THE VILLAIN
An hour later, I was knocking on Violet’s door with a box of pepperoni pizza. I figured this was the safest bet. After all, who didn’t like pizza?
I waited for a minute and a half before the door swung open. I was wondering what the hell was taking so long until my eyes took in her damp hair and face, still flushed from the heat of her shower. She was wearing an off-shoulder t-shirt, leggings, and a glare.
“I told you to call when you got to the building. How did you get in?”
I gestured to the pizza box. “I look like a pizza delivery boy, I guess.”
She rolled her eyes but I could tell by the sparkle in her eyes that something wicked was about to come out of that pretty little mouth.
“Boy? Isn’t that just what they’re called in porn? Too bad I got myself dressed before I answer the door, then. However will I pay now, Mr. Pizza Boy?” She feigned an innocent tone that went straight to my dick.
No. Off limits.
“Watch a lot of porn, do we?”
“God, no.” She snorted, stepping out of the way. “Much prefer to read it. I can picture the main characters however I like. Sometimes I see myself and sometimes I just like to watch.”
It took everything in me not to let out a tortured groan and shift as my pants become uncomfortably tight. It was like she could tell because a smirk grew on her face.
“It’s nice to be able to picture the love interest as whoever I want.” Her eyes trailed over me slowly. “Anyway, shall we get to work?”
“That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?” Did my voice sound normal? Fuck I hoped so. I couldn’t remember why I was here; my mind was too busy assaulting me with visions of Violet on her knees with my hands tangled in her hair, putting her wicked mouth to good use.
Not good.
She grinned. “Cool, I’ll grab plates.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon going back and forth.
She wanted something that wasn’t easily crackable, and I wanted something super complicated so she’d have to reach out to me—often.
I came up with something in the middle but I didn’t share it yet.
I wanted the excuse to keep all her attention on me.
We spent the next two weeks meeting almost every day.
I would have gone longer, but by the end of week two, she had over twenty phone numbers.
Half of them were people I’d never spoken to in my life. Her name and reputation were spreading like wildfire. I didn’t think it would when I gave Weave her information. Sure, I had fun. But I didn’t think so many of the other villains would want to spend their free time with dying children.
Then he spent two hours at the hospital on 56th with one of the older patients. She was sixteen, battling leukemia, and she was a huge fan of him.
When Violet mentioned he was visiting, I made it my business to be there. I didn’t think he was a threat, but I was worried the police might do something stupid—like trying to raid a hospital full of sick kids and get someone killed.
They tried. An Emergency Response Team—better known as ERT—showed up in tactical gear with their semiautomatic guns ready to storm the hospital.
Violet hit the panic button that locked every door and window except the emergency room door.
Then she stood in front of the entire ERT squad and told them to take their guns and shove it.
The captain had gotten right in her face trying to intimidate her but my girl didn’t scare easy. (Not your girl. Someone you barely know. Again, semantics.)
“Over my dead fucking body,” she’d said.
“You kiss your momma with that mouth?”
If she had looked at me the way she looked at the captain, I would have been scared for my life. Murderous, like she was a second from snapping his neck.
“Get. Out.”
And he did.
A week later, Hemlock visited 65th. You bet your ass I was there for that one. I wasn’t letting that poison weasel anywhere near her without supervision.
The same captain came storming through the emergency room doors, demanding she let him pass. She held her ground again. No matter how much he leered and threatened, she just kept telling him to shove it.
My favourite was her closing line.
“Look, dude, you barge in here with your guns not taking no for an answer so how about this? I’ll take your gun and fuck you with it, then I’ll let you pass.
I promise I won’t pull the trigger but, you know, sometimes accidents happen.
No? Oh come on, it’ll will only hurt a little and you probably won’t die.
” She paused as he turned an unnatural shade of red.
“You hear how dumb that sounds right? Good. Get lost.” She gave him a fake smile and waved as he stormed right back out.
That was the moment I knew it was more than curiosity. I was falling—hard.
By the beginning of November, she had forty-five villains contact her. Her reputation spread farther and farther, reaching other cities, even other countries. Every new person was another stress for me.
I thought the circle would stay small; I thought it would be easy to protect her. But she was getting more and more attention. Not just from the villains but from the police and media outlets too. Everyone was talking about her.
