Villainous

by Brand, Kristen

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgments

  Note from the author

  Fight Crime Preview

  Villainous

  by

  Kristen Brand

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2015 Kristen Brand

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotations used in reviews.

  Editing Services by Holloway House

  Cover by AngstyG

  Chapter 1

  “It doesn’t look good” is pretty much the last thing you want to hear from your lawyer. Well, maybe not the absolute last. “They found the body” or “It was all caught on camera” would be worse, but my lawyer had still sounded grim when he’d called yesterday. It was why the two of us had been sitting in a waiting room at the state attorney’s office for the past half hour.

  You’d think I’d be the most nervous person in the room, but that honor went to the receptionist. Waves of anxiety rolled off her, and I had to block my telepathic senses to keep from sharing her cold sweat. She glanced at me, saw I was looking, and swung her head back to her computer screen so fast that she must have gotten whiplash. I wanted to tell her I didn’t bite, but… Well, let’s be honest. That wasn’t always true.

  The other two people in the waiting room were playing games on their phones, bored and blissfully ignorant of the danger the receptionist thought I posed. My lawyer had his phone out, too, but he was using it to watch a video of baby pandas going down a water slide. It would worry a client who didn’t know him well. I’d been flipping idly through a battered celebrity magazine for the past five minutes, but I should have passed the time on my phone like everyone else. Then I wouldn’t have turned the page and seen the article about me.

  Former Superhero White Knight Married to Arch-Enemy the Black Valentine. Ugh. It was a sexy story, sure, but it had broken two months ago. Hadn’t the media found something else to gossip about by now? There must be a pop starlet with boyfriend troubles who could steal the spotlight from me. Four years: that was how long I’d been out of the public eye, and I’d been married for three of them. I’d love to find whoever had leaked that fact to the press and murder them messily, but who was I kidding? Someone would tie me to the killing, and it would whip up even more of a media frenzy. Anyway, I hadn’t killed anyone in… How long had it been? Long enough for me to have forgotten, evidently. Someone should give me a gold star.

  A large photo of me covered the right page. It must have been taken over ten years ago, showing a woman in a copious amount of black leather who was—if I do say so myself—stunningly gorgeous. A lot about me hadn’t changed: the long black hair, hourglass figure, and a burn scar that started at my jawline, marred my cheek, and continued up my forehead. I’d traded in the leather boots and bulletproof corset from the photo for a dress suit, and I almost regretted it. Superheroes, security systems, and police barricades were much easier problems to handle than the one facing me today.

  “Valentina Belmonte.”

  A young man who must spend most of his free time working on his suntan called my name from the office door. My lawyer stood and eyed him like a fox looking at a particularly plump hen. That meant the man with the tan was the prosecutor. I swept past him into the hallway, putting on an air of unconcern. It wasn’t completely fake. My lawyer, the silver-tongued Mr. Charles Meinhart, had only failed to keep me out of prison once—which, considering the number of crimes I’d committed over the years, was an astronomically high success rate, believe me. I’d certainly recommend him (assuming you could afford him), but this time… This time, I wasn’t sure he’d be enough.

  The prosecutor introduced himself, but I ignored his mouth and scanned his mind. He was thinking this case could be the opportunity his career needed, which was nothing original, and that while he didn’t usually go for older women, he could make an exception for me—which was definitely nothing original. No signs he was taking bribes from organized crime members to push for a guilty verdict or was involved in any kind of government conspiracy, though. That was a nice surprise.

  He led us to a cramped office barely big enough for the extra chairs that had been set out in front of his desk for us. There was a shelf full of brightly-colored binders and heavy-looking books, a whiteboard with half-legible sentences that had resisted all efforts at erasure, and a beach-themed calendar on the wall that didn’t exactly tie the room together. More interesting than the decor was the woman standing in the corner with her arms crossed. Mid-forties, black, dressed in business slacks and a blouse with the sleeves rolled up, she wore a pair of odd glasses with lenses tinted electric blue.

  Her consciousness brushed up against mine before I attempted to scan her. A telepath. Probably worked for the DSA. The Department of Special Affairs had jurisdiction over crimes involving people with special abilities—people like me. I’d have to be careful.

  “This is Agent Nicole Lagarde,” said the prosecutor. “She’s here to make sure everything goes smoothly.”

  “To make sure I don’t mind-control you into dropping all charges and then telling me your bank account information, you mean,” I said.

  The prosecutor tugged at the collar of his shirt as he sat down. “That, too.”

  “I should protest,” said Charles as he sat down next to me and pulled a pad and pen from his briefcase, “on the grounds that she could read my mind and discover information falling under attorney-client privilege.” He glanced at me with a smirk. “But I’m confident my telepath is better than yours.”

  Oh, yes. Last time the DSA had arrested me, they’d been smart and sent five telepaths. Agent Lagarde had probably been one of them, in fact, given how few of us there were out in the world and not locked in padded cells. I wasn’t sure what she hoped to accomplish alone, but I kept my senses alert anyway.

