Because You Love to Hate Me: 13 Tales of Villainy

by Ameriie

It’s not like it was in the old days, when there were plenty of gold bars and jeweled treasures to hoard. There are banks now and high-tech security, and all the valuable stuff isn’t tangible, just information and 1s and 0s.

I hope he isn’t one of those astute people, you know, the kind you can never be comfortable around because it’s like they see through everything you do? Dad says people like that have only two stations in life: at your right hand or on the sharp end of a pike.

(The battle cry fee fi fo fum translates roughly from the old giant tongue to “fight destroy conquer expand,” but it’s suffered an unfortunate downgrade and now just means “I’m really pissed.”)

He looks up at me with this lopsided expression and I think this might be like one of those moments in a story where the guy says this awkward thing, and the girl says this sarcastic thing, and there’s a moment of silence and they just stand there until he lunges and kisses her anyway . . . You know the story?