Silvertongue

The Federal Bureau of International Superhuman Relations had booked supervillain Raphael Montoya on tax evasion.

Tax fucking evasion.

He didn’t even earn a taxable goddamn income, so he didn’t know how they had booked him on that. Granted, financials weren’t his strong suit, so he had an accountant for… oh shit.

Goddamn Ryan from H&R Block.

So yeah, he was being led into the Bureau on tax evasion. He had been blindfolded because apparently the agents dragging him through Bureau headquarters didn’t want him to hypnotize them into letting him go. Pussies. All of them.

To top this shitty morning off, the handcuffs around his wrists were suffocatingly tight. Like tight to the point that his hands had gone numb after stinging excruciatingly for the hour and a half ride to the Bureau. He was sure his hands would be black and purple by the time they finally took off the cuffs—if they ever took them off.

Fuck. What was he going to do about Georgie? He’d found a black kitten three years ago in the bushes by his condo, and the cat had separation anxiety. When Raphael went on jobs (which was a rare occurrence these days), he booked Georgie a stay in a pet hotel. The cat was probably losing his mind if the Bureau agents hadn’t let him out… or worse. If they had touched his goddamn cat, he swore to God he’d—

“Oh Jesus,” someone said. A woman, most likely, by the higher timber of her voice, but it wasn’t nasally or whiny. “What’s your name? Yeah, you.”

The agent gripping Raphael’s elbow like a vice answered gruffly as if his manhood was being challenged, “What? Me? Uh, Gary. It’s Gary.”

“Great,” the woman said. She sounded younger, maybe in her twenties or early thirties. “Gary, loosen your charge’s cuffs. They’re too tight.”

Raphael felt Gary’s calloused hand constrict around his elbow. “What? Ma’am, I can’t do that.”

“You can. I don’t care if he’s max-threat, loosen those cuffs. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen if he has to have his hands amputated by the doctor on staff.”

Raphael cocked an eyebrow and leaned his head back slightly. The hell was this woman doing? He was Raphael Montoya, a supervillain the world called Silvertongue, and here was this Bureau bitch demanding a gaggle of federal agents loosen his handcuffs. Sure, his hands were numb, but shit, she was just being dramatic. There was no way he would need his hands amputated. And if he did? If he came out of this fucking ordeal with no goddamn fingers to pull the trigger of his beloved M24, he’d sue the shit out of the Bureau and the rest of the United States government.

“Shit, my hands that bad, doll?” Raphael drawled, his nonchalance a languid cover for the panic clawing at his chest. “Or are you just jealous you ain’t the one holding them?”

“Shut up,” Gary growled at him.

Raphael smirked, but he wanted to headbutt Gary in the goddamn face. Fucking Bureau brute.

The woman took a deep breath, sounding as if her patience was quickly waning. “Gary, loosen the goddamn cuffs,” she said, her voice sharp.

Tension crackled like static before a summer storm, and Raphael wished he didn’t have that damn blindfold over his eyes. He wanted to see their faces. Wanted to sow some discord and dig his claws into the soft underbelly of the Bureau.

His cuffs clicked. Loosened. Blood rushed into his hands, stinging like fire ants. He tensed for a moment as if unsure what had happened. Some random Bureau woman had stood up for him and won, and Gary was a big man: tall, bald, nearing three hundred pounds of roid muscle.

Shit. That was an unexpected turn of events.

“Thank you, Gary,” the woman said, her voice a tad softer now though not without a dash of condescension.

He listened to her oddly quiet footsteps as she walked away, and as Gary shoved him forward, he felt strange. His hands ached, and when he flexed his fingers, a sensation not unlike a cool breeze on a hot summer day settled over his body. But there was no breeze nor boiling hot sun in the Bureau hallway. Just the woman’s fading footsteps, the darkness of the blindfold, his tingling hands, and Gary’s vicelike grip on his elbow as they marched him toward his holding cell.

