Page 54 of Heart of a Villain

They laughed, and these weren’t the laughs of people about to jump out of an airplane at eighteen thousand feet.

But then, focus took over.

Lee took one side of the rear of the aircraft while Mike took the other. As the ramp lowered, a gust of frigid air slammed into Adrían’s chest, momentarily taking his next several breaths until his oxygen kicked in. From this high, the globe transformed into a still image, and it was as if they were brushing the edges of outer space. The vantage point always gave him a renewed respect for the earth and all the things that made her beautiful, unique, and indispensable. Up here, everything made sense. Up here, all things in life were kismet.

Joel’s voice crackled in his ear. “Hey, you good?”

Nodding, he sent Joel a thumbs-up. “Yeah. Why, are you going to freak out aga?—”

One second, he was looking at the gunship’s interior. The next, all he saw was blue sky.

The last thing he felt was either a kick or shove, and it appeared that his growing re-obsession with Sayeda wouldn’t be changing the dynamic between him and Joel anytime soon. Strangely, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

By the time she was done, she would be able to wring her hair out like a washcloth.

But she loved it.

Sayeda rolled her shoulders and savored the soreness, the tenderness. She squeezed the muscles in her thighs and marveled at their fatigue. Lashing out at Adrían the other night hadn’t left her with the guilt she’d expected to show up at some point over the course of the week. In fact, it was the first time in her life she’d felt the kind of empowerment that fueled her today as she learned self-defense techniques from the woman who gave birth to Giorgio Pozza’s baby.

“You might not be able to use strength alone,” Mo instructed. “As women, we can seldom count on being stronger than our attacker. Bodyweight and pain points are going to be your best assets. Eesh and I will show you what I mean.”

Mo walked up behind Ayesha.

“Much of the time, you’ll be attacked from behind,” Mo explained. “That’s why we started with being aware of your environment; self-defense begins long before the first grab. Many attackers rely on that element of surprise as the first thing they use to take power from their victims.”

Sayeda nodded, enraptured.

Without warning, Mo grabbed Ayesha, and Ayesha didn’t strike out or try to hit Mo. Instead, she focused on creating distance using the lower half of her body.

“Now, Seda, notice what Eesh did there?”

“She didn’t focus on the hold first,” Sayeda answered. “She went straight to trying to create distance.”

“Distance might be all you need. Most attackers love an easy target. They’re counting on freeze and fawn responses, banking on entering the situation with control already established. So, a gap might be more than enough of a defense, especially if they never lock in the hold. But sometimes they do.”

Mo and Ayesha demonstrated three different techniques for getting out of a hold, ranging from loose to firm. After freeing herself, Ayesha went on the offensive, focusing on the would-be attacker’s nose, eyes, feet, and the pressure points at the sides of the neck and behind the ear.

“Very good, Eesh,” Mo said, barely breathless. “Now, here’s where things change. Because of this world we either willfully entered or married into, we might be required to do more damage against attackers with more skill. And those attackers will, more often than not, be intent on having us as their target. In short, their choice wasn’t random.”

Again, Mo attacked without warning.

Ayesha escaped from the grasp, brandished a hidden blade, and stabbed her assailant through the heart. They ran the drill several more times with different combat weapons, a pistol, and a sharp set of hair sticks. Mo also demonstrated how to target veins and arteries, but she emphasized that undergoing that particular training segment would come much later.

Next, Mo had Ayesha run drills with her.

After Ayesha, Mo took over, and although Mo encouraged her to give a face to her assailant, she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to paint Rafael’s or Lorenzo’s face onto someone as kind and beautiful as Moana Pozza.

As the afternoon wore on, it became clear why this was the woman Giorgio had ended up marrying. The only other woman she had ever seen with a level of skill close to Mo’s was Hannah, and she couldn’t see Hannah besting Mo in any sort of hand-to-hand combat. Still, whether Hannah was watching from a city loft in heaven or a penthouse apartment in hell—Hannah had done some shit in her lifetime—she hoped her cousin was proud.

When they were done, she was drenched.

They washed up at Mo’s training facility.

On their way out to the cars, Mo and Ayesha received messages from the guys that they were done with their own training. She checked her phone, but there were no messages from Adrían. However, it wasn’t as if he had to tell her he was back. They shared a house, not a home, and that house had two other adult occupants.

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