“She’s at her cottage with her boyfriend.”
“What boyfriend?”
“It’s new, only a month or so. But she sounds smitten, maybe killing him will trigger her powers.”
“Is he one of the villains she works with?”
“Absolutely not. She was fucked up after Avalanche died, she wouldn’t go for another villain.”
Well, it turned out Avalanche wasn’t fucking dead. And the ice freak was her fucking boyfriend. He single handedly killed twenty-nine guys—without powers—then thirty-one more once he crossed the property line. Then Violet went on to take out another fourteen.
It would be a shame to kill that fight in her, but I needed her submissive—docile.
Because I, Christopher Anthony O’Neill, was going to rule the world.
And I was going to use Violet Olivia Hayes to do it.
42
THE VOLUNTEER
I wokeup with a pounding headache, strapped to a metal chair, hands and feet bound. It took me a few tries to blink the haze out of my vision enough to get a good look at my surroundings. I was in the centre of a dome shaped room—actually, I think I was in a cave, considering the walls were just black stone and lined with torches, not a single lightbulb in sight. The only hesitance I hadabout calling it a cave was the steel door with a keypad in the back left corner.
“Morning, Sunshine.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. This was a fucking nightmare, it had to be. Because that voice couldn’t be real. I couldnothave been kidnapped by Officer Fucking O’Neill. He absolutely couldnotbe the Big Bad I had been stressing about for months.
But when I opened my eyes, there he was, hovering in front of my face.
“All this time it’s been you?”
He grinned. “That’s right.”
“Why?”
I didn’t know what I was expecting to come out of his mouth, but it certainly wasn’t a twenty-minute misogynistic monologue about how I’d been promised to him as a child and how I was going to be his wife, help him rule the world, serve him for the rest of our days.
Holy fuck, the guy was batshit crazy.
I probably shouldn’t have laughed, given that I was tied to a chair, at the mercy of a psychopath, but whatever, my self-preservation had never been great. So I laughed and laughed and fucking laughed until I was coughing up a lung with tears streaming down my face.
He stared at me, bewilderment all over his face. “Why are you laughing?”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Why am I laughing? That’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard! You kidnapped me because you think you’re entitled to me based on a deal I have no information about, that was made twenty years ago. Dude, be so fucking for real right now. You sound stupid.”
His eyebrows knitted together. “You don’t seem to under?—”
“No.Youdon’t seem to understand.Iwillneverbe yours. I willnevermarry you. I willneverhelp you take over the world.And I willneverlove you. So, I propose you let me go, and we pretend like this never happened. I won’t report you, or tell any of my villains, and we go our separate ways.”
“No. Whether you like it or not, you’ll be mine. You don’t have a choice. We can do it the easy way, or you can be difficult. But I’ll get those powers unlocked and you’ll stand behind me while I turn this world into something to be proud of.”
“You’ll never make me your servant.”
He grabbed my chin and dug his fingers into me—all the confusion vanished from his expression as he got right in my face.
“Mark my fucking words, Violet. You’re going to be whatever I fucking want you to be. My wife, my whore, the mother of my children, or my fucking tool.You don’t have a fucking choice.”
Nausea coiled in my stomach. The fuck I would be. Even if I hadn’t already made my vows to Austin, I would never let fucking Officer O’Neill push me around like a puppet.
