Page 52 of Villains Never Die

veilknight:You know how to contact me.

I logged off without any kind of goodbye.

Hope is a dangerous thing, so dangerous I’ve sworn it off like a vice. Hope is addictive. Once a seed is planted, it grows like a flower, ready to fell a man when it shrivels and dies.

Trust is even riskier, but I had been searching since I was eighteen for an answer. What veilknight said about the book only made me more certain it would arrive from Prague.

Death was terribly close to her end.

***

“Do you dress up for everything?” Rook asked as he waltzed through my front door with an alarming amount of familiarity. I stopped chopping onions and glanced down at my button-up and slacks.

“I’m just wearing clothes. You are rather dressed up this evening…you know, for you.” I shrugged and tossed the onions in a hot pan.

While I sautéed them, I stole glances at him. He wore dark jeans and a button-up of his own, and I wondered if he had dressed up for me.

“What are we eating?” he asked, making himself comfortable on the couch.

“Stir fry,” I said, “since you were so eager to eat garbage from boxes, I thought I’d make something you might order. Mine will be better, obviously.”

“That was thoughtful.”

I glanced up and raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”

“So what do you do when you’re not ruling your empire, England? You like movies?”

“No.”

“Books?”

“Occasionally.”

“Fucking your enemy?”

The corners of my mouth did that weird twitching thing again. “Unfortunately.”

He looked pleased with himself as he leaned back. “For someone who pretends to be so social, you suck at conversation.”

“I don’t pretend to be social,” I said. “Iamsocial.”

“But you don’t have any friends,” he observed, as if he thought he knew everything. “You’re too closed off.”

I turned to dice bell peppers. “Gray is my friend,” I said, even though I still wasn’t sure he was. He seemed to think so, with all his ideas about my sex life.

“Gray is your employee,” he said.

“How do you know who Gray is?”

He chuckled and came forward to lean his elbows on the island where I was prepping dinner. “Big guy. Good at blending in. Not so good that I didn’t see him scouting out threats at your gala. If you opened up, people might actually like you.”

“I have no desire for people to like me. Respect and fear go much further.”

“C’mon, it’s not that hard.” He placed his hand over mine and forced my knife to stop moving. “Watch. Hi, I’m Carter, but most people call me Rook. I grew up in Massachusetts, I’m better at chess than you, and I like—”

“Long walks on the beach and watching men get beaten to death?” His hand was still over mine, sending my stomach fluttering.

“Something like that.” He withdrew his hand and watched me resume chopping. “Your turn.”