The Villainess Takes the Money and Runs

Tears scorched my face. "I love you ." I choked the words out, over and over. His hot breath scraped my ear. "You chase pretty faces, Maeve. You promised to marry me. No takebacks.

Want my money? Want my body? I don't care. You belong to me! You only leave over my dead body!" At ten, I caught gorgeous Valerian in the shower.

He instantly assumed I harbored a massive obsession. From that day forward, he left the bathroom door cracked open. We hit twenty, and I finally discovered the original script.

The plot demanded his fated soulmate swoop in and fix him. So, at twentyfive, I weaponized his sickness. I drained his bank accounts and bolted.

But I underestimated a desperate, unhinged man with zero left to lose. A total psychopath trapped me.

Chapter 1 Now, he was sobbing, demanding I take responsibility for our tangled sheets. A massive headache pulsed behind my temples. I knew he slipped something into my Coke.

I just didn't dare call him out. First, his mental state hung by a terrifyingly thin thread. Second, his knockoff drugs were pretty weak. I remained conscious.

I gave in because his ruined, beautiful face shattered my selfcontrol. I guess I was a little guilty of being a sucker for a pretty face.

Staring at his tearstreaked, postcoital flush, my defenses completely crumbled. I foolishly agreed to be his. We dated for years.

I was totally oblivious to the dark, calculated triumph buried deep in his eyes. Fast forward to recently. I developed a slight obsession with swiping through TikTok thirst traps.

He caught me. He spiraled. I sighed, trying to defuse the bomb. "Come on, baby. A guy with a dump truck like yours needs to learn how to share." But I forgot a crucial rule.

You cannot logic with obsession. The delicate, tragic curve of his eyes snapped into something violent. The usual hazy vulnerability in his gaze vanished.

A scorching, toxic glare replaced it. He snatched my brandnew iPhone right out of my grip. Without breaking eye contact, he chucked it over his shoulder.

Glass shattered against the hardwood. Before I could blink, he crashed against me. His mouth found the curve of my neck. Hot, jagged breaths scraped against my skin.

He licked a frantic path up to my jaw. I gritted my teeth. "Stop acting like a feral dog! You just destroyed my phone!

I haven't even owned it for two days!" Valerian let out a low, guttural hum. He lifted his head, his voice rough and wrecked. "So it broke. Go buy another one.

Isn't my card linked to your phone?" Silence stretched for a few heavy seconds. Then, a muffled pout. "I act nothing like Banjo. Besides…" He paused. A dark flush crept up his neck.

He forced the shameful words out. "You used to kiss me exactly like this. You claimed it built intimacy. Did you lie? I just want to crawl under your skin.

Does that make me a criminal?" He didn't wait for an answer. He buried his face right back into the crook of my neck, playing dead just like our golden retriever.

A second later, he tilted his head a fraction. One eye cracked open to gauge my reaction. I calmly closed my eyes. A vein throbbed at my temple.

Expressionless, I snapped my head to the side and clamped my teeth down on his cheek. Hard. I left a perfect ring of teeth marks on his pale flesh.

I hated his newly sharpened tongue. The weak, pitiful, silent Valerian from our childhood had mutated into a master manipulator who beat me at my own game. He stiffened.

His thick lashes fluttered wildly. A slow smirk curved his lips. A flush of deep red bloomed at the corners of his eyes. He lived for this kind of physical pain.

He smiled against my skin, letting his eyes drift shut. His features smoothed out into peaceful, deep slumber. But I knew the truth. He passed out again. Sickness consumed him.

His brain literally forgot how to sleep. The only way his body rested involved crashing into absolute unconsciousness.

On his worst nights, he went days without a single wink of sleep. His bloodshot eyes locked onto me until his body finally just gave out. The doctors offered zero solutions.

The severe psychological trauma literally broke his body down. No pills cured it. I let out a shaky breath. I lifted my hand, weaving my fingers through his dry, brittle hair.

It felt like dead straw—malnourished and yellowing at the ends. He lay unconscious, his breathing finally even. That angry, red bite mark on his cheek still stood out vibrantly.

