The Villain (Built to Break #2)

Chapter 1

ONE

Devlin

I closed the door to my motel room and inhaled the chilly night air.

It was far from fresh, the oxygen tainted with the smell of weed from the room next door, detergent from the laundromat downstairs, and grease from the pizza joint across the street.

The red neon sign for Joe’s Pizza burned my retinas, and I rubbed my eyes.

My mouth watered. I hadn’t eaten in… I couldn’t remember how long it had been, but the thought of downing another pepperoni slice made my stomach heave.

Joe’s would close soon, but the sign would remain on, light searing through the thin curtains of my room until I wanted to claw my eyes out. I could request another room, or get another motel, but it felt like a punishment I deserved.

Plus, that light was the most stable thing in my life now.

I began to walk, because sleep was elusive, as always.

I couldn’t recall when I’d last gotten a full eight hours.

Maybe never. I hadn’t slept much as a kid, too busy listening for my father as he ramped up for another drunken rage.

And then after… Well, after was when everything went to shit.

When I’d stayed awake by snorting coke and slept by swilling a handle of vodka.

How I still had a functioning liver and olfactory system was a mystery.

God, I was like a fucking cockroach. Nothing could kill me, not even an epic beatdown that had shattered my jaw, fractured an eye socket, and cracked a cheekbone, among a plethora of other injuries.

The scar tissue on the back of my thigh tugged uncomfortably as I walked.

Glancing over at myself in the window of a pawn shop, I curled my lip.

I looked the same. The exact same. When I’d finally woken up from surgery I’d felt almost giddy, thrilled that the fucker who’d pummeled me had rearranged my face so I wouldn’t have to look at myself with recognition. So I could be someone else.

But no—I’d only had the best doctors. My face had been perfectly reconstructed except for a few minor scars.

It had been a year since I’d woken up in that hospital bed, bandaged and so very not numb.

Now when I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw every decision I’d made, every body I’d left in my wake, and all the violence and pain I’d caused during my decade of terror in Detroit.

I sidestepped a puddle, not wanting to ruin my boots.

They were the only footwear I had. Back at the motel, I had a few pairs of jeans, a pair of sweatpants, some athletic shorts, and a handful of T-shirts and hoodies I’d gotten for a bargain at the thrift store.

My current gray T-shirt read Panthers Baseball across the chest in faded orange, with a motivational “If it’s to be, it’s up to me” printed on the back.

My jeans had a hole in the knee that could maybe pass as fashionable, though I’d torn them myself on a piece of rebar at a construction site.

The only jacket I owned was the battered, burnt orange puffer I currently wore.

Early spring in New Jersey had been wet this year, which meant every day was a mud-fest as I stood in a ditch, holding a sign for traffic that read either SLOW or STOP.

The cars were never slow, and I’d been splashed by SUVs more times than I could count.

But it was the only job that would hire me, and even that had come down to luck, since a car accident had left some of the road crew unable to work.

Tomorrow would be my day off, which was why I couldn’t sleep.

A day off meant I had nothing to focus on, so my brain would just cycle through the same flashes of memory over and over again, making me want to slam a fork straight into my eyeball.

Staying awake like a zombie was preferable to closing my eyes and being tortured by nightmares.

Sometimes, I thought about ending it all.

But I couldn’t. I’d even thought he would end it all for me.

That was what I’d wanted, what I still craved—someone else to do it for me.

Instead, my former best friend had done the one thing he’d known would hurt me most: he’d let me live with the ghosts of my past decisions.

I blew out a breath as I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket.

A woman holding a cigarette stood under the flickering stoop light outside a nearby law office.

She spotted me, and her eyes darted down to my feet before sliding back up to my face.

Her head cocked, and she stepped forward wearing heels, a skirt too short for this weather, and a dirty coat over a tube top.

“Hey there,” she called, voice raspy from the smoke. She smiled slightly when she got a better look at my face, maybe because I wasn’t ugly or eighty years old. “Need company?”

My heart lurched. In her face, I saw so many others like her, people I’d exploited into selling their bodies so I’d have more cash in my pocket.

Cash I no longer had access to. Cash I hadn’t even cared about.

Shame burned in my gut. I wasn’t going to use her as absolution for what I’d done.

