Page 93 of Villains Series

EIGHT YEARS AGO

UPTOWN

THE phone rang, and rang, and rang.

“Don’t answer it,”

said Marcus, pacing. A dark tie hung loose, unknotted, around his neck.

“Darling,”

said Marcella, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“You knew they’d call.”

He’d been on edge for days, weeks, waiting for the phone to ring. They both knew who it would be: Antony Edward Hutch, one of the four heads of the Merit crime syndicate, and Jack Riggins’s long-term benefactor.

Marcus had finally told her, of course, what his father did. How, for them, the word family wasn’t just about blood—it was a profession. He’d told her in their senior year of college, looked like death when he said it, and Marcella had realized, halfway through the meal, that he was trying to break up with her.

“Is it like joining the clergy?”

she’d asked, sipping her wine.

“Did you take a vow of celibacy?”

“What? No…”

he said, confused.

“Then why can’t we face it together?”

Marcus shook his head.

“I’m trying to protect you.”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that I can protect myself?”

“This isn’t like in the movies, Marcella. What my family does, it’s brutal, and bloody. In this world, in my world, people get hurt. They die.”

Marcella blinked. Set down her glass. Leaned in.

“People die in every world, Marcus. I’m not going anywhere.”

Two weeks later, he’d proposed.

Marcella adjusted the diamond on her finger as the phone stopped ringing.

A few seconds later, it started again.

“I’m not answering it.”

“So don’t.”

“I don’t have a choice,”

he snapped, running a hand through his sun-streaked hair.

Marcella rose to her feet and took his hand. “Huh,”

she said, holding it up between them.

“I don’t see any strings.”

Marcus pulled free.

“You don’t know what it’s like, having other people decide who you are, what you’re going to be.”

Marcella resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Of course she knew. People looked at her and assumed a whole lot. That a pretty face meant an empty head, that a girl like her was only after an easy life, that she would be satisfied with luxury, instead of power—as if you couldn’t want both.

Her own mother had told her to aim high, that she should never sell herself cheap. (The correct saying, of course, was short. As in, don’t sell yourself short.) But Marcella hadn’t sold herself cheap or short. She’d chosen Marcus Riggins. And he was going to choose this.

The phone rang on, and on.

“Take the call.”

“If I take the call,”

he said.

“I take the job. If I take the job, I’m in. There’s no getting back out.”

Marcella caught him by the shoulder, interrupting the pendulum of his movement. He faltered, drew up short as she wrapped her fingers around his silk tie, and pulled him toward her. Something flashed in Marcus’s eyes, anger, and fear, and violence, and Marcella knew that he could do this job, and do it well. Marcus wasn’t weak, wasn’t soft. He was simply stubborn. Which was why he needed her. Because where he saw a trap, she saw an opportunity.

“What do you want to be?”

asked Marcella. The same question he’d asked her the night they met. One Marcus himself had never answered.

Now he looked at her, his eyes dark.

“I want to be more.”

“Then be more. That,”

she said, turning his face toward the phone.

“is just a door. A way in.”

Her nails scraped against his cheek.

“You want to be more, Marcus? Prove it. Pick up the phone and walk through the goddamn door.”

The ringing stopped, and in the silence she could hear her quickening pulse, and his unsteady breath. The moment stretched taut, and then collapsed. They collided, Marcus kissing her, hard, and deep, one hand already sliding between her legs, the other dragging the nails from his cheek. He spun her around, bent her over the bed.

He was already hard.

She was already wet.

Marcella stifled a gasp of pleasure, triumph, as he pressed himself against her—into her—her fingers knotting in the sheets, her gaze drifting to the cell phone beside her on the bed.

And when it rang again, Marcus answered.