“Welcome to the team.” Hannah greeted Elijah from the head of her dining room table. Her jet-black hair framed her pale face. She wasn’t in leather now, but she wore her other uniform. Khakis and a black polo with the silver logo of SecureTech Solutions, since she got called into the office today, she looked like hell. She crossed her arms over her chest as she surveyed our amazing villainess team assembled before her. The rest of us looked better tonight than we did early this morning when we let each other after breaking Elijah out of prison. It’s amazing what a bit of beauty rest can do.

Elijah smiled. “It’s nice to be back to what I love. This is so much better than brewing hooch in the prison toilet.”

“Hooch?” I raised an eyebrow. “Your taste was always more expensive than that.”

“Ahh, you know me well, Darling. I love a good glass of scotch and would never drink that poison I made. I brewed it to trade for favors.”

“Favors?” Madison’s giggly question made Natalie and Jasmine giggle, too. “What kind of favors?”

“Yeah.” Jasmine leaned in, giving Elijah the perfect view of her cleavage hanging out of the neckline of her teal scrubs. “Tell us about these favors. And I want all the details.”

Elijah’s eyes never glanced down. “Not what you’re hoping for. I traded hooch for loyalty, dirt on the superheroes, and other villain stuff.” He turned and looked right at me with a sneaky smile.

“Updates on me?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Okay, people,” Hannah chirped up. “We need to finalize the details of our plan to get rid of the superzeros once and for all.”

I took a deep breath and faced Elijah. “You eliminated Shadow Strike. How exactly did you do it?” I swallowed a lump as I prepared for all the gory details I didn’t want to know. I was starting to not see Elijah as a monster anymore, but knowing what exactly happened that night, nearly a year ago, would certainly remind me of my disgust towards him since he went to prison.

But maybe I needed that reality to keep my head on straight.

Elijah shrugged nonchalantly. “All the details are in the court records. And Ems, you were there at my trial. You all already know that I killed him with a ray gun.”

I cringed, imagining the evil look on Elijah’s face as he pulled that ray gun’s trigger. In my head, Elijah wasn’t even recognizable as my husband anymore.

“We read the court proceedings,” Hannah said. “You said that Doctor Quackery had blackmailed you to eliminate all four members of the Wonderful Wons. What was your master plan to do that? Obviously, Doctor Quackery had faith that you could pull it off.”

Elijah’s eyes had never left my face, and he must have noticed the sickness that was pulsing through my body. He spoke softly, like the other four women in the room disappeared and it was just the two of us. “There was no big master plan. All I knew was that I had to do everything in my power to keep you safe, Ems. I hope you can forgive me someday for that.”

He did it for me. My stomach further swirled. That guilt I had been trying to deal with resurfaced. Yes, I had guilt about sending Elijah to prison, but it was more than turning him in and testifying against him. It was because of me, he killed a man.

Early in my supervillain journey, I made the girls take a pact that we’d kill no one. That we could get revenge without resorting to violence. During our marriage, I had always thought Elijah held the same ethical code. Because once you crossed over to murder, you lost your humanity.

And he crossed the line. Had he lost his humanity?

Now, something twisted inside me under Elijah’s focused stare, like I should know some deep secret he was keeping. I replayed his words in my head. “You didn’t have a big master plan?” I chortled. “You were always scheming. There was always a plan.”

Elijah set his jaw, and a vein pulsed in his temple.

“So, you hunted Shadow Strike down and used a ray gun on him?” Hannah asked. “How did you find him?”

“He found me,” Elijah said. “I lured him out, then blasted him. He disintegrated to ash and was never seen again. This isn’t important—”

But I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. My head was focused on the image of Elijah using the weapon we had tested in our kitchen. “You killed Shadow Strike with the ray gun that never worked quite right?” I arched an eyebrow.

“Not that one in our house, but a different one. And it worked. Didn’t we blow up the cupcake and our kitchen table once upon a time?”

I nodded. “Yeah. They blew up…” But the pieces didn’t fit together. “Did the ray gun you used work exactly the same?”

Elijah tensed his jaw again and didn’t answer. There clearly was more to this story.

So, I pushed forward. “The police didn’t find any evidence or DNA… And nothing fried to ash.” My mouth dried. “You didn’t actually kill Shadow Strike. At least you didn’t blow him up with a ray gun.”

Elijah looked around the table while the vein in his temple continued to pulse. “Shadow Strike is gone. I did my part to free my wife. Any man in love would do the same thing to save the life of the woman they love. Maybe you all made a mistake breaking me out of prison. If you want my help to take down the Wonderful Wons, I’m happy to help. You all know my history with them and my desire to rid the world of their self-righteous attitudes. Plus, I really want to stick around and see my sexy wife wearing leather again. But the details of that day Emily was captured and my confrontation with Shadow Strike have to remain in the past.”

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Involuntarily, I was shaking my head. Why didn’t he want us to know the truth? Maybe I was reaching, or maybe it was wishful thinking, but I couldn’t let the thought go. “You didn’t use the ray gun… so… so I’m willing to bet that Shadow Strike isn’t dead, since the police never found a body. If he’s not dead, where did he go?” I tilted my chin at him.

He stared at me, then glanced at my team, then back at me. “Can we talk in private?”

Chapter 15–Yup and You Betcha

“You didn’t kill him!” My voice was ecstatic. “He’s still alive. I knew it. All this time…”

“Ems, stop. Please.” Elijah pleaded. “In private, please?”

I shook my head. “No. These are my girls. My team. They’ve been here to support me over the past year when I needed it the most. What I know, they know. Even if you would tell me in private, I’ll spill it all to them over our next glass of wine.”