I shifted closer, pulling his heavy head against my chest, and wrapped my arms tightly around him. Chapter 2 I clicked off the bedside lamp. Darkness swallowed the bedroom.

My throat constricted, forcing out a hoarse whisper. "Hold on a little longer, Valerian. Gemma steps onto the stage soon.

The universe practically handwrapped her to cure your wrecked life. This twisted script has put you through hell." I refused to play the tragic martyr.

A dry laugh scraped past my lips. "Let's get one thing straight. I keep the bank accounts. I dragged your halfdead body to the finish line.

I earned that payout." A faint, shuddering breath answered me. It hovered right by my ear—fragile, yet anchoring me completely. I slept dead to the world.

Morning sunlight hit the dining table. I watched him choke. His knuckles turned white as he gripped his own throat, desperately fighting the gag reflex. It didn't work.

He heaved everything right back into the trash bin, even throwing up bile. It shattered my heart to watch, but ten years of this exact scenario had left me paralyzed and numb.

Nothing I ever did worked. Yet Valerian worshipped my every word. I acted as his absolute lifeline. He choked down every bite I demanded, even as his stomach violently rejected it.

He just kept wasting away. He nearly flatlined in front of me more than once. Even passed out, his fingers locked around my wrist in a bruising death grip.

I stood as the solitary witness to his miserable existence. The ultrawealthy dynasty that spawned him didn't give a damn about a bastard heir. His mother died when he was ten.

She left him a massive trust fund and a permanent scarlet letter. His future looked like a black hole. Prep school kids took bribes to torment him.

When his goldenboy halfbrother discovered his existence, the violence escalated. That relentless psychological torture birthed this fractured, ruined version of Valerian.

I dragged this shattered porcelain doll home. I glued his pieces back together. I shielded him. It failed.

I couldn't fix him, and soon, someone else would drop from the sky just to snatch my broken boy away. Why? She would fix him with a single touch.

She would polish him into the most breathtaking, flawless man alive. Why? Because in this sick cosmic joke, I played the extra. They starred as the fated lovers.

So I deserved the dirt. I deserved the helpless panic. I deserved to lose him. My bleeding heart existed merely as a stepping stone for their perfect ending.

Expendable cannon fodder. My breath caught in my throat. A numb smile stretched across my face.

I stood up, walked perfectly straight into the kitchen, and grabbed a heavy chef's knife. I returned and slid the cold steel right against his carotid artery.

His frantic pulse hammered against the sharp edge. "Swallow it," I murmured, my voice dripping with toxic sweetness. "If you can't be fixed, just die.

Baby, do I get the trust fund when you flatline? Highend male escorts charge a premium these days.

Those TikTok thirst traps expect heavy tips if I want them in my bed." Valerian froze against the blade. The threat of my infidelity finally penetrated his twisted brain.

The agonizing panic drained right out of his eyes. In absolute silence, he picked up his fork. He swallowed every single bite. He didn't gag once.

It marked the largest meal he kept down since his sickness began. I tossed the knife onto the table with a clatter and leaned back in my chair. My mind raced.

Gemma would arrive tomorrow at the latest. But Valerian refused to step foot outside this house.

I seriously doubted his fated soulmate would just show up disguised as the meter reader. Chapter 3 A sudden, searing warmth brushed my knuckles. My cynical calculations stalled.

I glanced down. Valerian crouched still by my feet. He pressed his cheek into my palm, offering a pathetic, terrifying kind of surrender.

A devastating physical surrender that stripped my manipulative thoughts completely bare. "I'll be good," he rasped, his eyes completely wrecked. "Don't be angry.

You hate seeing me like this, I know. Please just stop being angry. You barely touch your own food.

It tears me apart." Violent, purple bruises from his own strangling fingers ringed his pale throat. He stared up at me, begging with every shallow breath.

Complete silence filled my lungs. A heavy thump broke the tension. Banjo crawled out of his crate, his tail thudding rhythmically.

The massive golden retriever shoved his thick flank right into Valerian, wedging him out of the way.

