The Villains We Make (Heroes and Villains Duet Book 2)

1. Ophelia

Pain.

It’s the only word I know, the only conscious thought.

I hear sounds around me, and a voice I recognize. I’m not sure he’s talking to me, though. I’m not sure anyone is talking to me. The woman, maybe? Hers is the voice that soothes, that doesn’t terrify me.

“Why isn’t she waking up?”

It’s Silas. He’s angry. Furious.

The woman says something in Spanish. Between basic Spanish at school and time spent with Esmerelda when both Dad and Tonia were away, I can understand a little bit, but not this. It’s too fast.

My mind wanders to Esmerelda. She’s gone now.

A man’s face hovers over me. It’s blurry, like I’m looking through dirty glass, a lake frozen over. I reach up, but my fingertips only brush ice. I’m trapped beneath that ice.

“Give her some space,” a man whose voice I don’t recognize says. It sounds gentle, though. Then I hear Silas again, but he sounds farther away.

“Look at this,” the woman says, cool fingers at my throat.

“What is it?” Silas asks.

“A needle, perhaps. Whoever injected it was careless.”

“She’s safe here. Come with me, Silas.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“We need to get supplies.”

“I will take good care of her. Please,” the woman says in a coaxing tone.

I hear Silas groan before I fade away. My mind is a collage of blurred images and words all meshing together until I can’t tell what is past, what is present. What is real and what is a dream.

A nightmare.

I’m in that car with Ethan and the stranger. What was his name? Chandler. Chandler Carlisle-Bent.

Who was he? I wrack my brain, my memory foggy.

My uncle. He’s my uncle.

I have an uncle and a grandfather. They’re both living. Searching for me. Ethan said…

Ethan.

Pain.

The woman’s soothing voice is there again, blanketing me. “Shh. It’s just a dream. You’re safe.”

What had he said? What did he tell me?

Daughter of Oil Tycoon Kidnapped.

I don’t understand the words.

He’s here again, the face hovering over me, those turquoise eyes. I try to breathe, but my chest heaves with so much emotion that it feels like I’m swallowing water, choking on it.

Silas.

Silas making love to me.

Silas holding me.

Silas kissing me before he betrays me.

Fire and ash and Silas’s betrayal.

“Shh. You’re safe.”

I need to move, to wake up, but my arms and legs won’t work. When I open my eyes, I see faces like shadows. Like looking through dirty glass again. Strangers. A woman. A man. And then Silas.

His eyes are so much like Sly’s. Like ice.

I’m freezing. It is so cold, and I’m freezing. It’s Ethan’s needle. It’s what he gave me that has me trapped.

“She should have woken up by now,” I hear Silas say. “She hit her head… The accident… She hit her head too hard. Is that?—”

The woman speaks in a lowered voice. I pick up one word. Drugged.

Drugged.

Yes.

Ethan injected me with something when I tried to get out of the car. He’d been giving me something for days. He said it was to help me sleep. He said it was for the pain, but it wasn’t that.

Ethan betrayed me too.

Silas and Ethan and Sly, and even my own father.

Is there no one I can trust?

“Give her something then!” Silas demands, and I feel a tiny prick in my arm.

I drift away, into my childhood home, my bedroom, the small bay window I love. It’s quiet as I sit alone in the warm light and read, but a commotion outside has me turn as a dark cloud obscures the sun. I look out through my binoculars into the garden of the house next door and watch two boys and a girl. I’m the girl. I’m twelve, and Ethan is fourteen, and Silas? He’s already a man. Silas looks up at me in the window. His hair flops into his eyes and we watch each other for a long, long time. What had he said to me that day?

Some things are better left unknown.

He was right.

Warm tears run down my cheeks. Someone wipes them away.

“Shh, sweet girl. Sleep. It’s all right.”

But it’s not all right. Nothing is all right, nor will it ever be all right again. My house is gone. My father is in prison—my father, who has been lying to me all my life. Ethan—well, Ethan and Mr. and Mrs. Fox—I never knew any of them. When I see them now, when their faces swim in my vision, their expressions are dark, their teeth sharp, their eyes as red as the rubies in that ring Sly likes to wear on his little finger.

But it’s not them who have tears running down my cheeks when I can’t move my limbs. When I can’t properly open my eyes.

It’s not the thought of all I’ve lost, all I never had.

It’s Silas. It’s Silas’s betrayal that makes my heart ache. Silas’s lies. His manipulations. What we did, what we shared. If we’d had one more moment, I’d have told him the truth. Told him I loved him. Told him I had always loved him.

What a fool I am.

My thoughts come in the form of chaotic, dizzying images as I lie here trying to make sense of all the people and events that have shaped my life up until this day, this moment, the things that led me into that car with Ethan and Chandler.

Through it all, I see only one thing clearly.

Silas walking out of my house dressed in that tuxedo, looking so beautiful, so determined, so strong.

Silas stepping through fire, through the ashes he made of my past.

It’s his betrayal that has me sobbing, tears pouring when I can’t move any other part of my body, when all I want is something to numb this pain that makes my heart ache.

Because it’s always been him.

Because I loved him.

All these years, I have always loved him.