Vengeful (Villains #2)(32)

“Good,” said Marcella. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten my keys.”

Ainsley nodded briskly and rounded the desk to summon the elevator. When the doors opened, he followed her inside. As it rose, she rubbed her forehead, as if simply tired, and asked the date.

The concierge told her, and Marcella stiffened.

She’d been in the hospital for almost two weeks.

But that didn’t matter, not now. What mattered was that it was a Friday night.

She knew exactly where Marcus would be.

The elevator stopped. Ainsley followed her out onto the fourteenth floor, unlocked the cream-colored door, and wished her a pleasant night.

Marcella waited until he was gone, then stepped inside and flicked on the lights.

“Honey, I’m home,” she cooed to the empty apartment. She should have felt something—a pang of sorrow, or regret—but there was only the ache in her skin and the rising tide of anger beneath, and when she reached for one of the wineglasses on the counter, it warped under her touch and turned to sand. A thousand grains rained down between Marcella’s glowing fingers, spilled onto the floor.

She stared down at her hand, the remains of the glass dusting her palm. The strange light was already sinking back beneath her skin, and when she reached for a fresh glass, it held under her touch.

A bottle of chardonnay sat chilling in the fridge, and Marcella poured herself a drink and flicked on the news—now eager to know what she’d missed—as she clicked the volume up and headed for the bedroom.

One of Marcus’s shirts lay thrown across the bed . . . along with one of her own. The glass in her hand threatened to give, so Marcella set it aside. The doors to the walk-in closet were thrown wide, Marcus’s dark suits lining one wall, while the rest was given over to a medley of couture dresses, blouses, heels.

Marcella glanced back at the clothes still twined in a lover’s embrace atop the bed and felt her anger rising like steam. Fingers glowing, she ran her hand along her husband’s side of the closet, and watched the garments fade and rot under her touch. Cotton, silk, and wool all withered and dropped from the hangers, crumbling by the time they hit the floor.

Hell hath no fury, she thought, dusting her palms.

Satisfied—no, not satisfied, nowhere near satisfied, but momentarily appeased—Marcella took up her drink and went into the luxury bathroom, where she set the glass on the rim of the marble sink and began to peel away the frumpy stolen clothes. She stripped until she was dressed in nothing but bandages. The sterile white wrappings weren’t nearly as seductive as the gold ribbons, but they seemed to trace the same path across her leg, her stomach, her arms.

Marking her. Mocking her.

Marcella’s hands twitched with the sudden urge to reach out and ruin something, anything. Instead she stood there and took in her reflection, every angle, every flaw, memorized it while she waited for the rage to pass—not vanish, no, simply retract, like a cat’s claws. If this new power was temporary, a thing with limits, she didn’t want to pass them. She needed her nails sharp.

The painkillers from the hospital were wearing off, and her head was ringing, so Marcella dug two Vicodin out of her emergency supply beneath the sink, washed them down with the last of the chardonnay, and went to get ready.





III





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.”