Banjo dropped his heavy chin onto my knee, working his puppydog eyes for all they possessed. Valerian's eyes darkened with venom. He slapped Banjo's hindquarters hard.

Banjo didn't even flinch. The dog just whipped his massive, broomlike tail right across Valerian's face. A raw, genuine laugh ripped out of my throat.

I buried my face in Banjo's golden fur, letting the suffocating dread of the plot completely evaporate. I couldn't rewrite destiny. But I refused to play the tragic, discarded ex.

If the universe wanted me miserable, I planned to become a spectacular, selfserving menace.

That night, I scorched through five gigabytes of cellular data swiping through shameless TikTok thirst traps. I chased the dopamine hit. Valerian hated it.

He hovered, radiating intense jealousy, practically begging for my attention with that desperate, pushandpull magnetism. I folded immediately.

I shoved him backward into the mattress and pinned his wrists. The raw friction of his chest heaving against mine wiped out my sanity. He whimpered.

A broken, gorgeous sound—one that put every single one of those TikTok guys to absolute shame. His skin burned against mine. I caught the harsh, jagged rhythm of his breathing.

The heavy swallow working his throat. His teeth scraped against my earlobe. "Maeve," he growled.

The sound vibrated as a ruined, gravelly scrape against my skin. "Who gave you permission to brutalize my milliondollar abs?" He bit down lightly. "Are you part dog?

You left an entire ring of bite marks on me." My pupils dilated. The sheer, suffocating possessiveness in his tone hit me.

I quoted the exact comment I left on that streamer's video just to throw it back in my face. I never predicted the fallout.

I never guessed that during the agonizing years we spent apart, Valerian would walk into a parlor and get every single past bite mark permanently tattooed onto his flesh.

A sick, beautiful obsession etched into his skin while he tore the world apart looking for me. My fingers brushed the soft wool of the scarf I just finished knitting.

Superstition claimed gifting a handmade scarf to a lover guaranteed a breakup. Perfect. I fully intended to vanish. "Valerian," I said softly. "Go to the market.

Buy me some fresh bellflowers. Check if they have any tart cherries, too. I've craved them all week." He nodded instantly.

He looked exactly like a pup from Paw Patrol on a highstakes rescue mission. He grabbed his keys and practically vibrated with eager energy as he walked out the door.

I stood frozen in the center of the living room. I stared at the empty space he just occupied.

My eyes drifted over every meticulously placed piece of furniture in our quiet, upstate New York cabin. We built this sanctuary by hand.

Last year, Valerian leveraged his ruthless instinct for music production and the stock market to amass an absolute fortune. Then, his mental state violently shattered.

We bought this remote property to hide from the world. We adopted a darkcoated golden retriever.

I specifically picked the biggest, most aggressivelooking puppy so the local strays wouldn't mess with him.

Ironically, Banjo reserved all his bullying specifically for a sickly, exhausted Valerian. But my timer hit zero. The selfaware, doomed extra needed to exit stage left.

I learned a brutal lesson a long time ago. You cannot force destiny to rewrite your ending. Chapter 4 I packed my entire life into two suitcases in under three hours.

The quiet cabin suddenly felt suffocating, holding years of memories I needed to leave behind. I had already crated a sleeping Banjo and shipped him off to JFK ahead of me.

I stood by the secondfloor bedroom window and shoved the sash up. A flash of red slowly magnified at the end of the driveway. Valerian stumbled through the front gate.

A girl followed right on his heels. She possessed that effortless, magnetic aura—the kind that naturally swallowed the spotlight.

Valerian leaned heavily against the fence, his chest heaving violently. "Maeve! I—I'm home. Where are you?

I need an orange." "I need an orange" acted as our absolute distress signal. A panic attack code.

Whenever his mind splintered and the hallucinations started bleeding in, the rambling got unpredictable.

We established the code so I could catch the drop before he completely crashed. He never made it up the walkway. His knees buckled against the gravel.

