The Villain

by Shen, L. J.

  Perhaps I misheard. No one was as stupid as to throw away wealth, mind-blowing sex, and freedom for a stupid principle. What we had was different. It was…

  What? A voice inside me chuckled. You just told her you were going to visit your paid-for flings if she doesn’t comply, then added that, by the way, if she can’t get pregnant, you will replace her with a 2.0 version.

  I knew I needed to turn around and walk away, but something told me I wasn’t going to get a good night’s sleep if we left things as they were, which was absurd. I’d always slept like a baby. Came with the territory of not having any regrets, worries, or a soul.

  “You’re still here.” She flung her magnificent hair to one shoulder, parting it into three sections and braiding it as she got ready for bed. “Why? I told you my decision.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I warned her.

  “The only stupid thing I did was marry you.” She stopped mid-braid to lunge forward, pushing me the rest of the way out of her room, then slammed the door in my face.

  I trudged back to my bedroom, too angry to think straight. I said divorce wasn’t an option, and I’d meant it. If Persephone wanted out of this marriage, it’d have to be in a coffin. Whether I was the one inside it or her was the real mystery.

  Once I got to my room, I noticed my phone was flashing with new text messages.

  Sam: Stop her before she costs you this fucking lawsuit.

  Sam: Don’t let anything fuck it up. Least of all a woman.

  Cillian: Have her followed, tracked, and surveyed at all times starting tomorrow morning. Track her phone and text messages, too. I don’t want my wife to take a piss without knowing about it.

  Sam: Whatever happened to not giving a shit?

  Cillian: Business is business.

  Sam: Finally, you got your head screwed right. Consider it done.

  The next day, I emptied all of Andrew Arrowsmith’s British Virgin Islands accounts. The money Sam told me he’d stolen from his father-in-law. The sum came up to a little less than eight million dollars.

  Andrew showed up at my office door less than an hour after I moved all the money to numerous charities across the globe, making anonymous donations.

  “So this is how you chose to play this?” He stormed into my domain, running his fingers over his hair, nearly ripping it from his skull.

  I swung my chair around, ripping my gaze from a monthly report concerning my new drillings.

  “Play what?” I asked innocently.

  “You know exactly what went missing.”

  He advanced toward my desk, crashing his palm over it, expecting a reaction.

  He got one, all right. I yawned, wondering what caused my restless stupor last night.

  It was probably the linguini. I should never have eaten carbs for dinner.

  The alternative to what had caused my restlessness was too ridiculous to consider.

  “Where is it?” he fumed.

  “Where’s what?”

  “The thing you stole from me.”

  Of course, uttering the words aloud was admitting misconduct.

  I rubbed at my chin. “Still doesn’t ring any bells. Care to be specific?”

  “Cut the bullcrap, Fitzpatrick. Where’s my money?” He tried to grab the collar of my dress shirt, leaning over my desk, but I was quicker. Pushing back in my seat, I made him dive headfirst onto my desk, his eyes landing on the mouthwatering numbers that came back from the monthly report.

  I stood, buttoning my suit.

  “What’s money in the grand scheme of things, Andy my friend? You have the Arctic to save.”

  “You won’t be so smug when I knock on the FBI’s door and tell them how much money you stole from me.” He scurried to his feet, straightening his tie.

  “Please let me know when you do that, so I can pay a visit to the IRS and inform them you’ve been keeping undeclared millions in offshore accounts. A sure way to kill your nonprofit career faster than a fish out of water.”

  He stiffened, knowing damn well I had a point. Andrew would have to take the financial hit. No one was supposed to know he stashed millions where no one could see or touch them.

  He narrowed his eyes at me.

  “You think I care?” he hissed. “You think that’d stop me from sending Tinder and Tree to Evon? To give them all the things your family stole from me? You can never touch my personal wealth. My wife is a millionaire.”

