Guns and Roses

Born a villain

Saint-Laurent

Power’s a hell of a thing.

In China, I sat across the table from a supplier who could bankroll a country’s war if he wanted to. He wore a suit that probably cost more than one of my houses, and still—he waited for me. That’s the level I’d reached. I’d replaced ghosts with gold, pain with property. The streets didn’t own me anymore. I owned them.

Five houses, twenty cars, three offshore accounts, one empire.

Ten thousand dollars every thirty minutes.

But none of that could shut her out of my head.

While they spoke Mandarin and talked routes and ports, my mind was 13,000 kilometers away, on her. Genevieve Taylor. My girl once. My mistake forever.

I saw her again in my mind, just as clearly as if she were sitting across from me in place of this supplier…brown skin glowing under the station lights, lips pursed in defiance, those dark eyes burning straight through me like I was some problem she needed to fix. She’d been wearing a trench coat over that short silk dress shirt, the skirt hugging her waist in that clean, professional way that made my heart pound for all the wrong reasons.

And when the chief of police ordered her to let me go… God.

The fire in her eyes?

She looked like she could’ve killed me and gotten away with it.

It was beautiful.

She didn’t even say anything when they unlocked the cuffs, just glared like her soul was screaming. I smirked, couldn’t help it. It wasn’t cocky. It was habit. That smirk was my last wall, the only way I knew how to survive the hurricane she always stirred in me.

Her full, heart-shaped lips were pressed tight, trembling with the rage of a woman who still felt. And damn it, that hurt more than anything else. Because I still felt too. And I hated myself for it.

The moment I walked out that station, I handled business. Got Jayce released. Quieted Rico Lanes before he decided to blow the truce sky-high. Moved numbers. Shifted weight. No mistakes. Everything went smooth.

Except my head.

It was still with her.

It was with her when I drove past the street where she used to live with her father. It was with her when I lay on silk sheets and ignored the models in my bed. It was with her when I pulled the trigger on a traitor and didn’t blink once.

And when I touched down from China, all I could think about was the way her hips moved when she walked away from me in that precinct, how that tan on her skin caught the light and made her glow like gold dipped in fire.

I wanted to kiss those lips. Bite them, even. I wanted to breathe her in like she was the last clean thing in my dirty life.

But she hated me.

And maybe she was right to.

Still, if fate gave me even half a chance.

I’d take it.

No hesitation.

——————————————————————-

Genevieve

I wasn’t in the mood for attention that morning.

The precinct felt unusually warm despite the chill in the air. The kind of heat that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with eyes. Everyone was watching me—smirking behind their desks, whispering over lukewarm coffee. I pushed through the stares and made my way toward my office, my boots hitting the floor like gunshots.

Then I saw them.

Flowers. A full bouquet. Deep red roses cut with dark purple lilies, elegant and wild all at once, sitting perfectly in a vase on my desk like they belonged there.

“What the hell…?”

A low murmur rippled through the hallway.

“Oh my God, who’s your secret admirer now?” Mariah giggled from the front desk.

Another colleague chimed in, “Detective Taylor’s got a lover!”

“Must be one hell of a man to send these.”

I ignored them all. My heart had already climbed into my throat. I moved toward the desk like the damn bouquet was a bomb and I needed to defuse it.

There was a card nestled between the petals. Clean, cream-colored, expensive paper. My fingers hesitated before pulling it free.

The handwriting was sharp. Familiar.

“I’m sorry I can’t be a hero for you. I was raised to be a villain. ~S.L.”

S.L.

Saint-Laurent.

Leo.

I blinked hard, willing the flush rising in my chest to cool down. But then I remembered.

Not the flowers. Not the card. Not his smirk or the jail cell or the sting in my palm from the day I slapped him.

No.

I remembered the period packet.

I had been seventeen, cramping, irritable, soaked through in the middle of school, and humiliated. I didn’t have anything on me. Nobody cared. Nobody helped.

Except Leo.

“Don’t act like I don’t know how to take care of my girl.” He had said one time.

My chest twisted.

That moment used to make me feel warm.

Now?

Now it made me sick.

Because that same boy, the one who’d once made me feel safe in a world that never had room for softness, had grown into a man I could barely recognize. A man who smiled when he was released for breaking into my house. A man who sold poison and carved power out of people’s misery. A man who haunted my career like a ghost I never asked to keep.

The warmth evaporated. Replaced with something colder. He thought this..these flowers, this message, would fix something. Would rewrite the past.

But I wasn’t seventeen anymore.

And I didn’t have the luxury of falling for pretty words wrapped in thorns.

I tore the card in half, tossed it in the trash, and shoved the vase to the farthest corner of my desk.

Let him send all the flowers in the world. It didn’t change what he was.

And it sure as hell didn’t change what I had to do.