About five hours later, Raphael sat in a cinderblock room with two metal chairs and a metal table. A one-way mirror gleamed to his left, and he glanced at himself, noting how mussed his hair was from being rudely awoken from his beauty sleep at ten in the morning by Bureau agents knocking down his penthouse door. He was still handcuffed, but they’d taken the blindfold off of him without an explanation when they’d shoved him in here. He reached up and ran his hand through his hair, a small nagging voice in the back of his head telling him how vain he was. He was supposed to be vain. He was a supervillain, at least according to the United States government.

Funny. You dropkick some C-list superhero once, and suddenly, you get pegged as an “enemy of the people.” Fucking bullshit, that was what it was.

He sighed heavily. Dammit, how was he going to get out of here? Georgie was probably freaking out if he was even still in the penthouse. He hated thinking of a damn cat as his only family, but the truth hurt sometimes. It definitely hurt now like a sucker punch to the ribs.

For just a second, Raphael let his eyes slide shut. Rest still felt like a luxury even after all these years. How long had it been since the last morning that changed his life? Six years?

He still remembered the feeling of warm then lukewarm then cold blood on his hands as dawn broke through the jaundiced apartment window. How he’d relished in dissolving the body Breaking Bad style. He didn’t have it in him to feel guilty for that one, not really. The sadness had never really gone away, the longing for a love that had never been, and what a fucked-up love it had been.

The door to the cinderblock room opened.

Raphael’s eyes snapped open, and he tilted his head up. Those foosteps… shit, fate had to be kidding.

He swept his eyes over the woman who slipped in the door. She was decently tall in the black sneakers she wore, and her deep brown hair was pulled back into a frizzy ponytail. She wore slacks and a black shirt inundated with cat hair she hadn’t bothered to lintroll, and Raphael found himself weirdly charmed by that. She was one of those women with thick thighs, a fat ass, a decent rack, and stupidly adorable chubby cheeks. Oh Jesus, she was cute-hot. Sexy enough to grab by her squishy hips and fuck senseless but cute enough to want to do girly shit with like plaster on face masks and slug down a few bottles of wine.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said as she shut the door, throwing his arm over the back of his chair and painting on a gilded smile. “Just so we’re clear, I’m a masochist with mommy issues, so you’d better start hardcore if you want anything more from me than a hard-on.”

The woman set her digital tablet down and raised an eyebrow. She glanced at the one-way mirror and then back at him before crossing her arms over her ample chest. Raphael’s grin morphed into a smirk.

“I’m a psychologist,” she said, “not some sadist from Guantanamo Bay. The name’s Dr. Aurora Carden, and you are Raphael Montoya, correct?”

“Oh, legally, yeah sure. But for you, darling? I can be anyone: Raphael, Silvertongue, daddy. Whatever floats your boat,” Raphael said easily. He shrugged as if they were simply discussing the weather.

Aurora clicked her tongue lightly but sat down across from him. She folded her hands on the table. “Mr. Montoya, I am here to discuss your mental state, not your sexual inclinations,” she told him with a flick of a chillingly polite smile.

Oh, she was adorable when she tried to be all professional.

Raphael leaned forward, mirroring her posture. “Miss Carden,” he said, his eyes glancing at her bare left ring finger, “I’m a simple man. My mental state is perfectly stable for a psychopath. Now can we discuss my sexual inclinations? Million dollar word by the way. Is that what they teach at those fancy nerd schools?”

That cold smile returned. “Hmm,” Aurora said. “I did expect a tad bit more charm and a tad bit less bitterness. Now, tell me, do you know the difference between a psychopath, sociopath, and narcissist?”

“Shit, babe, isn’t that your area of expertise?” Raphael asked, lacing his hands behind his head as he leaned back into his chair again. He didn’t care what the difference was. He knew they were all people he stayed away from in truth.