  “No, her parents are,” I pointed out, striding along the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the human dots going about their day on the street. “Real estate, right? Her daddy is a property tycoon type? Bet there’s a whole can of worms to explore there, too,” I tutted. “Never met a New York real estate mogul who liked to pay his taxes.”

  At this point, my arm was shoved so deep inside Joelle Arrowsmith’s family fortune, on the lookout for any transgressions, I could tell Andrew things about his in-laws I doubted they knew about one another.

  Andrew realized the noose around his neck was tightening.

  “Remember one thing, Fitzpatrick. Your wife visits our house frequently. She talks.”

  I could only imagine what things Persephone said about me. She wasn’t a fan unless we were in bed. I had no idea why she tried to burst through my walls so persistently only to ruin my defense against Andrew.

  So she can have power over you.

  Arrowsmith had used that tactic before. Why wouldn’t she?

  “Watch your back, Cillian.” He pointed at me. “I broke you before. I intend to do it again.”

  I smiled. “Give it your best shot, Andy. I sure as hell am going to do the same.”

  The rest of the week was an elaborate torture.

  Sam sent two of his investigators with the combined IQ of a cucumber to track Persephone. He promised they’d do their best to remain unnoticed.

  The days following our fight, I received hourly text messages about my wife’s whereabouts. Her predictable routine was the only thing keeping my pulse from exploding.

  She was either at work, at yoga class, tutoring the Arrowsmith kids, or with her friends and sister.

  One place she was notably missing from was my bed. Even though I couldn’t fault her for not crawling in my lap at night to offer me her sweetness, I hated that she wouldn’t let me in her room, either.

  The evening after our fight, I arrived at our moronic dinner as if nothing happened and was even charitable enough to offer a piece of information about my day. I told her I had fired three people that morning—didn’t she say she wanted me to share things with her?—but after I got out of the shower and knocked on her door, she didn’t open it.

  I’d knocked again, thinking she hadn’t heard me the first time.

  Nothing.

  “I know you’re there,” I’d grumbled, loathing myself for pushing it.

  I’d never sought out a woman before. All of my companions expressed prior attraction to me before I took them on. I could have gotten what they offered for free. I simply didn’t want to have them on their terms—only on mine.

  “I’m not trying to pretend I’m not here,” Persephone had answered from behind the door.

  Cracking my knuckles and reminding myself that she had every right to be angry after I declared I would replace her with someone else, I’d rested my forehead on her door.

  “You have marital duties to perform.”

  “If you think you’re walking through that door, you’re not just a cold fish, Cillian. You’re a dumb one, too.”

  Cillian. Not Hubs or Kill.

  She also called you a dumb, cold fish. Perhaps that’s the part you should focus on.

  I felt my nostrils flaring and my lips thinning as I uttered, “I’ll be quick about it.”

  “No.”

  “Please.” The word tasted funky in my mouth. I couldn’t have said it more than a handful times in my lifetime.

  “Go to Europe, Cillian. Have fun with your little girlfriends. Maybe they’ll give you the child y
ou want so badly.”

  My pulse was through the roof now.

  I could feel the tension and pressure curling around my neck, and for the first time in years, I knew they were going to win.

  Being turned down by my wife wasn’t even one of the worst things that happened to me this month, yet the idea she rejected me made me want to tear off my skin and cannonball it all over Sam Brennan’s house.

  It was his idea I throw my weight around with her. Now not only did I have Arrowsmith as a problem but I also had a wife who refused to get knocked up.

  I turned around, storming down the hallway, zipping past the master bedroom like a demon, continuing all the way down the hall, to the farthest room on the second floor. My fingertips itched. My eyelids ticked. I could no longer hold it inside.

  Could no longer rein it in.

  For the first time in years, I was going to let the beast come out.

  I flung the door open.

  It was an old study room I converted into a spa. Whatever BS excuse I could give the builders to soundproof the room and fill it with soft, unbreakable things.

