Page 90 of Beautiful Villain
It would’ve ended the same way it always did.
I smiled faintly, thinking of my wives.
Wives.Plural.People always forgot that part.
No one really knew what happened to them.The public narrative was delightfully tragic—dead women, lost to unfortunate circumstances.People loved a grieving husband.Loved a man marked by loss.And it did wonders for my reputation.
The truth was much less dramatic.
They hadn’t wanted me.
And once I realized that—once I accepted that love given under duress was just another form of decay—I let them go.
One lived out her days in the Caribbean, living a quiet life in a little house, where she spent her days gardening.
The other preferred France.The south of it.Lavender fields and sunsets forever.
I’d made sure they were comfortable.Safe.Forgotten.
I wasn’t cruel.Just…lonely.
That was the part no one ever understood.
I wanted what everyone wanted.To be loved.To belong to someone.To build something that stayed.I wanted a family.A legacy that wasn’t just blood and fear and money.
I’d honestly believed Mikayla could be that.That if I showed her enough of the good parts—if I convinced her—we could make it work.
What a fucking joke.
Footsteps crunched closer.
I didn’t need to look to know it was Gianni.
He stopped just within my line of sight.Calm.Controlled.Irritatingly alive.
The gun lifted.Steady.Professional.
Ah.
There it was.
I took a shallow breath and met his eyes.
“Before you do it,” I said, my voice rough but stubbornly still mine, “I need to give you a message for Mikayla.”
Gianni didn’t blink.
The gun stayed trained on my head.He had that look on his face—the one that said he’d already decided how this ended and was just being polite enough to let the universe catch up.
“I never meant to break her,” I went on.“I honestly thought if I held her close enough, she’d want to stay.”
That naturally earned me nothing but silence.Gianni Cavalho had always been infuriatingly economical with his reactions.Why waste emotion when you could store it away like ammunition?
Pain flared through my knees again—bright and ugly—and I sucked in a breath through my teeth, letting it pass before I spoke.
“You and I?”I said quietly.“We’re the same kind of monster.”
That did it.
