Page 36 of Always A Villain
But it doesn’t matter.
Because I can’t deny it anymore.
I fucking love her.
And I’m going to find out what really happened the night her mother died. When I do, the ones responsible will bleed for it. Time doesn’t erase a debt like that.
Her father let it slide, like the fucking coward he is. Let her grow up without answers, without justice.
He should’ve burned the city down for her.
But he didn’t.
So I will.
I grip the wheel tighter as I drive to the Iron, my mind filled with violence and...her. The more time I spend withRory, the more I realize how badly Ineedher. I want her in my life, in a way that’s real. Not some fucked game of revenge.
I navigatethe corridors of the Iron, weaving through the controlled chaos, then push inside the Command Center doors. Arsen’s already hunched over the screens, eyes locked on whatever the hell he’s uncovered. He’s been texting me all morning to get my ass to the Command Center.
“What’ve you got?” I grunt, scanning the monitors.
“The footage is garbage from the stadium, but we pulled some clearer shots,” Arsen says, nodding to one of the techs. No surprise. That stadium is a ghost town, only used by us for the Red Arena. “Managed to ID a few of the bastards we killed, but this is what you need to see.”
He taps the screen, hitting play. Grainy footage shows a pack of idiots in black, storming the arena, guns in hand. It’s laughable, the way they move—no coordination, no training. They’re spraying bullets like kids playing with Nerf guns.
“Jesus. They can’t shoot for shit.”
“Exactly,” Arsen agrees. “Amateurs, but look at the gear. That’s not cheap. Helicopters, military-grade firepower—someone funded this.”
I narrow my eyes at the screen. “What's the endgame here? No way they thought they'd make it out alive. It’s a suicide mission.”
Nodding, Arsen scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah, they had no exit strategy, just went in guns blazing. No realplan beyond shooting up the place.”
He moves to the other side of the room, motioning me to follow. One of the techs hands me a folder, and I flip through it. A man in his late forties, Portuguese, small-town. Nothing special, a fucking nobody.
“Mateus Sanches. Owns a tile company,” Arsen says, his voice steady as he lays out the details. “Widowed, four kids—one’s an addict, in and out of treatment. Currently reported missing. No criminal record, no ties to organized crime. Facial recognition confirmed him from the video. The others we’ve ID’d are all varying backgrounds: different incomes, education levels. But all have clean records, no connections to each other. They had no reason to be in a stadium packed with Sovereigns in upstate New York—and none of them made it out. They were all shot dead on the spot.”
“What a bunch of fucking idiots. What the hell was the point? Other than to die?”
“Whoever was behind this was prepared to sacrifice them. Collateral damage.”
An entire group of people thrust into a death trap, each one a stranger to the next. No training, no real plan—just a command to unleash hell on the Sovereign and die.
My steps are silent as I move into Rory’s room. Her soft breathing fills the space, steady, unaware. She’s curled up, her blanket barely covering her body. Vulnerable.
I take a seat beside her, the mattress dipping under my weight. Brushing her hair from her face, I drag my thumb over her cheek, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath my touch. She has no fucking clue what she does to me. No idea how much I crave her—how much I want to ruin her in every way possible.
She thrives on fear, danger, pain. And tonight, I’m going to give her exactly what she needs. She thinks she can hide it; pretend she isn’t built for this. But I’ve seen it—the hunger in her eyes, the way her body reacts to me, the way she breaks so beautifully when I push her past her limits.
Rory is a filthy little slut whocraves the darkness—my darkness.
I watched her fuck herself with the masked man’s knife. My knife. She’s obsessed withhim. But she doesn’t needhim.
I’ll show her. I am the one who fulfills her deepest, sickest cravings. I am the one who owns her body, her pleasure, her pain. She belongs to me, and I’m going to make her fucking understand it. I'm going to show her what a monster can do.
Tonight, she’s my prey.
I yank the cloth sack from my pocket and pull it over her head.
