Page 12 of Hero & Villain (Super Serum Billionaires #1)

I buzzed the intercom and waited two minutes, then held down the buzzer until Jezebel’s voice drawled back along with a glimpse of her face on the screen.

“Look at what the cat dragged in. What do you want, Dagger?” Her Texas accent was thick this morning, like her makeup.

“I’m here to check on Toni. You’re the one who dragged her in. Have you gnawed off her face yet?”

Jezebel gave me a hard smile. That’s the only kind of smile she had.

“She’s got a good face. It’ll be even better after the swelling goes down.

Do you think she’ll want to be candy? She’ll need some plastic if she wants to achieve true Las Vegas proportions, but the face doesn’t need anything but false eyelashes.

She looked real pretty in your arms. Maybe we could do a racing the train stunt and use her as emotional leverage. ”

I ignored all the poking and kept to the point. “I’m here to see her.”

“She doesn’t want to see you.”

I smirked. “I doubt that.” Daniela was here for the sole purpose of ruining me; ergo, she’d get as close to me as possible.

I hadn’t thought she’d end up in my arms so soon, but I wasn’t complaining.

I mean, the fact that she’d actually had sunstroke and possible internal bleeding made me want to kill things, but complaining never did any good.

“She’s unconscious. She could be dreaming about you, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Unconscious? I scowled and took a threatening step towards the com. “Why is she unconscious? What are you doing to her?”

She cocked her head, eyes getting brighter like she wanted me to start something, but there was technology between us. “I’ll tell you that right after you tell me what you want with her.”

I crossed my arms and took a step back. I wasn’t here to fight with Jez.

Nix would be irritated, and I liked working with him.

Mainly because it irritated Horse. If I were working for someone, it should be him.

Yeah, no. Not when all of his associates ended up on his couch.

Therapy. He couldn’t leave anyone alone, had to fix them.

Nix didn’t fix anything, even if it was broken. He just let it be.

I forced a polite smile. “I’m concerned about my racer’s relative. She’s my responsibility.”

She snorted. “If that’s Nitro’s cousin, I’ll eat my hat, and you knew her much better than I did.”

I took a deep breath and tried to channel my confident calm. I used to have one of those. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if I did, what difference does it make?”

“What difference does it make if you play nice to someone who’s been recently broken in half?

” It was her turn to move towards me threateningly, framing the screen with her face and flaring nostrils.

“You want to know why I stepped in? You’ve been in the menagerie, right?

You know how I take in strays and nurse them to health before I send them on their way.

This girl’s a feral cat that got ran down by a coyote.

I’m going to make sure she’s in fighting condition before I release her into the wild. ”

I scowled at the camera. “Like Minx and Felicia? I know what you do to your human strays, and it’s not what she needs. She’s not stripper material.”

She laughed, a rumble that gave me goosebumps. “Oh, but she is! Or rather, she would be if she weren’t nursing two broken ribs. You must have noticed what a nice package she made when you were carrying her around like a helpless doll. She’ll be a perfect addition to our girl’s night.”

I rubbed my forehead. Only Nix knew how to get what he wanted from Jezebel, but she did rehabilitate injured creatures no one else would touch, and they always recovered.

Like Marcus Licinius Crassus, the most devious mountain lion in the world.

Wish he hadn’t recovered. “Nix invited her onto the team. You’re going to let me check on her, or I’m going to get him to talk to you. ”

“Mm hm. Calling on Nix because you know when you’ve been licked. You want to see Sleeping Beauty? Here ya go.”

The screen panned, showing a bed with a sleeping Daniela. Her bandage-covered body looked so small, her arm so delicate and breakable hooked up to an IV.

Seeing her like that, she looked like the victim, not the villain. How could I play her if she wasn’t playing? What if she’d really come here to get away from her family? Impossible. And yet…

“What are you putting in her?”

“Didn’t you hear? She wanted a vet. I’m giving her vet medicine.

” The screen went dark, and I was left more wired than I’d been earlier.

It didn’t help that Jezebel made Horse nervous.

I backed up and went over to my car. Once I’d gotten in, a gunshot went off as Jezebel peppered my back fender with buckshot.

How could the most feral woman I’d ever met have the slightest idea how to rehabilitate anyone?

Jez had done that just to be irritating, like I’d chosen that color of pink, just to irritate the other team members.

Nix’s team was too serious, the best at what they did and they acted like it, at least publicly.

I adjusted my mirror as I drove away, catching a glimpse of the pink shirt I was wearing.

No, I didn’t do pink to be annoying, but to remember.

Funny that Daniela showed up with that hair, making me remember more than vengeance, how she’d felt kissing me with all the emotion she usually kept pent up, the same emotion she poured into her music.

It was beautiful, irresistibly complicated, like her.

It was a good thing that I didn’t have to try to resist her.

I was really looking forward to being thoroughly seduced by her.

Unless she really was here to be saved. I wasn’t a hero, but I could play the role if necessary.

I wasn’t going to let anyone else play hero for her.