  Agent Lagarde didn’t say anything. She didn’t grab a seat, either. So she was just going to loom in the corner and look intimidating, huh?

  The prosecutor cleared his throat. “I notice Mr. Del Toro is absent.”

  “My husband is in a lot of pain,” I said. “You know, from the injuries he got while saving the lives of hundreds of people. Great use of government funds to prosecute him for the laws he broke doing that, by the way. I’m sure the American people will be thrilled to hear about it.”

  “Laws apply to everyone. Mr. Del Toro doesn’t get a free pass because of his celebrity status. We’ll take his health into account when scheduling his arraignment.”

  Celebrity status. Like Dave had gotten famous from appearing in music videos instead of dedicating his life to saving stupid people like the prosecutor. I resisted the urge to drive my pointed heel into his foot under the desk. No need to start assaulting people. Not yet.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  It was too early to ask such a direct question. It knocked the prosecutor off balance, and his brows drew together as he searched for an answer.

  “Justice.”

  A beat of silence followed his impassioned declaration. Then I groaned. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

 
; Charles made a disgusted noise. “Honestly. Stop embarrassing yourself.”

  The prosecutor’s tan wasn’t dark enough to hide his blush. “I serve the law—”

  I waved my hand to cut him off. “If this goes to trial, it’ll be a shitstorm of bad publicity. And it’ll waste time and resources you could be using on real threats. The DSA’s new director is stupid, but he’s not that stupid. At least, I sincerely hope not. You want to make a deal. With me, obviously, otherwise you’d have insisted on my husband being here. So what do you want?”

  The prosecutor glanced at Agent Lagarde.

  “She’s not reading your mind,” the agent said.

  “I don’t need to,” I said. “It’s obvious.”

  Apparently, the prosecutor’s turn was done, because Agent Lagarde came over to do her looming up close and personal. “Have you ever heard of psyc?” she asked me.

  Those tinted lenses made it impossible to make exact eye contact with her, and her body language was practically mute. If only I could read her mind without her knowing, but it was too risky to try. Not until I knew how good she was.

  “Should I have?”

  “It’s a drug that gives people telepathy temporarily.”

  I tilted my head and grinned. “My, my. Are you and I becoming obsolete?”

  “It’s highly addictive and has a laundry list of nasty side effects that end with death, so no, I doubt it. It’s also in high demand, and most of it is coming into the country through South Florida. We think the Prophet King is responsible.”

  Ah. I saw where this was going.

  “You have a history with the Prophet King,” she said, and just then my phone buzzed. “We want to send you in with a wire. If you…”

  I dug my phone out of my purse. The text was from my daughter, Elisa.

  “Go on,” I told Agent Lagarde, not looking up.

  “If you can give us enough evidence to take down him and his crew, we’ll drop the charges against Mr. Del Toro,” she finished.

  Yeah, that was what I had expected. And Elisa had sent a similarly unsurprising text. She wanted me to pick her up early from school.

  I glanced at Charles to take the lead while I typed that I’d be there in half an hour.

  “This is a sad attempt to bully my client into protecting her husband from charges that won’t even stick,” he said.

  “They’ll stick,” said the prosecutor. “We have more than enough evidence to present the judge—”

  “If you think there’s a jury in the world that’ll convict White Knight, I’ll have to lower my opinion of you yet another peg.”

  The prosecutor bristled. “It’s not a popularity contest. It’s a trial. Mr. Del Toro broke out of DSA custody and assaulted federal agents. The amount of property damage alone—”

  The corners of my lips turned up. Yes, my darling husband was extremely good at property damage.

  I tuned out Charles and the prosecutor as they continued to debate. If Dave went to trial, it would be a media circus. I could practically see the news vans parked outside our house, the reporters swarming us on the courthouse steps, Elisa’s classmates hounding her for information at school. It would be terrible, but we could survive it. But if Dave got convicted… Elisa had been in elementary school when I’d spent two years in prison; I couldn’t put her through that again with her father. I wouldn’t put myself through it with my husband. The only prison in the country strong enough to hold White Knight was the Inferno, and I refused to let Dave spend even a minute in that hellhole. Especially not when it was my fault he’d been arrested in the first place.

  “Done,” I said.

  The prosecutor stopped midway through his argument. “Huh?”

  “Done,” I repeated as I stood up. “I’ll help you bring down the Prophet King, and you’ll drop the charges against Dave. Charles will let you know when he’s drawn up the agreement for you to sign. Now, I’ve got places to be, so if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Wait,” said Agent Lagarde before I reached the door. “We need to plan your meeting with the Prophet King.”

  I gave an over-dramatic sigh and turned around. “What’s to plan? I’ll call him, we’ll set up a dinner date, and I’ll keep you posted.”

  “I need to be involved in every step of the process. If something goes wrong and you get your head blown off, I have to be able to explain to my superiors exactly how and why it happened.”