Weave set her up with an encrypted burner phone like the rest of us had. He went to her apartment on a regular basis to do bug sweeps. I thought he was being overly paranoid, but he found one after Hemlock’s hospital visit.
Eva was giving me more and more shit. I wasn’t sleeping, I was barely eating, and I certainly wasn’t focused on the plan or the list. I was too busy worrying about Violet being targeted, kidnapped, or killed.
It didn’t help that she was jumped by an attempted mugger nearly every night.
After the incident with Arthur, I’d been walking her home as much as possible.
Sometimes I missed her coming out of the hospital and caught her along her route; other times I missed her completely and ended up stumbling across her as she was taking out her would-be-assailant.
She teased me every walk.
“What’s the point of walking with me if I just get jumped anyway. You never even help.”
“I’m here for moral support. That’s not good enough for you?”
She always laughed and shook her head. But she never complained about my presence so I kept going.
Tonight I was running super late. Eva had called a last minute meeting with the group helping me take out the list. She finally informed them about the information I got from Arthur and asked if they wanted to do a timeline push.
None of them seemed concerned—so what if a few criminals went missing?
That was a wild take for three guys who supposedly cared about everyone in the city, but what did I know? I was just their loaded gun.
Violet had already taken care of her latest attempted mugger and was asking her usual question.
“Are you going to freak out if I call the police?”
Only two had the same reaction as Arthur, the rest were confused about why she was asking.
“Fuck you, bitch.” He spit at her but she moved out of his range.
“That was unnecessary.”
She drove her heel into the side of his head to knock him out while she pulled out her phone. Damn, she was beautiful when she was violent.
“Fucking gross, I hate saliva,” she mumbled before she raised the phone to her ear.
I hung back in my shadows. Usually, I’d wait for her around the corner while the police took her statement anyway, so this wasn’t much different. Okay, it was a little different because I used my shadows to hear the other side of the conversation. What? I was curious.
“Nine-one-one, do you need fire, police, or ambulance?”
“Police.”
“One moment.” There was a brief pause then a new voice came on the line, “Nine-one-one police. What is the nature of your emergency?”
“Kelsey! Hey! I thought you were off today?”
It wasn’t uncommon for Violet to recognize the voice of the operator taking her calls, but I’d never heard her this excited. They must be friends outside of just phone calls.
“Oh hey, V! I was. Got asked to come in for a couple hours, you know how it is.”
“Do I ever.” She sighed. “Anyway, I’m at the corner of 45th and 48th. Some dumbass tried to take my wallet and spit on me. Ugh. Sorry still not over it. I hated that. Could you send someone my way?”
“Sure thing! You good to wait? O’Neill saw your name but he’s about ten minutes out, I can send someone closer.”
Violet smiled. “It’s a nice night. I’ll hang out.”
Who the fuck was O’Neill, and why was she smiling like that?
“Perfect. Him and Castle are on the way.”
“Cool. I’ll let you get back to saving people.”
“You’re actually my last call. I don’t want to leave you hanging but I do want to head out. Can I call you back on my cell?”
“Sure. I’d love the company.”
“Excellent, one sec.” She hung up and called back thirty seconds later. “That’s better. Now we can talk without the recorded line.”
“What are we talking about that can’t be discussed on a recorded line?” Violet grinned.
“Chris.”
“Ugh, he’s relentless.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I don’t understand why he’d make up such a dumb excuse to skip out on our date if he was going to be like this after.”
“Girl, when he told me, I was sure it was an excuse too, but his car really was destroyed. And there were ice shards everywhere.”
Violet scrunched up her nose.
“How does an icicle fall on someone in June? Even better, how does an icicle big enough to crush a car fall…ever?”
Oh. Oops. I remembered that. One of the people on my list had a meeting in City Core.
He didn’t get out much so that had been the best opportunity for me.
I’d been standing on the balcony of a vacant unit overlooking a low foot-traffic area.
The lawyer walked under me, and I’d dropped a larger-than-necessary icicle.
It had missed the guy, landing on a SUV parked on the street instead.
The owner of the SUV had run out of the building, absolutely losing his mind.
