Page 22 of Heart of a Villain

“But, if you’re bored, feel free to put your hands on somebody here since you seem to like hitting women,” Gage urged. “Actually, Mo? Let him hit you.”

Giorgio’s gaze flicked to Rafael.

Sayeda held her breath, waiting for Rafael to be the Brazilian Butcher he was known to be. Every ounce of her desire to kill him temporarily vanished; right then, she would have given anything to see what it was about Giorgio Pozza that made her know she would always fear him a little, regardless of whether they one day became friends.

“What does that mean?” Adrían asked. He lightly squeezed her hand to grab her attention. “Querida, who did he hit?”

She shrugged.

Joel tossed Adrían a key fob that he caught without turning away from her. Based on the little bit of interaction she’d seen so far, she wondered whether Joel was the brother the fortune teller told Adrían he would initially butt heads with over “matters of the heart.” Were these the brothers the seer told him he would one day have? The ones he’d looked forward to having?

“Juliana,” Rafael called. “Don’t think this gang will save you from Lorenzo, you dick-sucking whore. It doesn’t matter what happens to me. He’ll come for you.”

Adrían stepped closer to Rafael, his hand still wrapped around hers. “Joel, I changed my mind,” he said. “I’ll kill this one.”

“And sucking dick isn’t an insult,” she tacked on. “It’s a treasured pastime.”

Ayesha raised her hand, and she slapped their palms together. Larke, Xara, Mo, Ari, and Tayler joined in with a quiet round of applause. Wren playfully shoved her sister in the shoulder, her nose wrinkled.

Rafael looked around the room, his olive skin illuminating with faint shades of crimson rage. “Your days are numbered, bitch,” he hissed.

“All days are numbered, bitch,” Sayeda tossed back. “It’s called a calendar.”

Adrían used one arm to lift her off her feet. “Let’s go, Don Corleone.”

They headed for the front door, and she continued to toss middle fingers over his shoulder at one of the men who’d made her life worse than hell for far too long.

CHAPTER

SIX

“How was your flight?”

Sayeda shifted in her seat, caught off guard by the sudden conversation. For a moment, in her mind, they were back in Morocco, feeding each other chocolate confections and making love in the dark.

But those days were a lifetime ago.

She no longer recognized the woman who stared back at her whenever she stood in front of a mirror. That she’d, at one point, loved this man to where she’d considered giving up her freedom for him seemed almost mystical. Feelings avoided her nearly as much as fortune did, and it never seemed to matter how hard she tried to experience them. Numbness was all she knew now.

“Long,” she said.

“Is this your first time to Sweden?”

“It’s my first time in Europe.”

His grip flexed on the steering wheel, his fingers covered in markings too dark for her to make out. When they first met, he’d had a few tattoos, but the ones on his hands and those crawling up from the collar of his crew-neck T-shirt hadn’t been there before.

He’d also filled out.

Marvelously.

His broader shoulders and the more solid, attractive angles to his face were proof of all the time that had passed. Once upon a time, she’d convinced herself that the man everyone thought was heartless had given his heart to her. Luckily, she was wrong. Adrían did have a heart, one of the most beautiful she had ever seen, but she couldn’t be more grateful that she never quite seemed to have made her way into it.

“When did you learn Portuguese?” he asked.

“Back when…” She frowned. “How do you know I’m not a native speaker?”

“We’re still doing this?”

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