“You won’t like what I have to say.” Elijah blew out a breath as he looked around the table to the five sets of eyes staring at him. “Fine. But this stays in this room. Okay?”

A round of yups and you betchas circled the room.

Elijah continued, “I knew Shadow Strike since we were both teens. He was my… friend back at WynGlo when Doctor Quackery took us from the orphanage for his experiments. Shadow Strike and I had both gone to a special school they named the School for Superheroes.”

“Wait… you were supposed to be a superhero?” I asked. He had never told me that part of his backstory.

“No. None of us were. It was just a name used to make us feel special. But it went to some of our heads, like the Wonderful Wons. Shadow Strike was the leader of our little band of teens with superpowers. The super quartet was supposed to be a super quintet, only I couldn’t stand the Thunderbolt. I went off on my own, but the public only saw me as the villain. The Thunderbolt made sure of that. So, I switched sides. Being a villain is so much more fun. At least, it would have been with Doctor Quackery out of the way. He had power over us all. Deep brainwashing shit.”

“So, you know all the Wonderful Wons secret identities?” Jasmine asked, leaning on the table again.

Elijah shook his head. “I only knew the boy behind Shadow Strike’s cape since we had been friends. Doctor Quackery never let us into school without our superhero costume disguises. And back then, we hadn’t made our civilian lives yet. We were only teens wearing masks.”

That lump in my throat grew. “I knew Doctor Quackery was evil, but this is a whole new level. He set you up to kill his own creation, your friend, to save me?”

“The doctor was bitter, since the superheroes turned against their creator. And me, I revolted too. Killing Shadow Strike wasn’t the option Doctor Quackery gave me. He wanted me to bring Shadow Strike in as a trade for you. And that’s why it took me so long to hunt you down and rescue you. I had to come up with a plan alongside Shadow Strike.”

“So, your plan was to fake Shadow Strike’s death.”

“And I couldn’t just kill him. I had to disintegrate him to nothing, so there would be a reason the body wasn’t around.” Elijah took a deep breath. “The point is that Shadow Strike was my friend, and I knew his secret identity. I simply used his secret identity to blackmail him into leaving town. He had a family and kids who I… threatened.”

My fellow villainesses exchanged skeptical glances.

“So, you didn’t actually kill him?” Hannah asked, her brow furrowed.

“Told ya!” I gloated, struggling to hold back a rush of excitement at confirmation of my hunch. “All this time and you didn’t actually kill him.”

“I blackmailed my friend. The only Wonderful Won that had my back. That was bad enough. But I had to convince everyone that I killed him, so Quackery didn’t retaliate. And to keep Shadow Strike and his family safe from Quackery and his henchmen in the future…” Elijah paused, then he let out an evil chuckle. “And, of course, a villain needs to protect his reputation. It’s better if everything thinks I’m ruthless.”

Hannah let out a sigh of relief. “Well, that’s a relief. I felt guilty allowing a murderer to go home to sleep on Emily’s couch.”

“Hey!” Jasmine said. “You were going to let him sleep on my couch?”

“I knew you could handle yourself.”

“And I couldn’t?” I huffed with a playful hand on my hip.

Hannah winked at me, and I knew it was all in good fun. “Anyway, we don’t need any murder on our hands. Blackmailing is one thing, but outright murder is a whole different level of evil. We need to put our heads together on our next step. This puts a little kink in our plan to break Elijah out of prison and have him tell us how to hunt down the Superzeros in order to expose their flaws. It turns out that he only figured out who Shadow Strike was because they had been childhood friends.”

“So, we don’t need him?” Madison giggled. “Emily took a bullet in her bum for nothing?”

“Don’t tell me that bullet was for nothing.” I laughed. “Elijah is still valuable, as he had superhero training, fake or not. He knows how they think.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Jasmine said. “That bullet wasn’t for nothing. You now have a war wound. Something to show off.”

“I guess. My butt was hot before, but now with a big scar? Nobody will be able to resist it.”

Elijah growled from beside me. “You better not show that off to anyone but me.”

My world stopped. “Possessive, are we?”

He cleared his throat. “A little. That’s why I’m sticking around to keep you out of trouble.”

“I’d like to argue that I only got this bullet wound because you were around.”

Elijah chuckled. “What was your line? Bygones? Besides, I loved your sister, too, and agree we need to make sure the public knows the truth.”

Jasmine interrupted our flirtatious chatter. “You two can take that back to your bedroom if you want to continue.”

And as always, Hannah brought us back to reality and focused on us. “We need to be smart about this. Our original plan still stays. We are going to discredit the heroes and show the citizens of Obsidian City that they cause harm, too. Like what they did to our loved ones. Exposing them just might take us a little longer without hijacking Elijah’s master plan.”

Natalie, a mischievous glint in her eye, chimed in. “So, we need to expose their secret identities. Elijah used Shadow Strike’s secret identity against him. Maybe that’s the first step. Then we could dig up some juice to discredit them in the eyes of the public.”

“Like maybe they have a secret love for crocheting?” Madison giggled.

“Or maybe they secretly attend karaoke night every week and sing off key?” Natalie added with a chuckle.

Hannah shook her head in disbelief. “You two are ridiculous. Let’s focus on finding something that will actually damage their reputation.”

I didn’t hear much of what the girls were saying. This past year, I had hated Elijah for the blood on his hands, but it turns out, his hands were mostly clean. I whispered towards my ex, “I testified against you…”

“You did. And it hurt.” His gaze pierced directly into my heart. “Now can we talk in private?”

I sucked in my bottom lip and all I could do was nod.