Page 85 of Beautiful Villain
The territory.
The future that came with both.
Some men spend their lives hoping the world will bend in their direction.I have always known it would.Confidence like mine is not a belief.It is a fact.Things fall into place for me because they understand that resisting is pointless.
Gianni had resisted longer than most.
But in the end, even he had knelt.
I smiled to myself in the dark, already tasting the victory.
I should have been satisfied.
I wasn’t.
Suspicion slid in instead, cold and patient, because men like Gianni Cavalho did not give things up.They performed.They staged.They built traps so pretty you forgot to look for the teeth until they were already in your throat.
Still, greed is a beautiful drug.It makes even careful men careless.
Provence was not just territory.It was ports and pipelines and supply routes stitched together into something that made wars unnecessary.You did not have to win when you could simply outlast everyone else.You let them bleed themselves dry while you stayed rich and armed and untouched.
So I let myself want it.
And everything was finally falling into place, exactly the way I had always known it would.All it took, in the end, was the greatest of virtues.Patience.
My phone chimed.
It was Laurent.
Handover at the old processing site.Midnight.Bring minimal men.
Minimal men was Laurent’s polite way of saying do not frighten the seller.
I smiled to myself.Laurent had always mistaken stupidity for courage.
I was going to bring enough men to turn that stretch of countryside into a crime scene.
We left the mountain in a low, steady convoy, engines whispering, headlights dulled to thin blades of light that barely skimmed the road.The night wrapped around us, thick and quiet and heavy with fog.Monte Amiata fell away behind us, the dark bulk of the fortress sinking back into the forest like a secret that knew how to keep itself.
I sat in the back seat, watching the road unwind through the trees, my mind already far ahead of the vehicles moving in formation around me.
Mikayla was still up there.
Alone.Locked away.Furious.
For now.
That would change.I knew it would.
Women were predictable if you were patient enough.They hated you first.They fought.They tried to leave.And then, slowly, they learned.They grew tired of hurting.They grew tired of resisting.They discovered how easy life could be when they stopped pushing against the walls of their cage and let it become a home.
I was going to give her everything.Clothes, jewels, travel, indulgence, safety.A name that meant something.A future no one could take from her.In time, I would become the man she loved.She would forget all others and see only me.
Me.
The road descended out of the forest, the air warming by degrees as we dropped back into the lowlands.The vineyards and open hills were asleep, black and silver under the moon, and for a moment it almost felt peaceful.It was always easier to think when the world was quiet.
With Provence secured, everything else became manageable.Ports.Routes.Supply chains.Influence that reached farther than money alone ever could.I was already rich.I was already powerful.This was something else entirely.This was permanence.
