Page 5 of Hero & Villain
My heart stopped. How many people who thought they could cut out my grandfather in the past sixty years ended up destroyed? Annihilated. “That wasn’t our deal.” My voice was strangled. All of me was strangled.
“Our situation has changed.”
“Has it? So delighted to hear. Your ring, if you should want it, is in the back hall of the Indian restaurant around the block from the apartment.” I pried it off my left hand and dropped it on the floor. It glittered there under the hideous painting. So much money, so much more regret.
“You want to break up over a merger?” He finally sounded slightly upset.
Too little, too late.
I hung up, dropped the phone and stomped on it with my spiked heel. No one would be able to trace that. Or me.
Chapter Two
VILLAIN
The chocolate should have smothered my unhealthy emotions, but instead, I just felt weird, sitting in a bar, trying to drown my sorrows in chocolate when everyone around me was drinking. Except Straw, my cello, sitting on the stool to my right, who didn’t drink the glass of whiskey in front of her any more than I drank mine. The cello was also probably weird. Who goes drinking with an instrument?
The tightness in my chest squeezed as I took a big bite out of the mediocre chocolate bar. It was the last one. I’d eaten too many too fast, but I still felt too much. My emotions roiled until I could barely breathe. With one business deal, the man I’d been living with for the past two years had thrown away any future we could have had together, destroying Toni’s security and my own. Other than Thursdays, I’d gotten used to a quiet life with my cello and the slightly less quiet life as the socialite on Clint’s arm at every fundraiser our set attended. It didn’t feel like my set. Nothing from his world belonged to me. I’d left everything I’d accumulated in the last two years in that apartment, and I had no intention of going back. My grandfather would have men waiting for me, and Maples was dying.
I was staring at my last sad chocolate bar when a new blonde edgy bartender slammed her hands on the counter in front of me. Ooh, so tough.
“Look, honey. You’re a musician; that’s great, but you can’t take more than one seat, not in this place during happy hour.”
Happy? How was working all day and then drinking the futility of life away happy? I slammed my hands over hers, pinning them down while I looked into her suddenly nervous eyes. “I’ll take as many seats as I like,honey.” That’s right. I might be crazy, but I’d paid for that drink. Quake before me, you normal person.
She started nodding, suddenly smiling a fake smile that made my stomach twist. That’s how people smiled at my grandfather. “Sure, sure. No worries. Cellos are people too.”
For a second, I really felt like a villain, and it wasn’t a good feeling. I released her and grabbed Straw, turning to the crowd of happy hour customers who were watching this with way too much interest, like they expected me to start talking to Straw or something really crazy. I suppose I could put on a performance on top of the bar. I’m sure they’d all appreciate my artistry.
Mm hm.
I’d stayed here long enough. It was time to get back to the villainous lair. To do something with my life. Because it was so awesome. Yeah. Look at me. Incapable of hacking, of saving Maples, of keeping a fiancé, of standing up to my grandfather, or of playing my cello in public. Yeah, hear me roar.
As I lifted my cello and turned, my coat’s belt got caught in the chair and untied, leaving me exposed in my Thursday dominatrix garb.
A bar-wide gasp went through them as they came to attention. Suddenly, a mostly naked woman was in their midst. Did I look vulnerable to them? There were so many of them and only one of me.
“Hey, you’re a hooker? You should come home with me. How much do you cost?” the guy to my left slurred.
I carefully set straw down and picked up my two whiskey glasses instead. I downed one and then the other, wincing at the burn down my throat while my eyes watered. I didn’t like alcohol, didn’t like being out of control, so it had been a while.
“I am very, very expensive,” I said in my most eloquent upperclass voice. “Sometimes I forget I’m for sale, I’m so expensive.” I turned from the bar, eyeing the guys who had surrounded me. I was pretty, so I must be weak.
A tall man with bad teeth came closer, looking me up and down as he licked his lips. “I’ll take a sample of that. You know, to make sure it’s worth the price.” He grabbed at me, and I broke his nose with my glass. The crunch of cartilage and bone was like music to my ears. Off-key music, but maybe that was his scream. I kept it short and sweet, using all those delicate pressure points that you had to be incredibly precise to make work. Everyone was delicate if you knew where to put the pressure, not just the woman who’d forgotten her pants.
I tightened my belt while no one else touched me for some reason. When I stood and swung Straw onto my shoulder, the grabby man was whimpering on the floor. I pressed my heel into his shoulder, turning like I was putting out a cigarette. My five-inch spike didn’t go in too deep, but deep enough.
“Did you like the sample? You should know in life that nothing’s free.”
He whimpered, and I felt petty for wanting him to hurt. I hadn’t hurt anyone in a long time. I must be out of practice. My grandfather would be so disappointed.
I shuddered as I walked directly towards the guy standing between the tables. He swallowed and got out of my way, staring between the fallen guy and me like he wasn’t sure what to do. I could relate. What in the world was I supposed to do with myselfnow that I wasn’t bound to the role of high-class dominatrix fiancé?
I stepped out of the crowded bar and into the blowing storm outside. Everything I had could be traced by my grandfather and probably former fiancé. I wasn’t ever going back to our place. Clint’s place. Had I ever thought of it as mine? Surely even I would have things lying around if I thought I belonged somewhere.
The white stuff was getting thicker, heavier, more snow, less sleet. My heels were soaked before I’d gotten a block. I kept walking, going through my options. No one had touched Toni in two years since I’d made the deal with my grandfather, catching the uncatchable, bringing him down to his knees literally and figuratively. Clint was the family I used— an alliance between Harrison and Haversham that gave me, or my grandfather, Louis Haversham III, business deals with the tech sector that had always been out of reach. Haversham’s name had a certain reputation that made some families keep their distance. I closed the distance and held the heart of young Clinton Harrison beating in my fist, squeezing whatever I needed out of it. They were my business interests, but it was always under my grandfather’s umbrella.
I hadn’t meant for it to last so long, but there was always the next deal, and the next. I hadn’t hated living with Clint, and he was miles better than my sadistic grandfather. I’d enjoyed playing a cello that no one would hear, arranging business takeovers with the branch of Haverscorp I managed, competing with my cousin Philippe to show who could grow the business more and faster. Clint had been an excellent ally as far as business was concerned. At least he would have been, if that last merger hadn’t undone everything I’d been working for.