  I slammed the door behind me and let the monster in me take over.

  Hoping the bruises and cuts it would surely leave would be gone by tomorrow.

  On my seventh day of celibacy (but who the hell was counting?), we met for poker again.

  Sam was watchful, Hunter was in his usual devil-may-care mood, and Devon looked like he was trying to work out what crawled up my ass.

  Exactly one week from the moment I’d told Flower Girl she couldn’t tutor the Arrowsmith kids anymore, and she proceeded to piss all over my demands and continue about her life, banishing me from her bed in the process.

  I’d been on edge all week, channeling my simmering anger toward Arrowsmith. Each day, I found a new way to poke him.

  One time, I sent paparazzi cameramen to take pictures of Andrew picking his nose at a restaurant. The other, I had a PI sit in front of his house all night just to mess with his head, and on another occasion, I had an editor of one of the local newspapers run a story of that time Saint Andrew himself was caught in a three-way during his frat years at whatever community college he’d attended.

  The issue with my secret was, revealing it would be damaging to Andrew, too. I wanted to push him to a point where he had nothing left to lose. To go to my father and tell him. Expose me. Turn me from the golden child to the fraud he thought I was.

  Today, I was particularly sour. So much so I hadn’t even gone to the ranch to visit the horses. It started in the morning when it occurred to me that something was amiss. That something was the lack of cloud texts I’d been receiving (and ignoring) for months.

  I couldn’t believe I missed Auntie Tilda.

  The old hag never ceased to create problems for me.

  Persephone was taking things too far.

  I knew I had two choices—either I was going to back down and throw my wife a bone, tell her if she couldn’t get pregnant, or I was infertile, or both, that we could adopt—which I was genuinely open to.

  Or I could flex my muscles and kick her out.

  I had the decency to pretend to debate the two options for the sake of my ego as we played.

  Hunter kept checking his phone. Sailor wasn’t anywhere near ready to pop—she wasn’t even half-close to delivery—but he acted like she was the first human to give birth to another one.

  Earlier today, Sam’s spies had texted me at nine a.m. that Persephone had arrived at the Arrowsmith household. She spent a whooping six hours there before going straight to a nursing home on the outskirts of Boston to visit her former grandmother-in-law. She was still out, probably bathing and dressing Greta Veitch, putting her to bed.

  My wife, I had to admit, was either the most naïve or disloyal person alive. Possibly both.

  One thing was for sure: for all her traits, she wasn’t the pushover I expected her to be. Not by a long mile.

  Snippets of conversation sliced through the air, unable to penetrate my thoughts.

  “…ripping him a new one. You have to calm down, Kill. You’ve been going so hard at Arrowsmith. You’re lucky people haven’t noticed yet.”

  “Kill thinks luck is just lazy math.”

  “Kill is not thinking at all. Check out his face. He looks like he is about to kick all of us out again so he can have a snuggling session with Wifey Dearest.”

  Speaking of the she-devil, the door to the entertainment room burst open, and Hurricane Persephone thundered in. Raindrops scattered about her face and lips like tiny diamonds, a telltale sign of the showers pouring outside.

  Tiny diamonds.

  One premium cunt and I was down for the count.

  It had been getting warmer and nicer recently, but this week, it’d been pissing rain.

  The strong resemblance to the scene of Persephone accepting my proposal in front of my friends licked my gut, and I grinned, watching her with an air of amusement.

  Finally, she’d come to her senses.

  My wife slowed to a stop. By the time I realized she was clutching something in her curled fist, she tossed it at my chest. A soaked, heavy cloth slithered down my dress shirt.

  I could almost hear Sam’s, Devon’s, and Hunter’s jaws as they slammed against the floor in unison.

  “You’ve been following me!” Persephone thumped her open palms on the table and in one movement, wiped it clean of cards, glasses, and ashtrays. The contents of the table flew to the floor. “I found your stupid soldiers waiting by my car when I left Mrs. Veitch’s nursing home, so I decided to chase them. Got one guy’s beanie. The other was too fast.”

