Page 207 of Kiss the Villain

“Mrs. Davenport was never my mistress, and I’m positive he gave up on revenge not long after he met you.”

Mrs. Davenport.Cassandra. The woman who had his last name.

My skin prickles as I stare ahead, willing the smiling couples to distract me. But all I want to do is drown them in the lake. Hold their heads under the water like I did Gilbert. Feel their struggles, their gurgling screams, until they go still.

Why the fuck are they smiling so much?

“You don’t have to believe me,” Simone continues. “But he never looked at her the way he looks at you.”

“Naturally. He loved her, and I was just a toy.”

Her head shakes. “It’s the other way around.”

I laugh, sharp and bitter. “Do you get a bonus for trying to sell me on his bullshit?”

“Mr. Carson…Gareth.” She hesitates. “Deep down, you know it’s not bullshit. He killed all his previous targets immediately, after torture. He would’ve never kept you around—let alone been…intimate with you—if he planned to kill or hurt you. He’s been a wreck since you left, burying himself in work and smoking himself to an early grave.”

Didn’t he quit smoking? He had, after I told him I hated the smell.

“Has he been in pain?” I run a finger over the bracelet I should’ve thrown away but couldn’t.

“Immense pain.”

“More than when Cassandra died?”

“He wasn’t in pain then. Just enraged.”

“He’d have to feel pain to be enraged.”

“Not him. For him, they’re distinct emotions.” She pauses. “He flew to the UK to retrieve your cat and some of his belongings. One of my men said he found a bowl of rotting strawberries and stared at it for twenty minutes.”

I tighten my fingers around the bracelet, then release it.

Fuck him.

I haven’t touched a strawberry since I left. Can’t swim, watch TV, or even study without seeing him everywhere.

Ineverything.

He’s like a curse, embedded in my bloodstream.

And because I can’t help myself, I ask Simone more questions, probe further, and dig deep into Kayden Davenport, who’s entirely different from Kayden Lockwood but somehow the same.

She tells me about his parents, his dad, in particular, about his moms and why they were banished and what he had to do to protect them. She talks about Grant, the slimy bastard, and Cassandra. About their open, arranged marriage, which surprises me a bit, because he kind of loses his shit when he sees me with someone else.

I listen to Simone talk in a steady voice, not mincing her words but apologizing when she curses. She tells me about Vencor and what he had to do to be in it. I’m not sure why she feels confident enough to tell me about some sort of a secret society, but maybe it’s because she feels guilty for lying, and now, she wants to make up for it.

Or maybe this is a ploy from Kayden, but I doubt he’d ever want me to know about this. That man is like a vault, really. He keeps all different compartments of his life separate.

His resistance to the Taser and the drug I injected him with makes sense now that I hear about all the poison and pain-endurance training he had while growing up.

And I’m having this tingling urge beneath my skin, the one I always had about others hurting what’s mine. I have it toward his dad and Vencor.

And this Julian, who’s the reason why Kayden’s vision grows bad sometimes and why he had that fever and was coughing. It’s why he had that ‘accident’ after which his moms visited. In reality, he had a major immune system attack. Apparently, Kayden’s been doing these off-the-record drug experiments for his pharmaceutical company.

Apparently, the lavender I remember smelling in his apartment in the first few weeks I knew him is Cassandra’s scent. I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry that he did stop having that scent in the house right after the time I walked in on him in that ice bath.

I think I fall asleep with a frown between my brows after Simone tells me Vencor is the reason he can’t be in a relationship with a man. That they’d kill him if they found out about me.

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