His knuckles turned stark white, maintaining a death grip on a crushed bouquet of bellflowers. That handmade red scarf hung in a chaotic, tangled mess around his throat.

The girl—Gemma—abandoned all hesitation.

She dropped to the dirt beside him, her hands steady as she checked his erratic pulse, acting exactly like the toptier psychology major she was.

She recognized the tremors of a severe psychological break. The plot gears locked into place. This precise encounter marked the turning point.

She offered the first legitimate lifeline in his endless war against clinical depression. She actually possessed the right tools to cure him. He would become her inaugural patient.

Her eventual lover. The financial and emotional anchor fueling her absolute success. I dragged this man to every elite psychiatrist from Manhattan to Zurich.

I bled myself dry keeping him breathing. I loved him until my own bones ached. She just walked up the driveway. She effortlessly transformed into his absolute cure.

A perfectly designed antidote. It sickened me to realize how expendable the universe considered my existence. Valerian, aren't you just a glutton for punishment?

A freezing numbness hijacked my nervous system. I brutally slaughtered the last remaining shred of affection I harbored for him.

I marched down the stairs and stepped out onto the porch. My eyes locked onto a repulsive scene. Valerian’s fingers clamped desperately around Gemma’s wrist.

He pressed his feverish forehead directly against the fabric of her sleeve in an act of sheer, religious devotion. Acid burned the back of my throat. Gemma snapped her head up.

Her eyes widened in flustered panic as she scrambled to explain. "Hi! I—I only followed him because I saw him swaying down the sidewalk. He looked completely out of it.

I just worried he might collapse on the asphalt. I swear I'm not some crazy stalker!" I refused to drop my gaze to the pathetic mess kneeling in the dirt.

I locked my jaw, stalking down the porch steps to close the distance. "Valerian? You know him by name? Then do you know who I am?" She didn't miss a single beat. "I'm Gemma.

I actually attended his piano recital at Carnegie Hall last year. I’ve always been a massive fan of his work. I recognized his profile on the street.

Otherwise, I would never just trail a stranger home." She hesitated, her gaze flicking between us. "As for you… I don't think we've met. Are you Maeve? Are you family?

He seems incredibly dependent on you." I gave a stiff, mechanical nod. My peripheral vision caught Valerian still desperately clutching her arm like a lifeline.

My ribs cracked under an invisible, crushing pressure. My lungs seized. I remained rooted to the concrete, refusing to let the physical agony show.

A sharp, hollow smirk sliced across my face. "Dependent? Actually, it looks like he depends a hell of a lot more on you." Chapter 5 A dark flush crept up Gemma's cheeks.

She darted flustered glances between Valerian and me. But her fingers remained locked around his arm. She didn't possess the slightest intention of letting go.

A heavy, exhausted breath left my lungs. When his mind fractured, Valerian turned highly unstable. He threw up relentlessly. He tore his own skin open.

If I looked away for a single second, he painted the floor in his own blood. Only familiar trust could breach his defensive perimeter and stabilize him.

It took me two agonizing years to earn that clearance. Yet here he leaned, completely blacked out, resting against a total stranger with absolute docility.

The universe really played favorites. The fated female lead pulled off in two minutes what took me twentyfour agonizing months.

Girls her age never learned how to mask their raw infatuation. The burning joy in her eyes practically screamed.

Her feelings ran miles past simple "admiration." They merely required a ticking clock to ignite. I understood the plot perfectly. But bitter resentment still clawed at my throat.

I closed the distance and dropped into a crouch. My fingers clamped over Valerian's freezing knuckles.

I brutally tried to pry his death grip off her sleeve. "Valerian, let go." My voice came out flat, entirely devoid of warmth. "I am Maeve. Don't grab the wrong person.

If you dare forget who I am, you're in dead trouble." A violent shudder ripped through his unconscious frame.

Even completely unmoored from reality, muscle memory dictated his absolute submission to my voice. His bruising grip instantly dissolved.

His icy fingers curled inward, desperately seeking the familiar warmth of my palm. "Maeve…" A broken, raspy whisper scraped past his lips. "Don't be… mad." Right beside me, Gemma's body locked up like solid ice.

