Page 56 of Beautiful Villain
CHAPTER 20
lev
Her skin is slightly flushed and warm from the sun. Absently I wonder if Vik remembered to tell her to apply sun cream, and I open my mouth to ask just as he pulls her into him, dips his head to hers and kisses her.
Bracing, I wait for her to push him away. To scream and yell and possibly punch him, but instead she stills, then she kisses him back. It’s only for a moment. It’s only the tiniest hint of compliance, but she kisses him and for the third time today my dick goes rock fucking hard.
Vik pulls back almost immediately, keeping their kiss brief, but from the smug look on his face, he just won whatever war he was fighting with her. Smiling, he arches his brow at me, then turns and leaves, humming merrily as he walks away.
Taking out my cell, I drop Roza a text in the group chat we have, asking her to bring us a jug of water and some beers out to the patio. Usually, I’d go and fetch them myself, but after Tanya’s little scene earlier, I had to have a very awkward conversation with the girl I’ve known her whole life and explain that we all love her like family, but that we don’t and never will see her as anything more than a cute baby cousin.
Honestly, I’m not sure she heard a word I said and it was clear her mother agreed, because she came to me afterward and said she’d keep Tanya busy in other parts of the house and away from Alabama for a while.
“What do you think of our island?” I ask, gesturing for Ali to sit down on the patio couch, wincing for her when she carefully lowers herself to the seat. After the way Vik whaled on her ass earlier, I’m impressed she can move at all. I can’t deny that watching my brother spank her was fucking sexy. It was. But now that we’re not in the moment, I feel regretful that we stood by and let Vik hurt her again.
When I spoke to Dimi about it, he assured me that this was the perfect solution, but I’m reserving judgment for the moment. As far as I can see, hurting her will only make her hate us more, when we should be wooing her and making her want to stay.
“It’s beautiful here. Although I don’t have anything to compare it to, I’ve never seen the sea or a beach before,” she confesses.
“You haven’t? But Savannah is a gorgeous coastal town, and it’s not too far from Columbus. You never visited?”
“Nope.” She shakes her head. “I grew up in a backwater town about four hours from Columbus. Until the day my aunt handed me a bus ticket, I’d never left the town limits. Although I guess you probably already know that.”
I shrug, not denying it, because we know almost everything about her childhood and obviously every single detail from the last year. But the year she was missing, that year is a mystery. Or it was until she admitted that she’d spent the time predominantly homeless.
“Did you ever dream of traveling?” I ask, hoping to steer the conversation in an easier direction.
“Honestly, not really. Until Darla gave me that bus ticket, I’d assumed I’d just finish high school and get a job in town or something. Mom and I used to talk about seeing the ocean, but then she’d get high and forget all about it.” When she laughs, the sound is bitter and almost self-deprecating.
“Paradise isn’t the worst place to live though, is it?” I ask.
“I guess not,” she says, shrugging, then falling silent when Roza appears with our drinks.
“Thank you,” I say, lifting the jug of water and filling our glasses, before handing one to Alabama.
Drinking it greedily, she empties the glass, placing it back down on the table.
“Another?” I ask.
“Please.”
I fill it again and she drinks half of it, then holds the glass in her hands, staring around her at the huge pool. “Why did you decide to live out here? Obviously, it’s beautiful, but aren’t you bored being out here alone, with only each other for company?”
Inhaling, I take a moment to think about how to answer. “We were only teenagers when the three of us decided that we wouldn’t let thoughts of revenge control our lives. All of us were intelligent, raised by parents who considered anything less than exceptional as failure, so we applied to American colleges. Vik went to MIT, Dimi to Harvard, and I went to Yale. After we’d graduated and Dimi passed the bar, we started our first company. Once it was successful, we sold it and started another. When that succeeded, we sold that one and started over again. After a while constant success got boring, so we sold our most successful company for billions and bought this island.”
Her eyes are wide, like she’s grudgingly impressed. Everything I’m telling her is the truth, it’s just not all the truth. I doubt she’d be scared to hear that we paid our way through school by running drugs, fighting for money and thoroughly embracing our Mafia roots. Or that the seed money to start our very first company came from a contract to take out a gang leader. We’ve already confessed to killing her father and admitted we plan to eradicate Orlov and the rest of the founding Bratva families. But I don’t want to remind her of our crimes, I want to paint us as ruthless businessmen, not dangerous criminals.
“But why isolate yourselves here, alone? Surely three attractive, young billionaires would have the pick of models, actresses and heiresses. So why are you all single? Are you all single?”
“We were waiting for you,” I tell her simply, and even though we weren’t acting like monks, it’s true, no other woman before her has ever captured our attention like she has.
Rolling her eyes, she scoffs, turning away. “I bet you tell all your kidnap victims the exact same thing.”
I laugh. “Of course we do, it’s in the Idiot’s Guide to Kidnapping. Chapter one, victim flattery.”
Her smile is soft and her laugh barely audible, but it’s there and I see it. “We’re not recluses, we’ve dated, but never seriously. I think early on we knew we’d prefer to share one woman between the three of us, but we never found the right woman, until you. Seeing you, we knew in an instant it was always meant to be you.”
“Why share?” she asks, sounding genuinely curious.