Kiss The Villain: A Dark MM Enemies to Lovers Romance
Kiss The Villain: Chapter 31

I wake to the sound of soft, mocking laughter, like a distant echo bouncing off the sterile white walls.

My head is heavy, my limbs bound in the tight grip of a straitjacket. I sit up on the white tiles, the cold digging into my bones. The room smells of suffocating antiseptic, the walls blurring in and out of focus as I try to figure out if I’m in my head.

No.

I’m here. In the real world.

Sitting on the floor. My pants are white, too, like the straitjacket.

The same straitjacket Grandpa tried everything to save me from—even hiding the truth from Dad.

I smile and my jaw hurts.

Ah, fuck. Looks like I’m not keeping my promise to him after all.

I’m sorry, Grandpa.

The laughter draws my attention, and I stare at the flicker of light. Projected images dance across the wall, crude and distorted at first, but then clearer.

That’s when I see them.

Kayden and her. Cassandra.

It’s a loop of videos. The first one is homemade, where she’s laughing, her voice soft as she films Kayden asleep, his face relaxed.

“Darling, wake up.” The camera zooms in on his lips as he stirs, and he smiles at her, a lazy, affectionate grin that’s all for her.

Only her.

My breath catches and I stand up, ignoring the throbbing pain in my chest, stomach, and face as my feet carry me closer to the wall as if I’m floating on air.

I can’t breathe.

My inhales are small wheezes, like I’m choking on the air.

But I keep watching. Video upon video of him hugging her at an event, her kissing him in public, both of them swaying to music.

Things I never had.

Will never have.

The videos go on and on and on, and I lift my hand to scratch her, but the straitjacket restricts me.

Binding me.

Forcing me to watch without acting.

Each image stabs me worse than a knife, tearing me apart.

And I can’t look away.

Or breathe.

I’m drowning in the rawness of their intimacy, the connection he never had with me.

Cassandra is the normal woman that fits him, and it’s something I’ll never be.

Normal. Or a woman.

Or a fit for him.

Because he loves her, and I’m only a vessel for revenge.

The laughter echoes again—this time, it’s not coming from the video, but from me.

I can’t stop the hollow sound as I hit my head against her. Cassandra. And the wall.

The louder she laughs, the harder I hit.

Again.

And again.

Until my vision is red, blood dripping down my lashes, over my nose, and into my mouth, but she won’t stop laughing.

And calling him darling.

And laughing.

And kissing.

And hugging.

And dancing.

Even as my blood drips on the ground at my feet, he’s still there.

Inside me.

In my head.

In that beating heart that wouldn’t purge him out.

And I can’t get him away from her, because she’s inside him and will always be inside him, and I can’t do anything about it.

Not like I did with Mr. Laurent or Harper.

I have this tendency to get too attached to people I like, too often, and in different ways. It’s not romantic or anything, I don’t think.

It’s my brain’s way of prioritizing people in my life.

Like Dad. He’s my role model, the person I’ve always wanted to be like. I studied law because he’s a lawyer. I dress like him and even adapted his manner of speech. He truly fascinates me. He’s the normal version of me that I strive to be, so when he started dividing his attention between me and Kill, I wanted to remove the hazard—Killian. But I didn’t, because that would make Dad sad.

Besides, at the time, I had Kayden, who muted my destructive thoughts and even reminded me that he’s both my and Killian’s dad, so sharing wouldn’t kill me.

That was okay, I guess. Maybe because I’m older now, so I have more self-control. Besides, Kill is also one of my things, so it’s not like I would hurt him consciously.

Mr. Laurent was also one of those people I thought belonged to me. I was attached to him and I liked him. He was smart and well-read and had a beautiful French accent. I liked listening to him talk and being in his company.

Not in a romantic way, but like with Dad, I respected him. A lot.

But when I found out he’d used me, I wanted to get rid of what took away what was mine—him. As Aunt Rai hugged me after I saw his dead eyes, I pushed her away. She thought I was in shock and wanted Mom, but, truly, I was a little mad that she was the one who got rid of what was mine.

I wanted to do it myself. Carve his eyes out with my own hands.

Those thoughts were ten times worse with Harper.

She was my one serious girlfriend. We started going out at fifteen. She had a crush on me for a while, so I agreed to go out with her because of her eyes.

I don’t know how to describe it, but she had these very sad eyes, almost lifeless, and I wanted to know the story behind them. Harper was super popular in our high school, but no one seemed to see beyond that image.

She had a façade like me and I saw through it. I saw how she flinched around men who had loud voices. How she secretly went to the bathroom to throw up her lunch.

But for some reason, she always said she liked my voice, because it was mellow and made her feel safe.

Me? Making someone feel safe?

Me, who pictured shooting people with my arrows whenever I went hunting with Dad?

She was clearly a bad judge of character, poor Harper. But I liked her personality, mostly because it was so different from mine. Where I feigned happiness, she was always smiling and laughing, making everyone feel safe and welcome. She volunteered at charities and stood up to bullies and was genuinely a good person.

Too good, actually. I suspected she cried herself to sleep, and she did.

Because Harper’s life that looked perfect on paper was, in reality, a living hell.

After a three-year battle, her mom died of cancer when Harper was ten, and after that, she was brought up by her dad, David—a local Pilates coach who everyone adored.

