Page 114 of Villainous Rise

Her eyes narrowed, though I caught something underneath the irritation, some flicker that said she’d already known this was coming. “And what exactly am I supposed to do while you play Villain for the cameras?”

“Just be there. I don’t want to waste a single minute away from you. Not today. Not when you’ve finally decided to love me.”

Annie held my gaze, and I let myself believe she was running the same calculation she’d already made the moment she chose to stay in my bed instead of running.

“I want to sit in front of those reporters and answer their mundane questions while knowing exactly where you are,” I said. “I want to look straight into the cameras and talk about destroying Havoc while his own Keeper stands ten feet away, wearing my marks under her clothes.”

“You’re serious.”

“Wear your mask. Hide in plain sight.” I cupped her face in my hands. “Let them look at me while I look at you.”

Her hand came up to cover mine, thumb stroking my knuckles.

“You could’ve asked, you know.”

“I could have. It wouldn’t have changed the answer.”

A short laugh escaped her, tired at the edges. “No. It wouldn’t have. But I’m choosing this. Not you deciding it for me.”

“Duly noted.” It didn’t matter whose choice it was, so long as she ended up exactly where I wanted her.

Something unfamiliar expanded in my chest. Normal people might call it happiness. I knew it as absolute victory. I had spent months trying to figure out how to make Annie mine and she had finally surrendered. I had finally broken down her walls, and now I got to keep her.

I pulled her down, my hand wrapping securely around the back of her neck to hold her exactly where she belonged.

CHAPTER 20

ANNIE

I scowled down at my phone, the message from Havoc burning into my retinas like I’d stared at the sun too long. The body count was now twenty-eight dead supers. All with the same mysterious symptoms, all from the same training cohort as Helios.

And still no response from Wraith.

I fired off my fourth message this week to the elusive tech genius. At this point, I was basically sending texts into the void.

Please respond. This is urgent.

Behind me, I heard Cipher’s voice, low and oddly melodic, as he continued his “conversation” with the League member he’d captured.

And by “conversation,” I mean a master class in creative threatening. Cipher had that special talent of making grown men cry without laying a finger on them and for the past hour, he had been picking apart the poor bastard’s bravado. The Villain, Inferno, had gone from cocky to whimpering in record time.

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

I’d been at Cipher’s side all day, his not-so-secret girlfriend. The mask covered my face but did nothing to hide the whispers that followed us like persistent shadows.

The first interviewer, a woman with cat-eye glasses and a perpetual smirk, had glanced between us with eyebrows climbing into her hairline. She’d opened her mouth, clearly ready to ask who exactly was I, but Cipher had shut it down before she could start.

“The interview is about my match with Havoc,” he’d said, voice deceptively soft. “Not about my personal life.”

She’d snapped her mouth shut.

We’d moved through a schedule packed with interviews and meetings until Cipher had stumbled upon Inferno. Now I was watching Cipher extract information from him about a potential League security breach.

Inferno whimpered something incoherent, drawing my attention back to the present.

“I already told you everything I know!”

Cipher’s laugh was cold. “No, you haven’t. But you will.”