  “I think we need to take a moment to appreciate how deep and touching your concern for my well-being is. Can we pause for a minute?”

  Agent Lagarde frowned, but not because I’d succeeded in annoying her. That just seemed to be her default expression. “You’re going undercover to get information from a super-powered crime lord. I’m not sending you in without protection.”

  “Protection? You mean agents who’ll get in the way and tip off the Prophet King that I’m working with you?”

  “It’s protocol. And he won’t know they’re there.”

  “You do know he can see the future, right?”

  Her voice remained calm and flat as it had throughout the entire conversation. “He can only predict threats to his life. He’s not all-knowing.”

  “You know that, do you? He must be so disappointed his secret has gotten out. Oh, fine, then. Hang on.”

  I dug my phone out of my purse yet again and dialed Jean-Baptiste Dupree, better known as the Prophet King.

  “Valentina,” he greeted. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” I’d put him on speaker phone for Agent Lagarde’s benefit, and the poor sound quality didn’t do justice to his low, smooth voice.

  “I need a favor,” I said.

  “You still owe me for my last favor.”

  “Oh? You mean when we met at that beachfront hotel, the DSA raided the place, and you ran off and left me to get arrested?”

  “The DSA was there for you. If anything, I should blame you for endangering me.” His tone was light and teasing, despite the fact that he was absolutely right.

  “I’ve already apologized for that. I sent you that nice wine basket, remember?”

  “I did enjoy it, the Pinot Blanc in particular.”

  “I picked it up last time I was in France. Listen, I just want to talk. Can we meet somewhere tomorrow?”

  “What would be the topic?”

  “You’ll just have to meet me and find out.”

  Jean-Baptiste didn’t answer immediately, and it occurred to me that I should possibly feel nervous. If he turned me down in front of my little audience, I was going to be embarrassed, and that wasn’t an emotion I handled well.

  “I suppose in exchange for the wine I could buy you a drink,” he said.

  Of course he didn’t turn me down. Nobody turned me down. We scheduled the date for six o'clock the next day, and when I hung up, I lifted my chin a fraction and gave Agent Lagarde a cocky smile.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That’ll do. Meet me here at four p.m. tomorrow.” She handed me her card with an address scrawled on the back. “We’ll set up your wire and go over the plan. If anything happens before then, call me.”

  And that was the end of that. As Charles and I rode the elevator to the ground floor, I sent Jean-Baptiste a text:

  Btw, DSA agents tagging along tomorrow.

  His reply came in less than twenty seconds.

  What have you gotten yourself into?

  I smiled. Tell you tomorrow.

  “So Agent Lagarde was frustratingly stoic,” I commented to Charles as we walked out of the building into the parking lot. “I didn’t get a single rise out of her. I never thought I’d say this, but I think I miss that Lee woman. She could trade barbs with the best of them. I suppose I’ll just have to try harder to be infuriating tomorrow. You don’t think I’m losing my touch, do you, Charles? Be honest.”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice surprisingly firm.

  “Was that answer in regard to my ability to annoy DSA agents? Because that was the question.”

/>   Charles stopped walking. “You caved too fast.”

  We were standing in the parking lot, the afternoon sun pounding onto the asphalt. Two weeks until Halloween, and the heat was still as strong as summer. This wasn’t where I’d have preferred to have this conversation, but then, I’d rather not have this conversation at all.

  “You’re the one who said it didn’t look good. And they made their demands pretty clear. I didn’t want to waste time.”

  If I hadn’t known Charles for years, he’d never get away with the look he was giving me now. “They wouldn’t have really gone through with it.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “And I’m not willing to risk it.”

  “You used to be better at calling people’s bluffs. Ten years ago, the only way you’d have taken a deal was if you got more out of it than they did. Unless working with them is part of your master plan. Do you have a master plan you’re not telling me about?”

  I refused to let myself look away from his pale eyes. “Not yet.”

  “You’re going soft in your old age.”

  “Old age? Excuse me, Mr. Just Turned Sixty. You’ve got a decade on me.”

  “I’m not old. I’m distinguished.”

  “And I’m going to bathe in the blood of virgins and be young and beautiful forever. So you worry about the paperwork and let me worry about the deal.”

  He ran a hand through his styled, white hair. “Just don’t get into any more trouble, hm?”

  He said his goodbyes and nodded at my driver, Eddy, who’d been watching our conversation with bored alertness from behind the tinted windshield of my car. Now Eddy was old. His tattoos were faded and wrinkled, and these days, his muscles were camouflaged by fat, but Charles wouldn’t dream of calling him soft. Maybe he was right about me. I’d been better at this when I was younger, but then it was easy to gamble when you had nothing to lose. I had a family to think of now.

  Speaking of family, I slid into the car and told Eddy to head to Elisa’s high school. I still had a daughter waiting to be picked up. And then I should probably tell my husband about all this.