  “Which one did you manage to catch?” Sam asked conversationally. “So I’ll know who to fire.”

  Her gaze bolted in his direction. She pointed at him. “Shut up, Brennan. Just shut the hell up!”

  I removed the now identified beanie from my abs, dumping the thing on the floor with a sneer. I knew an apology wasn’t on the table right now.

  A Fitzpatrick never bowed down or cowered to his wife.

  He married an agreeable woman who sired other agreeable women, and sons who were as impossible as they were awestruck by their fathers.

  That was what I’d been taught.

  That was what I’d lived by.

  That was how I was going to die, too.

  Hunter might have been an exception marrying for love, but he wasn’t the eldest. The leader of the pack. The man who’d been burdened with the task of carrying on all the family traditions.

  Besides, I had a reputation to uphold.

  “Back to hysterics, I see,” I commented blandly, smoothing my shirt. “Care to tell me something I don’t know? I told you about my plans last week. One of them was to have you tailed. Did you think I wasn’t going to follow through with my threats? Did you think you were…special?” I pouted sarcastically, feigning sadness.

  Her eyes widened. We were both thinking the same thing. My so-called plans also included visiting my mistresses and humiliating her publicly.

  “You’re following through on all your threats,” she said hoarsely. There wasn’t a question mark after the sentence. I knew I should back down. Every bone in my body told me to, but I had to seize the opportunity to prove to myself she didn’t mean anything to me. That she was nothing but a toy.

  I smiled cruelly. “All of them.”

  “Following me was against the contract,” she reminded me, having too much pride to mention the other thing I promised not to do.

  “Actually, I found a loophole. Sam did the following. I only gave the order.” I winked.

  “The devil is in the details.” Sam slouched in his seat, thoroughly entertained.

  “Now, that’s just bad manners, Brennan. Show some respect to the mistress of the house.” I snapped my fingers in Sam’s direction, still staring at my wife. “Apologize.”

  “My sincere apologies.” Sam bowed his head theatrically, laughing, enjoying ridiculing her. He wasn’t capa
ble of loving a woman and didn’t want me to, either. “My heart bleeds for you.”

  It was a peculiar choice of words, considering I’d taunted Persephone about her bleeding heart. I’d never told Sam—nor any other living soul—about the time I’d spent in the bridal suite with her.

  The day I couldn’t stop thinking about for years afterward.

  But Flower Girl didn’t know that.

  Her face reddened, and she clutched the sides of her dress in her fists.

  Now was a good time to tell her I did not tell Sam what happened.

  That he didn’t know she poisoned herself.

  Before I could do any of these things, Persephone turned around and disappeared like a fleeting ray.

  All eyes were on me.

  “Ready for my monster hand?” I leaned forward on the now empty table, fanning the cards I still held in my hand.

  Hunter groaned.

  Devon rolled his eyes.

  But Sam…Sam knew.

  He looked at me with his calm, gray eyes that didn’t miss anything, big or small. Important or mundane.

  I plastered my kings on the table and sat back.

  Hunter and Devon choked.

  “Goddamn.” Hunter smacked his cards on the rich oak. “You always win.”

  Not always.

  I glanced at the empty doorway.

  Not this time.

  Three hours later, my friends were finally gone.

  I climbed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I was forty-five thousand dollars richer and a million times more likely to stab Sam Brennan in the face for his bad advice.

  What on earth made me put surveillance on my wife? I already knew she was going to do as she pleased. And what did Sam know about women, anyway? He loathed the very idea of them unless they were his stepmother and sister.

  I didn’t bother to go through the whole pretending-to-get-ready-for-bed-in-my-room routine. I went straight to Flower Girl’s room and knocked on her door.

  After three knocks and radio silence, I pushed the door open a few inches.

  The room was empty.