There wasn’t any to be found. And because criminal kingpins didn’t have time for therapy, my guilt twisted into anger.

I glared at her and replied, “Fuck off.”

She flinched at my dismissal. Her eyes turned flinty as she reached into her pocket, probably for a knife, so I ignored her and walked past.

Maybe this was how I’d go out—stabbed in the back by a hooker and left to bleed out on some shitty New Jersey street. The police would find my body, identify me, and the news would travel all the way back to my home city: “Detroit Devil Stabbed in Bumfuck Jersey.” Fitting.

“Fuck you too,” she said to my back.

A year ago, no one would’ve dared say that to me. Well, no one but him. I wasn’t sure if I missed the respect or not. It wasn’t like I’d earned it.

I kept walking along the main street of Gary, the small town I’d been in for the last three months. I didn’t hate it here. I had a job, the motel rented by the week at a decent rate, the food was cheap, and the people living here minded their business. It was more than I deserved, really.

But fuck was it boring.

I missed the adrenaline rush, the victory of a new deal, the jolt of anticipation from catching a rat in my crew. But most of all, I missed the revenge. Because that was all it had been, really. A massive revenge tour on the man who rejected me.

Turns out, he’d never been who I thought he was, and he’d never be who I wanted him to be. The worst part was I hadn’t even lost him—I’d never had him to begin with. The him in my mind had been someone else. A delusion. A fantasy I had created out of thin air.

As the king of a criminal empire, I’d wreaked havoc on a city for a decade—all because of a fucking crush.

With a sigh, I shoved open the door to a twenty-four-hour convenience store. The woman behind the counter greeted me with a smile. She always did that, even though I never returned her greeting, not once in the weeks I’d been coming here late at night.

I grabbed a basket and began dropping items inside: an orange, a banana that would be too ripe by tomorrow, and whatever cheap snacks caught my eye—chips, popcorn, cheese curls, and a couple chocolate bars that were two for five dollars.

I dropped my basket near the register and pointed to a past-prime hot dog still turning on the roller grill behind the counter. “I’ll take that too.”

A small rack holding cheap keychains caught my eye. A bright green plush frog with googly eyes stared back at me. Without thinking, I snatched it from the display and tossed it onto the pile of snacks.

The cashier—Carmen, according to her name tag—hummed to the tinny music playing over the store’s speakers as she wrapped my hot dog in foil. Her dangly earrings, bearing the Puerto Rican flag, jingled when she bobbed her head. As she finished ringing up my purchases, she added a soft pretzel.

I balked. “I don’t need that.”

She shrugged. “For free. It’s going stale.”

I ground my teeth. I didn’t want charity, but that pretzel smelled so damn good... So I just grunted and peeled off a few bills to cover my purchases. “Thanks,” I muttered as I grabbed the bag off the counter.

“Have a good night,” she called after me as I pushed out the door, overhead bell tinkling.

As I walked back to the motel, I bit into the soft pretzel, moaning quietly at the taste.

Carmen was a fucking liar. This wasn’t going stale.

Before I even realized it, I’d polished off the entire thing and was licking buttery salt off my fingers as I turned into the motel parking lot.

My room was on the second floor, but I stopped in front of room 15 before heading upstairs.

I approached slowly, quietly, and listened for any shouting or noise from inside.

It was quiet. The rusted blue truck owned by the man who sometimes stayed there was gone, which was likely why.

I carefully placed the bag of convenience store food in front of the door and stepped away, priding myself on another successful drop, when a dark blur streaked across my path.

“Shit!” I stumbled backward and nearly hit the ground as a black cat let out a yowling screech and tore off into the night at a pace that broke land speed records. I clasped my hands to my chest, heart racing as I bent over at the waist to catch my breath with an amused huff. “Fucking hell…”

The metallic click of a lock turning brought me upright.

The door to room 15 slowly opened, and a familiar pair of brown eyes peered up at me through the crack, face washed in the dull light of the motel hallway.

The boy was probably only six or seven, but it was hard to tell.

I didn’t think he was getting proper nutrition, or much food at all.

His skin was pale, like he hadn’t left the motel room much.

I’d only ever seen him in the parking lot a few times.