Page 84 of Beautiful Villain
I lay there, heart slamming against my ribs.
His words dug in, cruel and precise, scraping at every old doubt and every insecurity I’d ever carried.Had Gianni really let me go because he cared what I wanted… or because he knew exactly where I’d land?
With this monster.
“Rest,” he said over his shoulder.“Grief makes people careless.And I need you alive long enough to stop hating me.”
The door closed behind him with a quiet final click.
I lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, my chest tight and hollow all at once.George’s face flickered through my mind—not the end of him, not blood or violence, but the small things.The way he used to hum while making coffee.The way he’d looked at me like I mattered, even when I didn’t believe it myself.The man had his faults, but there had been good bits, too.
I pressed my hand flat over my ribs and breathed through the ache.
Archie thought love was a weakness.
He was wrong.
Love was the only reason I was still alive.
And one day, if I survived long enough, it would be the reason he wasn’t.
35
Archie
The stars finally aligned.
I could feel it in my bones, in the quiet hum of everything clicking into place the way it always should have.Mikayla was back under my roof, where she belonged.George Gregory was nothing but a memory with a grave, which suited me just fine.And Provence—sweet, expensive, strategic Provence—had landed in my hands like the universe had finally stopped fighting me.
Gianni Cavalho had folded.
Of course he had.
Eighteen months of pressure will do that to anyone.Eighteen months of stalled permits, delayed shipments, mysteriously vanishing buyers, sudden regulatory inspections that never quite turned into fines but always slowed things just enough to hurt.You cannot bully a man who refuses to be bought, but you can exhaust him.You can make every win cost more than it is worth.You can bleed him quietly until he starts to believe that surrender is simply the logical next step.
And now he had surrendered.
Provence was no ordinary asset.It was the kind of thing that made men powerful even when they slept.Gianni had tried to pretend it was just another business venture, but I knew better.He wanted it because it made him untouchable.The irony was delicious.He had handed it to me instead.
I told myself it was because he had finally realized he could not win.I told myself it was because he had reached the end of his patience.I did not, under any circumstances, allow myself to consider that he might have wanted me to take it.
I have never been fond of inconvenient thoughts.
Mikayla, though, was the true prize.Provence was leverage.Territory.Power.Mikayla was something else entirely.She was proof.Proof that I always got back what was mine, no matter how far it wandered or how many men thought they could keep her.
Gianni Cavalho had borrowed her.
I had repossessed her.
George Gregory had been foolish enough to believe he had a say in the matter.He sold what did not belong to him and then pretended he had a spine when it suited him.I corrected that mistake.I was not cruel about it.I was efficient.There is a difference.
I am not a monster, despite what people like to whisper.Monsters act without reason.I act with intention.
And my intention had always been simple.
I wanted everything.
The woman.
