Page 6 of Villains Never Die

This was a bloody disaster.

The man I tortured shivered in front of me from chill and pain. I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t working!

I hadn’t slept the night before; didn’t even doze off for a minute or two. I stared into the dark and listened to the voices add their two cents until well past midnight, when I jammed a pillow over my head and stared at the wall like it might have a useful answer.

The door creaked open and Gray stepped in, footsteps silent like a cat’s. I took one more look at the sack of meat stinking up my basement with his blood and fear and urine? Did he piss himself at some point while I beat him?

I turned to Gray and shook my head. “Find out what he knows.”

Then I stepped past him and stomped toward the stairs. I took the lift from the lobby of the building to my penthouse and stripped out of my soiled clothes. My chest tightened at the sight of my blood-speckled shirt as I held it to the light. This was why I didn’t do the dirty work myself. I shoved it in the bin under the sink and turned the shower on hot. When I stepped under the spray, I tilted my head back and let the scalding droplets roll across my shoulders and down my back. Steam filled the room.

He thinks he’s going to wash away all his problems.

That won’t help.

If you want my advice…

“I don’t want your advice! Can a man not get some fucking privacy in the shower?!”

They fell silent, and then it was just Rook burrowing into every corner of my head and making his presence more than fucking known. Where was he right now? Was he laughing with his friends about how I failed to kill him? Or did he obsess over what transpired the way I did?

Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t dead.

I fucked up.

I closed my eyes, raking water through my hair, and tried to determine the exact shade of blue in those eyes that pierced through me at the moment of his death. Cerulean. No, aquamarine. Azure? I pounded my fist against the slick shower wall and cursed his fucking face.

This wasn’t working either. Would I never find relief from him? Surely he wasn’t at his club or wherever he slept at night thinking about how I nearly ripped his life away and lost myself in a brutal moment of attraction instead. He was probably celebrating my failure and planning more ways to take my city and make my sleepless life miserable.

I shut off the water, toweled off, and swiped my hand across the foggy mirror. I looked like shit as I raked a comb through my dark hair—bags under my eyes, paleness that made me look ill.

I sucked in a deep breath. I had three options.

One, kill him. I would not fail a second time. Next time I’d stab him in the back or strangle him from behind. Maybe I’d bring him back here, hang him in the basement, and let Gray cut him into a thousand bloody pieces. I wouldn’t have to lose myself in those eyes a second time while I killed him.

Two, ignore him. Let him have his tiny chunk of this city and run his little club and stay in my own lane.

Three, kiss him again—

No.

I turned away from myself in the mirror and ground my teeth. I folded my towel neatly, draped it over the towel bar, and made my way to my bedroom. I threw myself at my bed and sprawled out naked, staring at the ceiling like I was glaring up at some divine being who had decided to throw Rook into my path and make my life hell.

Because that was what he was going to do. Make my life hell for the foreseeable future just by existing and knowing he fucking won.

No, not if I ignored him. I would pretend he didn’t exist and hope someone else came along to do what I couldn’t. I’d go about business as usual, and no one would ever know what happened last night. Rook wouldn’t tell anyone, right?

***

“The final price is $1.4 million.”

The only reason I knew the man across from me disliked the price was the slight widening of his eyes and the way his fingers almost, but didn’t, curl into a fist on the top of my desk.

“That seems a little unreasonable,” he said. “Surely you could lower that price, as I am a regular customer.”

I steepled my fingers and leaned back in my chair. “I have many regular customers, Mr. Kristoffer, and I can get more than that amount at the next auction. If you are not interested in this piece, someone else will be.”

I put the emphasis onsomeone else. James Kristoffer didn’t know what he really had in half his collection; he just liked knowing he had it and someone else didn’t. Some of the wealthier magicians—and humans—in this city collectedrare magical artifacts simply for status and exclusivity; the knowledge they had something special.