Now he’s gazing at me like I’m his whole world.
My plan worked. The poison I used bound him to me. Not the candles—the lotion I’ve been slathering my skin with. It’s specially compounded to make him love me.
It should make me gleeful, knowing that I’ve got him under my spell.
It doesn’t. It makes me feel like shit. My stomach churns. I’m trying to hide it, but Kaiser is perceptive. He knows something is wrong. That I’m not happy.
It’s all a lie. His attention, his tenderness, is all because I made him feel this way.
He’s obsessed with me, just like I wanted him to be. But not because he actually likes me. The connection he feels with me is manufactured. It’s fake.
I thought I’d enjoy having the upper hand, but now that I have it, I hate it. It was better when he was really fighting me. At least then I knew what we had between us was real.
I tamed the beast, but it’s horrible. Like declawing a lion.
Why did I do this? I don’t want Kaiser to be like this. I want him to be… him. I want him surly and dangerous. Whatever he really feels for me—lust, distrust, even hate—I want it. I want it all. I’m greedy for him, the real him.
Because he was perfect in his own awful way. Evil and bad with a kill count greater than mine. Of all the people on Earth, he would be the one to accept my supervillain tendencies. To encourage them. If I hadn’t used the love potion, we could’ve had something real.
Now I’ll never know. We’ll never have a true connection, communion. He’s taken all my firsts, and I can’t even really be with him. Not while I’m still poisoning him.
How the mighty have fallen. He doesn’t know his obsession with me isn’t real; it’s manufactured by me. But I don’t want to be his captor or the villain in his story.
I want to be with him.
I wish we could have that.
But we can’t. It doesn’t matter if I can’t have Kaiser’s love. From the beginning, we’ve been locked in a struggle to fight for the upper hand. Now that I have it, I can’t throw it away. Not until I free myself and my father from this bogus alliance. I still need to figure out how to do that. I’m not just up against Kaiser, but the whole brotherhood. And then I need to figure out who framed my dad for Alfredo’s death and deal with the Vesuvios.
There’s no room for Kaiser in my life.
I wish it could be different. But it can’t. Kaiser made his choices. I made mine. We’ll always be enemies. Even though my body is sated by the orgasms he’s given me and we’ll sleep tonight in the same bed, we’re not on the same side.
“What’s wrong, Bella?” Kaiser asks.
He sounds so earnest, my heart aches. It’s on the tip of my tongue just to tell him.
Even if I wanted it to be different, what are my options? If I tell Kaiser what I’ve done, it won’t go well. Sure, he shook off my drugging him with the candles, but this is different. It’s so much worse. I’ve toyed with his emotions—him, a big, strong man who prides himself on winning every fight.
If I confess all my secrets, he’ll kill me. Not immediately. He’d confer with Fraternitas, and they’d figure out how to get my drug out of his system. I don’t know about mafia contracts, but what I’ve done is probably grounds to break the alliance. They’d send men to kill my father, and Kaiser would probably take his revenge on me. His loyalty to his brothers comes first.
Nothing’s changed. It doesn’t matter how sweetly he speaks to me, how softly he strokes my hair. I’m still his enemy, and he is mine.
He says he wants to figure me out, but I can’t let him. He can never know me the way he wants to.
What we have will always be fake. It hurts so much, like my own poison is burning me up from the inside. Worse, I can’t let the hurt show. I have to act like everything’s normal, like Kaiser’s love is real. My life, my father’s life, depends on it.
“Nothing,” I say, forcing a shadow of a smile to my face. "Nothing’s wrong.” I pretend to be tired and hide my face in the pillow. I’m so devastated, I can’t even cry.
This is the price of being a supervillain, and I have to pay it. For my pride’s sake. For my dad’s sake.
I never thought I’d share a bed, a home, a life with someone who loved me and still feel so alone.
The next few days are agony. I wish I could talk this out with my gal pals, but Raine is still locked up in her stepbrother’s castle.
Honey is willing to sit beside me in orientation class again, but she doesn’t have time to hang out afterward anymore.
Which is why, when Kaiser picks me up at university and says, “Your father wants to see you,” I’m relieved.