I hauled him up roughly. I dragged him by the wrist toward the front door.

Stopping under the porch awning, I threw a glance over my shoulder. "Come inside and have some tea, Gemma." She gave a stiff nod and trailed behind us in utter silence.

The second we crossed the threshold, I unwound the red scarf from Valerian's neck. I aimed to toss it onto the leather sofa. But Valerian's arms snapped out.

Even blacked out, he violently snatched the knitted wool back. He collapsed heavily into the cushions. His eyes remained shut tight.

He buried his face into the red fabric, guarding it like a sheer lifeline. Gemma stepped into the living room. The overhead light hit Valerian's exposed throat.

She physically recoiled. Vicious, deeppurple strangulation marks ringed his pale skin. Her pupils dilated massively.

The sheer horror stole her voice completely. "His mental state crashed," I explained, my tone dangerously indifferent. "He choked himself.

I held a chef's knife against his carotid artery. That stopped him from doing permanent damage." Absolute, stunned silence consumed her.

The untouchable idol she worshipped lived in an active war zone. To her, my drastic methods screamed of abuse and neglect.

Factor in her Ivy League psychology background, and the savior complex practically wrote itself. The universe handed her the perfect tragic hero on a silver platter.

She possessed a cosmic duty to intervene. The panic in her gaze vanished. A burning, righteous determination replaced it.

She shifted her intense stare to me. "Maeve, I study clinical psychology. Please let me try." Her voice shook with desperate sincerity. "You saw it yourself.

He didn't reject my physical presence. A trauma patient's innate resistance acts as the biggest barrier to recovery. We have to try something.

He has too much brilliant potential to rot like this." A hollow, freezing smile stretched my lips.

I took a step back and swept my hand in an elegant gesture of invitation. "Be my guest.

If you can coax that red scarf out of his arms, get him to swallow the sedatives on the coffee table, and put him to sleep—I will officially hire you as his private therapist." Chapter 6 Gemma’s eyes practically glowed with pure, absolute triumph.

She moved toward Valerian. An eerie, unshakeable confidence guided her hands—as if the universe itself had whispered the cheat codes into her ear.

Her palm settled gently onto his shaking shoulder. Soft, rhythmic pats. Muffled, soothing whispers. I stood rooted to the hardwood.

A hollow, disembodied ghost forced to watch her own funeral. She reached for the handmade red scarf. Inch by agonizing inch, she slipped it from his grasp.

His knuckles didn't tighten. He didn't fight her. Two years. The thick wool vanished from his chest. The void triggered his survival instinct.

His fingers blindly sought out a new anchor. They locked securely around Gemma's sleeve. Three years.

Gemma picked up the heavy sedatives and the glass of water from the coffee table. She pressed them to his lips. He swallowed them. No gagging. No violent thrashing.

His fractured subconscious surrendered to a total stranger in seconds. Five years. It took me five agonizing, bloodsoaked years to earn that exact level of compliance.

She did it in five minutes. One accidental meeting, and he handed over his absolute psychological submission.

A hollow laugh ripped out of my throat, but my eyes immediately burned with tears. I couldn't stop it. Bile burned the back of my mouth. Vision blurred.

The polite, detached mask finally shattered. I lunged forward. I shoved past Gemma and drove my fist directly into the collar of Valerian's shirt.

Gemma shrieked, scrambling to grab my arm. Too late. My fingers locked dead around Valerian's throat. Blood pounded a deafening rhythm in my ears. I squeezed.

The frantic, erratic flutter of his carotid artery beat directly against my palm. His pathetic, fragile existence rested entirely in my hands.

Gemma slammed her weight against my shoulder, trying to shove me off. I didn't budge an inch. Right then, Valerian's heavy eyelids fluttered open.

His dazed, unfocused gaze locked onto my face. A slow smile curved his lips. He tilted his chin.

He deliberately pressed his pulse point deeper into my strangling grip, chasing the warmth of my palm. Then, he let his eyes slide shut, finally slipping into unconsciousness