“It is, indeed,” Aurora said. She shrugged and continued, “Psychopaths are characterized by a severely limited or nonexistent empathetic ability as well as antisocial tendencies—though my personal belief is that those two behaviors are almost always inclusive—and display a cold calculating demeanor. Sociopaths may be antisocial and lack empathy as well but often come across as volatile through dangerous emotional and physical outbursts, and narcissists—while outwardly similar to psychopaths—are driven by a grandiose sense of self that hides a very wounded core.”

Raphael squinted at her eyes, trying to look past the cool exterior. What was she trying to tell him? Something he wasn’t fucking getting.

“Okay. And which one am I?” he asked, arching a brow.

“None of them,” Aurora said as she opened her tablet and scribbled something down with one of those fancy tech-y pens. “If you were, my brain would be screaming danger right now. Instead, it’s just screaming, Oh no, a man.”

Despite everything that had happened to him in the last several hours, Raphael let out a snort of a laugh. He surprised himself most of all, and he hovered over the table again, his cuffs jangling. “Fine, doc,” he said, unconsciously rubbing his thumb over his palm. “That’s your opinion, but in my humble opinion, you shouldn’t have had Gary loosen my handcuffs.”

Aurora scribbled down something else, and Raphael suddenly wished he could read upside down. “Oh yes, I know, but unfortunately, I am a woman. My sympathy extends to the… other sex as well,” she said dryly.

“The other sex?” Raphael said with a grin. “You mean the unfairer sex?”

“I didn’t want to say that.”

“But definitely.”

“Mm, but definitely. The sex that has trouble washing their asscracks.”

Raphael let out a barking laugh, his chest light for a moment. His grin changed into something softer as if they were chatting over drinks instead of a table bolted to the concrete floor. He liked her. He would have asked for a second date if he was the type to ask for second dates or go on dates at all. “I wash my asscrack thoroughly,” he said. “Clean as a whistle. You could eat a whole meal off my ass.”

“What a picture you’ve painted,” Aurora quipped, pinching her lips together in mild distaste. “But if you’re wondering why I had them loosen your cuffs, which is why I assume you brought it up, your hands were literally turning purple. I don’t know much about physical medicine, but I do know no body parts should be purple.”

His heart clenched, and he glanced down at the bruises blooming across his wrists. He smirked and said, “I can handle a little pain, sweetheart.”

“Regardless, it scared me,” she replied simply. She wrote something else down on her tablet.

“What are you fuckin’ writing?” Raphael asked, the first sign of fraying patience. He leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Better be about how hot I am and not some sappy shit about how you’re gonna fix me.”

He squirmed in his seat, shifting his weight from his right hip to his left. His skin prickled, and he felt like he might crawl out of it if he didn’t go for a run or head to the gym.

“Nothing bad,” Aurora assured him. “I’m writing down that you become defensive when someone expresses concern for your well-being, which is usually a sign of early and prolonged childhood neglect. Your file mentioned foster care from prenatal infancy up until seventeen when you ran away.” She gave him a knowing look. “The system was hardly kind to you.”

Okay, shit, rude, Raphael thought. This woman wasn’t pulling any of her goddamn punches. She was right, of course, and that pissed him off even more. The hell did she know about the foster care system? Mommy and Daddy had coddled her since day one, and he’d been a disappointment since conception.

“Nah,” Raphael said, smirking at her with all his teeth. “I was king of the world. What’s a little abuse here and there? Builds character.”

Aurora breathed in deeply through her nose and then out through her mouth before shooting him a disapproving look. “Mr. Montoya, you do not have to get into specifics if you don’t wish to,” she told him.

Her bluntness was a fucking curse, and Raphael hated how it rumbled the horrible moldy core he hid from anyone and everyone. See, he had to be a narcissist. He presented himself like he was some great supervillain, but in reality, he was a scared little boy. He gritted his teeth and said through the gaps, “What if I want to, princess? What if I’ve got a few stories that’d make your stomach churn? Can’t handle ‘em?”

Aurora blinked before her eyes darted to his, her expression openly guilty. “That’s not what I meant,” she said quietly. “I’m trying to understand your background, Mr. Montoya. I am not trying to antagonize you.”

