Page 74 of The Villain

“Wrong,” he countered. “We know what happened. She knows what happened to you. There’s a huge fucking difference.”

I gritted my teeth, fighting against his statement. There couldn’t be a difference.She couldn’t be different.

“I’m going to check out the address,” I declared, moving away from the conversation like it was a tightly packed explosive. I reached the door before I turned and asked,“Are you coming or am I going alone?”

“I’ll meet you out there.”

We pulled into the development right at the time when half a dozen soccer moms were out for their morning runs, all of them staring at us, leathered up on our Harleys like we were death eaters from another realm rather than bikers.

We were out of place, there was no doubt about it. Even at a slow speed, the rumble of our bikes gnawed straight through the perfectly crafted middle-class background noise. Lawn mowers. Pool splashes.

Ty followed me down the dead-end street. The houses were straight out of the American dream storybook. Two-story monstrosities landscaped to perfection. The one we were looking for was just before the cul-de-sac and obscured by two massive trees in the front lawn.

“We should make this quick,” I said after we parked at the curb. Nothing like getting the cops called on us while we were hunting a criminal they couldn’t manage to catch.

The house we wanted had a white brick exterior with all the windows drawn shut. Compared to the neighboring homes, the lawn was less kept up on. The house a little dirtier. From a distance, it fit in, but up close, it wasn’t cared for—a good indication that it wasn’t somewhere to live but somewhere to hide.

“Yeah.” Ty agreed, his stare calmly tracking every detail of our surroundings like he was preparing for another ambush. “I’ll take the front.”

“Got it.” We strode up the driveway, at the end, he veered for the path to the front door, and I ducked around back.

The upkeep was practically nonexistent behind the house.Weeds were overgrown everywhere. The grass wasn’t cut.What the hell was this place?I moved onto the concrete patio, positioning myself closer to the house and resting my hand on my weapon. I peered through the window.

Kitchen to my right. Dining table to my left. A doorway into the living room—Athena’s paintings.I tensed, seeing the stack of three propped against the couch. And then on the floor—blood.

“Dammit,” I swore and reached for the handle, the bad feeling in my gut growing when I found the door unlocked.

The smell of death was the first thing to hit me when it opened. It was the kind of smell you couldn’t forget, not when I’d breathed my fill of it overseas. I cleared the space in swift, silent movements, making my way around the island and then the table and chairs over to where blood streaked on the floor, leading me to?—

“Dare.”

I spun and instantly lowered my weapon, seeing Ty in the doorway to the living room.

“Front door was open.”

“So was the back.” I holstered my gun and stared at the two dead bodies on the floor, a gun in each of their hands. The one closest to me was face-up, blood covering the front of his shirt from three bullet holes. “It’s Brandon.” I held my breath as I bent forward and took a closer look to confirm; meanwhile, Ty crouched by the other body that was farther away.

Well, now we knew where Brandon had gone—and why we couldn’t find him. I’d have to tell Athena?—

“Dare…” Ty turned and looked at me, his expression unreadable. “It’s Ivans.”

I stilled and then straightened.No.“No,” I echoed my thoughts, moving to stand beside him.It couldn’t be…“Shit.”

It was.

Ray Ivans was dead. Shot by Athena’s ex-husband, from the looks of it.

“Shit.” I repeated the curse on a deep exhale, staring at the still body of a man we weren’t even sure was alive for almost two decades, and when we did realize he was, we weren’t sure we’d ever track him down.

I crouched and scanned the still lines of his face. The facial reconstruction he’d gone through made him appear nothing like the doctor who’d told Rob’s parents not to worry. He looked younger than he was, though gray peeked at the edge of his hairline. And from this angle, up close, the scars of his surgeries framed his face like the seal between past and present.

“I’ll call Rorik,” Ty muttered, rising and reaching for his phone.

Someone needed to break down the scene and do an autopsy on the bodies, and it was probably better that it wasn’t the police.

It seemed too easy—too unreal for the man we’d been hunting for years—to wind up dead in our laps.I should be thrilled. Fucking elated. Ivans was dead, and that meant Athena was safe. Instead, I thought about last night. I thought about the way she gave me her mouth and then her body, the taste of her sweet pussy like oxygen on my lips.

I remembered the way she’d responded to the truth about my past—the truth of what had broken me. Christ. And when Athena begged to touch me, I almost revealed the rest of my sordid trauma: that I hadn’t let a woman touch me since. But no matter how much I revealed, it changed nothing, certainly not the truth. I wasn’t her savior; I was simply the first man to break her heart.

---