The Villain (Boston Belles 2)

The door clicked shut behind the two men. Thunder rumbled, licking their shapes through the glass door in electric blue. They ran to a black Hummer parked across the street, slipping inside and gunning it back to the hellhole they came from.

I stumbled up the stairs to my sister’s apartment. I’d been staying with her since Paxton took off eight months ago. Shakily turning the key inside its hole, I pushed the door open.

I didn’t pay rent. Belle thought Pax stole all the money he and I had saved to buy a house when he ran away. That part wasn’t a lie. He did take our money. What she didn’t know was it wasn’t only that he spent my entire life’s savings in an underground casino—I was actually in debt because of him.

“Pers? Jeez, dude. There’s a thunderstorm outside.” Belle rubbed at her eyes, stretching on the couch. She wore a Fries Before Guys oversized shirt. A Korean drama danced across the flat TV screen, and a bag of peanut butter pretzels balanced on her flat stomach. A stab of jealousy pricked my chest as I watched her lying there. Trouble-free and relaxed.

She didn’t have to wonder if she would make it to next week alive without selling her body in a dingy Southie strip club.

She didn’t have her hand kissed, licked, and twisted by Colin Byrne, the scent of his cheap cologne lingering in her nostrils for days after each of his visits, making her stomach churn.

She didn’t toss and turn at night, wondering how to save herself from a gory death.

I hung my tattered windbreaker by the door. Emmabelle’s apartment was tiny but fashionable. A studio with hardwood flooring, trendy palm-tree wallpaper, deep green ceiling, and funky mismatched furniture. Everything she owned and wore dripped of her bold, sophisticated personality. We shared her twin bed.

“Sorry about that. Shannon’s parents went to a drive-in and must’ve gotten carried away. I didn’t even know drive-ins still existed. Did you?” I stepped out of my holed shoes at the entrance, concealing my despair with a smile.

Maybe I should admit defeat and do what Paxton did. Catch the next flight out of the States and disappear.

Only unlike Paxton, I was attached to the place where I grew up. I couldn’t imagine my life without my sister, my parents, my friends.

Paxton had been lonely. Orphaned at age three, he was raised by his grandmother Greta and various relatives. Tossed between houses whenever he got too difficult. That was what he told me when we first got together, and my heart went out to him.

“Drive-ins? Sure. Some of my favorite sexcapades happened at the Solano drive-in. But it’s been raining so hard, I doubt they could watch anything there. You really should’ve called me. I’d have picked you up. You know tonight is my night off.” She wiggled her toes under her throw.

Exactly. It was her night off. Who was I to take away the only free night she had for herself? She deserved to do exactly what she was doing. Binge on a TV show, junk food, and wear a discounted face mask from Ross.

“You already do too much for me.”

“That’s because that bastard, Pax, screwed you over. Remind me why you married him again?”

“Love?” Plopping down next to her on the mustard corduroy couch, I propped my chin on her shoulder with a sigh. “I thought I was respecting our pact.”

Once upon a time, when we were in college, Sailor, Emmabelle, Aisling, and I made a pact to only marry for love. Sailor was the first to keep her word. But she happened to fall for a man who worshipped the ground she walked upon, looked like a Hemsworth brother, and had enough money to start a new country.

I was the second in the gang to say I do. A few hasty kisses behind carefully trimmed bushes were all it took for me to make the biggest mistake of my life. Paxton Veitch was Colin’s previous Kaminski. A simple soldier who moonlighted as a security guy in the private sector. Paxton always maintained he was a bouncer at one of Colin’s bars. Said he was going to quit as soon as he found a more stable job.

Spoiler alert: he never looked for one. Not only did he love being a thug, but he also enjoyed losing the money Byrne paid him in his joints when he was off duty.

It wasn’t until I was too far gone that I found out Paxton wasn’t a bouncer. He broke hands, noses, and spines for a living, and had a police record thicker than Lord of the Rings. I’d never told Belle, Aisling, and Sailor that Pax was a low-grade mobster. They’d loved him almost as much as they loved Hunter, and I didn’t want to burst their bubble.