Seriously, his rage was off the charts. I definitely saved Violet from a giant red flag if that was the date she had planned.
“Seriously? Did you forget about the smoking hot, snow-wielding villain you tracked down a month and a half ago?”
“Well, then it’s probably a good thing I’m staying away.”
“How do you figure?”
“Avalanche has been single handily rooting out the corruption in the city for years. If he went after O’Neill, he’s probably bad news.”
I grinned. He wasn’t on my list, but if she thought he was a bad guy… I wasn’t going to correct her.
“Chris is literally a saint. It’s way more likely that Avalanche was trying to sabotage your date.”
Violet shook her head.
“I didn’t even know him last year. Why would he be trying to sabotage my date?”
“Maybe he saw you from across the room one day and became obsessed with you.”
There was a good possibility that would have been accurate, but alas.
Violet burst out laughing. “Okay, you and Amber need to read some fluffy books. All these stalker romances are rotting your brains. I’m proposing a fluffy read at our next book club meeting.”
Okay, book club friends made a lot of sense. From what I’d gathered Violet didn’t go out much, which was probably good because she seemed to get mugged every time she did.
“Amber and I will never. We’d rather die.”
“Keep going like this and one of your dates will make that happen.” The sound of sirens made Violet look up. “Ah, saved by the siren. They’re here.”
“Oh no, you’re not getting off that easy. You don’t get to judge me; you love stalker romances. You’re trying to tell me that you wouldn’t fold in half if you found out that gorgeous man has been stalking you for years?”
“That’s fiction, Kels. Where I can read exactly what’s on his mind. I don’t know Avalanche; I met him once.”
The lie rolled off her tongue easily. Although, I supposed she wasn’t truly lying. She’d only met the persona of Avalanche once, for the most part I was myself with her—even if she didn’t know my name.
“But—”
“Bye, Kelsey.”
She hung up just as the police car pulled up to the mouth of the alley. Two guys stepped out. The driver was definitely the owner of the car I totalled—blond hair, brown eyes, medium build. He was grinning ear to ear and his partner—red hair, blue eyes, on the thinner side—looked indifferent.
The former greeted her with sarcasm, “Miss Hayes, staying out of trouble as always, I see.”
“Can’t help that trouble seems to find me.” She shrugged.
“Might have something to do with your villains,” the partner muttered; Angry Icicle elbowed him.
“Always a pleasure to see you, Nate. How’s Abby? She was absolutely glowing the last time I saw her. Her due date’s right around the corner, isn’t it?”
His face lit up, smile growing. I was pretty sure Abby was a nurse that worked on the hospital on 65th. I was doing a bit of assuming because Violet had chatted with a pregnant woman during Hemlock’s visit.
“Another two months to go: January tenth. She’s hoping she’s not early; she doesn’t want a Christmas or a New Year’s baby.”
“I don’t blame her. Way too much going on that time of year. You must be so excited.”
“That’s an understatement,” Angry Icicle cut in. “Guy won’t shut up about it.”
Nate rolled his eyes. “It’s called being in love. You should try it sometime before you judge.”
“Tried. This girl I’m into won’t give me the time of day.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like made-up excuses.”
“I don’t know how many times I can tell her that I didn’t make it up. An icicle the size of a piano fell on my car and totalled it.”
Maybe I should have waited until this guy got in it. Back off, she’s clearly not interested.
“Well, either way. Maybe you should take the hint and try someone else. She’s not interested.”
Angry Icicle opened his mouth, but his partner jumped in.
“Anyway, we’ll get this guy off your hands. Are you okay to get home?”
“Yeah. Thanks, Nate. Tell Abby I’ll bring her some of my signature chocolate chip cookies next week.”
“Will do. Try to stay out of trouble until then so you don’t make me a liar.” He smiled as the two of them hauled the mugger to his feet.
“I’ll do my best. Have a good night, gentlemen.”
She waited until the lights turned off and the police car pulled out of the alley before she resumed her walk. I met her around the corner, she smiled when she saw me.
“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show.”
“And miss watching you take out muggers? Never.”
“Good to know.”
I held out my elbow, inviting her to link her arm through mine. She did with a soft smile.
“Shall we?”
“We shall.”