Page 28 of Heart of a Villain

It wasn’t a “friend” he saw himself kissing, touching, licking, and fucking as he watched her face contort with pleasure. And thinking about a friend with someone else didn’t usually end with him envisioning an end to that someone else’s life with his gun pressed against their skull.

Buried underneath her hurt, he was confident she still loved him, but she needed to heal and learn to trust herself and the world around her again. To do so, he would help her rediscover her strength. To start, he would teach her how to fight against her body’s instinct to surrender. Next, he would teach her how to kill.

“Adrían?” Wren nodded toward the hallway. “Can we talk real quick?”

He followed her, and Thanasis, all way down to the bottom floor, but he remained close to the foot of the stairs in the event Sayeda needed him.

“Do you know her?” Wren asked. “There’s something about the way you look at her. Is it because she looks so much like Ayesha, or is she the reason you felt the way you did about Ayesha in the first place?”

He wasn’t familiar with the woman lying in the bed upstairs—yet. He knew that face, those eyes, those lips, and that skin, but he didn’t know the soul they encompassed. Being a woman inside the Chamas cartel was a completely different experience.

“I’m not sure,” he half-lied.

“Who is she?”

The word “ex” implied that they were no longer together. Little did Sayeda know, there would be no dragging his feet and letting himself be mired in denial this time around.

“Someone from my past,” he answered.

“Her?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay.” She offered him a soft smile. “But I thought you should know that Dez told me to let him know if you leave. He said the guys are onboard with your plans for the, and I quote, ‘fake enforcer.’”

“How’d he know I would want to leave?”

“Get to know him. He knows,” she glanced at Thanasis, “a lot of things, sometimes before you do. The man’s a witch.”

A laugh crept up on him. “Noted.”

“So you’ll stay?”

“If she needs me.”

“I think she does.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

Wren stepped forward as if to hug him, but Thanasis used his elbow to hook her around her neck and drag her back against him.

“Oh my god, what is wrong with you?” She twisted, tugged, and fought until he released her from his chokehold. Then she swatted at the strands of hair that had fallen in front of her face during her struggle. “Look, I’m going to the patio. I need some air. Athanasios, don’t follow me.”

Thanasis followed her anyhow.

Adrían returned upstairs to the owner’s suite, and a heavenly choir rejoiced when he noticed Sayeda’s closed eyes and slow, deep breathing. The covers were pulled up to her neck, and she slept on her side, curled into a tight ball.

He moved aside the covers.

There was no evidence of bullet wounds, and she didn’t wear scars like a second skin. But there was a cut on her chin, and there appeared to be a burn mark on her arm along with a healing gash on her palm.

“You’re alive, querida,” he whispered, sitting on the mattress. “In the morning, I will ask about the money I sent you. I might have forgotten to specify that it was a loan.”

She curled into a tighter ball.

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