This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter novel Chapter 225

Chapter 225 Cold

Finished

At 17, lost and starved for connection, he’d treated that thin thread of goodness like an anchor. And he’d stubbornly refused to let gor

George had always been slow to learn. Smart, perceptive kids, when their parents told them the stove was hot, stayed away.

George was different. Even when Wendy told him the water would burn him, he’d reach out and touch it anyway. He had to feel the pain before the lesson landed.

It was the same with people. He didn’t know how to be good to someone. He could take any amount of abuse without getting angry, his emotions an empty room.

Only after he’d been truly hurt would the realization crawl in, slow and late. Oh. So that’s what pain feels like.

George walked outside.

Cold.

The street was impossibly quiet, as if it had been cleared in advance. Rehearsed. No one else in sight.

He heard it. A faint sound, something slicing through the air.

He didn’t have time to turn. A burst of heat along the side of his neck, and then the ground rushed up. He fell, turned his head, and saw a blinding spread of red. He understood that he was dying.

I left Maya behind.

The thought surfaced through the murk as his mind dimmed, already losing clarity. The base wasn’t safe. His teammates weren’t good people.

Maya was so small. Leaving her there, she could so easily die.

His vision darkened. A roaring filled his ears, and his consciousness was dragged down, inch by ineh, until there was nothing left to hear.

Maybe, in some corner he could no longer reach, something tugged at him. Something that felt like refusal. Like not wanting to let go.

He thought, Maya. What’s going to happen to Maya?

She’s still so little.

Liam stumbled out on unsteady legs.

He stood in the doorway and looked down at the blood on the ground. George lay curled there, motionless. Blood had spread beneath him in a dark, widening stain.

He suddenly remembered the first time they’d met. A convenience store on a street corner. A boy leaning

Chapter 225 Cold

Finished

against the wall, eating ice cream, eyes bright and bent into easy crescents. “Wanna be friends? I’d be a really good friend.”

Liam crouched down and buried his head in his hands. Tears leaked through his fingers and hit the

pavement.

Nothing in this world arrives at the right time. There’s no such thing as the perfect moment.

And Maya was no one’s savior.

She checked the location on her phone and walked out alone.

Cold. So cold it made her want to cry for no reason at all.

By the time she got there, her legs had gone weak beneath her. She stood and looked at what was in front of her.

George lay on the ground, his clothes soaked through with blood. The bleeding had mostly stopped. The pool beneath him had spread wide, its edges already turning black.

His eyes were closed. A thin layer of dust clung to his lashes.

Maya crouched down and touched his face.

It was cold.

Her hand rested on his cheek for a few seconds, then pulled away.

“Hey.” Her voice came out lost, directionless. “George.”

No answer. Of course there wouldn’t be.

She knelt beside him, her knees pressing into the hard, frigid ground. It hurt, but she didn’t move.

She looked at his face, remembering the way he smiled, eyes curving into arcs, carefree and thoughtless. Now he was still and silent and there was nothing left.

Maya didn’t cry. She still wasn’t used to solving anything with tears.

She didn’t know why, but she felt completely hollow. She just knelt there, blank and frozen, like a small statue someone had forgotten about.

This was her first time coming to see it in person. The death of someone she knew.

So cold. She couldn’t tell if it was the weather or if she just wasn’t wearing enough.

“George…” Her whole being felt emptied out. “Hey,”

Two figures stepped out of the shadows. They looked down at her the way you’d look at a small animal caught in a trap.

Chapter 225 Cold

“She’s calling him brother?”

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