“Funny. You’re funny,” Raphael said, wagging a finger at her. “Not here to antagonize a supervillain. You’re full of contradictions, aren’t you, doc?”

“Yes,” Aurora said slowly. She frowned, pressing her lips into a thin line before adding, “But so are you, Mr. Montoya.”

“Stop calling me that. Shit,” Raphael said with a laugh that could pierce steel. He scrubbed his cuffed hands over his face.

“What would you prefer?”

“Shit, I don’t know. Raph will work. Or daddy.”

The joke fell flat even to him.

Aurora nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “Raph, I meant that if you don’t want to talk about your past, you don’t have to.”

Raphael drummed his fingers on the metal table, and he huffed through his nose. “You’re a shitty psychologist,” he said.

“And why’s that?” Aurora asked, not seeming ruffled at all.

God, how was he supposed to get under her skin? She was digging fucking talons into him, and he had nothing on her. He looked her over again, tempted to go for a low blow. Instead, he said, “Aren’t you supposed to tell me I’ve got like depression or ADHD or something? How’re you supposed to do that if I don’t tell you about my fucked-up childhood?”

“I’m here to evaluate your state of mind,” Aurora told him, raising her eyebrows. “You know, whether you’re insane or not. It’s required for all constituents on the FBISR’s Supervillain Watch List, and no, your lawyer is not allowed in the room. Your lawyer may request an appeal to the judge if you plead insanity, but since you have been charged with tax evasion, I highly doubt that argument will fly.”

Right, a lawyer. Raphael should really ask for one of those before they tried to deport him as punishment even though he was born here. “Damn, you a lawyer too, doll?” he teased, tilting his head a little. “So what’s your professional opinion? Am I insane or just an asshole?”

“You are not insane,” Aurora said.

“So… an asshole.”

Aurora’s mouth twitched into something like a smile. She locked her digital tablet and magnetized the pen to the side before standing up. “Oh, you have a cat, don’t you? Georgie?” she asked.

“Okay,” Raphael said, sitting up straighter, “that was a topic switch. I may or may not have a cat named Georgie. Why the hell do you care?”

His heart pounded in his chest, and he scanned her face. Her eyes were wide and blue now, that scary kind of icy blue he associated with WASP-y homemade-kombucha TikTok moms, but hers didn’t seem quite as intimidating. Maybe it was the yellow lighting of the cinderblock torture room, or maybe it was just because he found her attractive. She wasn’t going to threaten him probably, but his instincts told him she was going to use his beloved cat against him somehow.

“I have a cat,” she finally said, her voice softer. Less professional. “Um, she’s lonely now because her brother passed away two weeks ago from intestinal cancer. Is… there anyone who’s watching Georgie right now?”

She already knew the answer, which was why she was asking. He knew that tactic; he’d used it himself on people who refused any sort of help. Dammit, she was good and not racist for a white bitch with Nazi-ass eyes.

One of Raphael’s hands curled into a fist, and he took a deep breath that rattled every corner of his lungs. He was glad he’d quit smoking when he’d gotten Georgie, but even now, his body craved a cigarette, the sensation of it pinched between his fingers and teeth. “Fine,” he ground out. “Go get the damn cat but don’t expect a parade when I get outta here.”

Aurora snorted softly, that taste of a smile on her lips again. “I might not know you very well, Raph, but I do know that’s one of the more sincere thanks you’ve ever given,” she said, turning on her heel.

“Fuck off,” Raphael said without thinking, and to his surprise, she laughed. His eyes fell on her ass as she opened the door and walked out of the room, her body a balm to his horrible day.

She was going to take care of his stupid fucking cat. This woman had done more for him in five hours than anyone had done for him in years, and now she was going to drive down to Los Angeles to find his trash cat. He scrubbed his face with his hands again and then surveyed the bruises on his wrists, the guilt inside him roaring like a V8 engine. How was he going to repay her? He hadn’t experienced kindness without expectation ever in his life, and he had to wonder exactly what she wanted from him.