Once Harper had a panic attack when she was kissing me in the locker room after a football game. She was hyperventilating badly and kind of threw up on me.

I helped her clean up and she burst out everything in a heap of tears. Her dad had been sexually assaulting her for years, since her mother’s death, and told her she was her mother’s replacement and that it was her duty to satisfy him. In fact, he started in the final months of her mom’s life, when she was too out of it to notice anything, let alone protect her.

Harper said she tried to talk to one of her neighbors, but they said that was impossible. They said David was such a good guy, and Harper was just a troubled teenager who wanted attention.

Harper was ugly crying and choking as she talked. She kept hugging me but also looking like she was about to be sick again. She wanted affection. Craved it, even. But the male touch disturbed her, and she hated that she couldn’t have sex with me because it would only remind her of David.

So I promised to talk to my mom and dad and get her help

She smiled and told me I was the best thing that had happened in her life. I asked her to come spend the night with me, no pressure, and said I definitely wouldn’t fuck her. She could stay with my mom if she wanted.

I simply didn’t want her in David’s vicinity anymore.

But she shook her head and kissed me, this time without hyperventilating. Then she hugged me close, telling me how much she loved me.

The next day, Harper was found dead in the bathtub after cutting her wrists open.

She killed herself.

Because of her father.

I watched with a tilted head as David cried at her funeral. He looked so sad and pitiful, as if he wasn’t the razor that had slashed Harper’s wrists.

Everyone showered him with sympathy, hugging him and calling him a saint for surviving both his wife’s and daughter’s deaths.

He touched Harper’s cheek in the casket, patting her cold skin, and I had to stop myself from cutting his hand off.

But it was at that moment that I decided he’d die.

Because he took Harper away from me.

Because he should’ve been in that casket, not her.

I spent a few weeks planning his death, taking my time to learn his habits.

Like with hunting, you have to be patient with your prey and wait until all the circumstances are aligned.

Then, one night, I slipped into his house unnoticed. I planned to spike his wine that he drank every Tuesday and Thursday with his bath.

The undetectable sleeping powder would make him fall asleep and drown.

A freak accident.

It wasn’t violent enough for my taste, but it was more methodical.

But then I heard his obscene groaning sounds.

So I grabbed a kitchen knife and went upstairs.

I stood in the darkness as I watched David fucking the sheets on Harper’s bed and moaning her name as he thrust his hips between the pillows.

I snapped, I think, because the next moment, I was behind him and I’d slit his throat. Then he turned around and I stabbed him in the chest and his dick.

My palm held his face on the bed as I stabbed and stabbed until he was lifeless, unmoving, just a pile of blood and shocked, lifeless eyes. Then I cut off his dick and stuffed it in his mouth.

I looked at him and felt nothing.

But I wanted to see Harper and tell her it was over now. She could rest in peace.

If there’s a Heaven, she better get access.

I cursed myself for not killing him earlier, actually. When Harper was ten.

Killing a man in cold blood made me feel nothing, but I was still left with a bloody crime scene. So I called Grandpa.

I needed a lawyer, and I didn’t want to wake Dad up.

Grandpa came straight away and found me sitting in the corner staring at the blood on the knife. He immediately understood the situation. He didn’t scold or even blame me. He just made a few calls and said he’d bury the whole thing.

Even before I told him Harper’s story.

He took me home, to his house, made me shower, and gave me a bowl of strawberries that I finished in record time.

I was hungry, or maybe empty, ravenous, gluttonous.

Since then, strawberries have become my comfort food, what I eat instead of fantasizing about blood. I told Grandpa about Harper and what David had done and that I didn’t regret it.

Not one bit.

My only regret was not doing it sooner.

I don’t even feel guilty that I’m the reason a man was erased from the face of the earth.

Grandpa just sat across from me and listened, his eyes flashing with both understanding and faint sadness.

“Why didn’t you turn me in, Grandpa?” I asked.

“Because you’re my grandson.”

“That’s all?”

“I don’t need another reason.”

“Will you tell Dad?”

“No, he’s not as fluid as me. He’ll have you diagnosed like Kill, and we all know what a shitshow that’ll be.”

“Oh. You already knew?”

“That both my grandsons are special?” He smiled and nodded.

“Is it good to be special?”

He ruffled my hair. “Of course. You’re strong and unlike any of these fools roaming the earth. My daughter was like you and I lost her. So I’m not losing any of you again. I’ll protect you from a world that doesn’t understand you.”

“Even if I kill people and feel nothing?”

“If they deserve to die, I don’t see why not.” He stood up and clutched my shoulders. “But you need to rein it in, son. Don’t get attached to the point of obsessing and then fixate about killing. I think that’s your trigger, so avoid getting too attached at all costs. You can never get caught, Gareth. None of them will understand.”

“Why not?”

“Because people like you are treated like animals. They’re abused and poked with needles. They’re probed and violated and eventually put on death row. Promise me you’ll never get caught, son.”

“I promise.”

Obviously, I failed my grandpa.

Not only did I become attached and obsess worse than all the other times, but I also got caught.

I let Kayden flow in my bloodstream, and I can’t remove all the blood. No matter how much I hit my head.

And Cassandra won’t stop laughing.

Mocking me.

And my inability to remove the obstacle.

Maybe because this time, the obstacle is me.