Page 106 of The Heart of a Villain

“Rush,” Rafael calls my name again and snaps me into moving from the window that opens up a panoramic view, to the nearby leather black couch. It’s as dull as the rest of this fucking place that on most days seems haunted by a ghost.

And maybe it is.

After all, without her, I’m nothing but a faceless and soulless creature destined to suffer in silence with no one seeing me because seeing me has deadly consequences for everyone.

The blood drips on the spotless black marble floor as the huge TV hanging on the wall silently shows different news clips, when Rafael drops onto the table in front of me, wiggling his fingers and silently asking me to give him my hand.

I do it and then wince when he pours antiseptic on it. While it isn’t deep, combined with all the other ones, it’s rather horrendous. “I would say you need to stop moping around like a little girl with her first crush, except…” Rafael trails off as he puts the bondage, wrapping it tightly around my palm. “That would be insulting to all the girls.”

“Is that so?” I deadpan, and he lifts his brow. “Where is your wife?”

“She has a show soon. She’s a prima after all.” He ties it up and then leans forward, wiping the blood off the floor.

Since I cared very little about my surroundings, I’ve never asked Rafael about his wife, but their fights are spectacular to watch and the only entertainment in my good-for-nothing existence.

Even though they moved out a long time ago to another penthouse, since they didn’t want to live with me and I can’t really blame them.

A soft padding of feet makes us swing our heads to the right as Lavender enters the living room, wearing shorts and a T-shirt while her pink-colored hair billows a little due to the wind slipping through the open balcony door.

She’s holding a book in her hand while she removes an earphone from her ear with the other and sighs. “Did you hurt yourself again?” she asks as she walks to the chair and drops into it with a loud huff. “You broke all the mugs,” she complains but then laughs a little as if finding it funny, and my heart flips inside my chest at the pure joy flashing on her face.

I guess one good thing came from Rafael’s weird-as-fuck marriage. Phoenix King took Lavender under her wing, deciding to help her as much as she could, but she didn’t promise us anything.

While it helped tremendously that Lavender was semi-sane and just pretended her outbursts in order to stay away from that piece of shit, she still lived in a prison of her own creation for a long while. Plus, she wouldn’t talk about Jade much, just reassured us that he never raped her.

But it didn’t leave out the fact that he might have done something else since something led her to light herself up.

If that fucker wasn’t dead already, I’d kill him all over again.

So according to Phoenix, healing from this trauma might take years, and she might still never be “normal.”

“Pink hair,” Rafael says. “I like it.” Although his tone implies otherwise, not that I can blame him. The color is horrible and does little to accentuate her beauty.

She touches one of her locks, twirling it on her finger. “I don’t.” Well, that’s good news. “I’m going to try out purple next.”

Since Lavender didn’t get the chance to experience her youth and twenties as she wanted, now she sort of relives it doing stuff she would have done at a younger age, testing our patience and boundaries.

That behavior involves the slamming of doors when she doesn’t like something, loud screeches about life being unfair, preferring junk food over a good meal, and experimenting almost every day with her hair and nail polishes. She also shouts every so often that we can’t tell her what to do and that one day she’s going to leave us and never come back because we are strict monsters who are chauvinistic and some other descriptions.

Also, the rock music blasting from the speakers adds to the whole ensemble.

“You do you,” I tell her, leaning back on the couch, when Rafael gets up and goes to the bar located on the left, heavy with various expensive bottles of whiskey.

As I found out, he doesn’t drink anything else. “How was your session with Phoenix today?”

She arrived home an hour ago but stayed holed-up in her room, giving us the finger on the way there.

“Boring and insightful.” I blink at this rather contradictory statement, and she elaborates, “We spoke about my scars.” She rubs her cheek, frowning. “If I want to get rid of them.”

I share a look with Rafael as he pours alcohol in our tumblers and comes back to us, giving me one of the glasses, and he takes a large sip, awaiting for her to go on.

We expected her to request plastic surgery right away, since she destroyed most of the mirrors first thing when she got here, according to Rafael.

But she never did.

“Do you want it?”

She glances at my twin. “No.” She pats her cheek, and a crooked smile curves her mouth. “They remind me that I’m strong.” Silence falls on us after this, our anger and anguish polluting the air while my fingers curve into the leather, stopping myself from erupting in rage for what has been done to her.

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