handsome when flustered.”

  “I swear, Persephone, I’m going to relocate you to your precious Namibia if you don’t stop grating on my nerves.”

  “So now I annoy you constantly.” Her blue eyes shone. “That’s one, steady emotion. Twenty-six more to go!”

  There were twenty-seven emotions? That seemed completely unmanageable. No wonder most humans were categorically useless.

  The driver opened the back door. I slid out first, taking my wife’s delicate hand in mine as the cameras clicked, devouring us, wanting more from the woman who had decided to lock her fate with The Villain.

  I tucked my wife behind me and marched past them, blocking the blinding flashes with my body so she wouldn’t trip and embarrass me.

  It was showtime.

  The charity ball reminded me why I didn’t do people.

  Out of the bedroom, anyway.

  A rancid cloud of perfume hung over carefully sprayed hairdos. The checked marble floor of the nineteenth century hotel twinkled, and the aristocrats immortalized on the paintings framing the ballroom glared at the guests disapprovingly.

  Everything about the event was fake, from the conversation, to the veneer teeth and crocodile tears over what we were raising money for—clowns for kittens? Ant sanctuary? Whatever it was, I knew I stood out like a sober guy at a frat party.