Page 26 of Villains Series

TWO DAYS AGO

THE ESQUIRE HOTEL

VICTOR stood in the bathroom and waited for the hotel to quiet around him. Beyond the door he heard Mitch lead Sydney back to bed, muttering an apology on his behalf. They should never have picked her up, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she would come in handy. She had secrets, and he planned to learn them. Still, he really hadn’t meant to hurt her. He prided himself on control, but for all his efforts, he hadn’t found a way to fully manage his power during sleep. Which is why he didn’t sleep, or at least, not much.

He ran cold water over his hands and face, waiting for the faint electrical buzz to stop. When it didn’t, he turned it inward, wincing as the humming vanished from the air around him and reappeared in his bones, his muscles. He clutched the granite counter as his body grounded the current, and several long moments later, the shudder passed, leaving Victor tired, but stable again.

He met his gaze in the mirror and began to unbutton his shirt, exposing the scars from the bullets of Eli’s gun one by one. He ran his fingers over them, touching the three spots where he’d been shot the way a man might cross himself. One tucked under his ribs, one above his heart, and one that had actually hit him in the back, but at close enough range that it passed right through. He’d memorized their position so that when he did see Eli, he could repay the gesture. Hell, if the bullets lodged, there was a chance Eli would heal around them. It gave Victor a modicum of pleasure to think of that.

Perhaps the wounds would have earned him some respect in prison, but by the time he’d integrated, they were long faded. Besides, Victor had found other ways of asserting himself at Wrighton, from the subtle discomfort inmates felt when they displeased him to the instant agony he used more sparingly, the kind of pain that left them gasping at his feet. But he didn’t only cause pain; Victor also took it away. He’d learned to gift painlessness, to trade it. Amazed by the lengths men would go to avoid any form of suffering, Victor had become a dealer in a drug only he could provide. Jail had, in some ways, been pleasant.

But even there Eli had haunted him, tarnished his enjoyment by clinging to his thoughts, whispering in his head, ruining his peace. And after ten years of waiting, it was Victor’s turn, to get into Eli’s head and do some ruining.

He rebuttoned his shirt, and the scars vanished again, from view but not from memory.