This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter novel Chapter 49

Chapter 49-Trying to Get Out

When he heard the door, his eyes came up slowly and landed like ice.

Finished

“Let me take her.” The bodyguard clocked the arm and measured his words carefully. “All right, sir?”

Toby didn’t move at all.

Worse than not moving, he was staring at the bodyguard with pure, unhidden hostility, as if the man had arrived personally to take something precious from him.

The bodyguard let two seconds pass. “Your arm isn’t working right now. Let me carry her.”

Toby’s lips pressed white. The war behind his eyes was visible, and the stubbornness holding it in place was

even more so.

He finally released her, a fraction at a time, his eyes tracking every single inch of the transfer with a glare that didn’t waver.

The boy looked exactly like someone who’d just had something essential stripped away by force.

The bodyguard had no immediate thoughts for a moment.

This kid is a genuine piece of work.

He wasn’t new to his employer’s volatility or his sudden, unreadable mood shifts.

But watching him react to being separated from his sister with this particular brand of raw, childlike aggression was something he hadn’t seen before.

Maybe it was a stress response to the incident.

That theory didn’t quite hold, though. Toby had been dealing with kidnapping attempts and credible hreats to his life since childhood. It was essentially a standard feature of his upbringing.

The Clark family had an unwritten rule.

At eight years old, each child got dropped onto a sealed-off island with hundreds of other children who’d been trained with the same lethal precision, and the rules were simple. Win, or don’t come back.

Toby had been the last one standing.

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Surviving that required more than just endurance. It required a kind of ruthlessness most people his age couldn’t have accessed even if they’d tried.

A shooting incident traumatizing someone else? Completely believable. His employer? Essentially out of the question.

The bodyguard landed on the only explanation that fit.

His employer was just, fundamentally, unhinged.

Maya, as it turned out, hadn’t come away from any of it with serious injuries.

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Finished

She was woken up, given a full physical assessment, and fully expected to be sent back to her mother. Instead, Toby brought het to the private villa where he was staying.

Out of everyone involved, Toby was the only one who’d actually gotten hurt. There’s a clean fracture in his

arm.

He hadn’t made a single sound about it the whole time.

Maya had always written him off as a pampered, soft boy who’d crumble under real pressure. Looking at him now, she had to revise that assessment entirely.

By the time his arm was properly set and treated, it was well past midnight. Maya was half-gone when she heard the door open again.

After a year of living alongside this particular brand of neurotic, she’d genuinely gotten used to him being

wake at hours that had no business existing.

She pulled the blanket up tighter and opened her eyes, watching him with quiet, careful attention.

He didn’t appear to have any intentions involving her specifically.

He just stood at the edge of the bed, looking at her for a moment, then dropping his gaze, then looking

gain.

The room was dim. The only light came from the small lamp on the nightstand, washing everything in something soft and indistinct.

Toby’s lashes cast shadows against the pallor of his skin. Whatever was moving through his mind, he wasn’t

haring any of it.

Maya accepted she’d probably never crack how his mind actually worked.

She used to figure he was just a love-starved masochist with something to prove.

Looking at him now, closed off and still in the low light, she had to admit she couldn’t read him at all.

He was free to stare if that’s what he wanted.

She needed sleep.

School was in the morning.

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୮

Maya pulled the blanket around herself and went back under without another thought.

Toby’s situation was considerably worse. The fracture produced pain that was constant and grinding. making real sleep completely out of reach, and he stayed exactly where he was, watching her in silence.

She slept like she had no concerns in the world whatsoever.

He noticed it, sharp and a little bitter.

There was absolutely nothing about her that gave any indication she’d smuggled a paring knife on her

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person and used it to stab a grown man only a few hours ago.

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Finished

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This Time, Be the Villain’s Favorite Daughter

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Finished

Chapter 49 Thinking

He stood at Maya’s bedside, thinking.

Beyond planning how to repay Thomas for what he’d done, another problem had settled in and refused to

leave.

Maya was afraid of Thomas.

Every movement of her body, every involuntary reaction, pointed to the same thing. She knew that man.

And whatever that man had done to her….

Toby’s face stayed completely neutral as the thought moved through

gh him.

Maya woke up the next afternoon, well past noon.

She walked through the villa looking for Toby and found no trace of him. He was probably somewhere resting from his injury.

The household staff here operated at an almost invisible level, never speaking to her without purpose and yet somehow always anticipating exactly what she needed.

The moment they noticed she was awake, someone appeared to show her to the bathroom and have everything she needed laid out, then vanished again before she could register the interaction.

It was exactly what she’d expect from old-money service.

Minimal presence, no intrusion, just a clean kind of distance that created no pressure.

After washing up, Maya pressed her lips together and walked over to the head of staff. “I want to go home. I want to see my parents.”

The man’s tone softened without any visible effort. “That’s not mine to decide, but you’re welcome to ask Mr. Clark yourself.”

Maya said nothing for a moment.

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Of course, Toby ran his household like something out of a period drama. She needed his permission just to leave.

“Can you just call him for me?”

“Of course.”

The man nodded with a quiet smile and turned to place the call. “Ms. Clark would like to go home”

Toby had come down with a fever by that same evening. His voice came through the phone thin and overheated, like even talking cost him something. “Fine. Let her

“Have the security team drive her home. They don’t need to come back after.”

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Chapter 49-Thinking

The line went quiet for two seconds, and then he added before hanging up. “Keep an eye on her.”

Finished

He had no interest in keeping her there. After the doctor cleared her with a full check and no notable injuries, she was allowed to leave after lunch.

Wendy had gotten the call in advance and was already waiting at the base of the apartment building. wound tight with anxiety.

The car had barely stopped moving when the woman broke into a run and pulled Maya into the tightest embrace she could manage the second the door opened.

The force of it nearly knocked the breath clean out of Maya.

“It’s a dangerous world out there. From now on, you stay with and nowhere else.”

Maya stood in silence for a moment.

“It was just a run of bad luck,” she said, and very carefully returned the hug.

She had a strong suspicion that proximity to Kaia was the actual source of her misfortune.

Several prominent figures from the business world had died in the incident, and the reverberations through elite circles were significant.

But the financial power behind Harmony International School kept it all contained, and no wave ever fully crested.

Thomas, the only wealthy man who’d walked out alive, had every reason to stay quiet about what had happened.

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