Villain’s Favorite 52

 

Chapter 52 Learning Girl 

90 

In the evenings, Wendy would set aside time to train her, teaching her how to use momentum to flip backward off a wall, and how to maintain balance at height while keeping the body suspended just a fraction longer than physics should allow. 

It sounded completely impossible on paper. 

How’s a person supposed to hang in the air? 

“That doesn’t really make sense, Mom.” Maya couldn’t help murmuring it. 

“Really?” Wendy looked genuinely surprised. “This is just the basics for us, sweetheart.” 

Wendy could walk up vertical walls like they were level ground and scale the side of a building without breaking her rhythm. 

She could stand at the edge of a rooftop with the complete ease of someone on a sidewalk, looking down at the street below. 

She moved through the kind of high-difficulty physical feats that most people would consider physically impossible as though they were entirely routine. 

But these things that felt like second nature to her seemed to be running into real resistance for her daughter. 

To prove it wasn’t actually that difficult, Wendy pulled Maya outside. 

She took two easy running steps, brushed the ball of her foot against the wall, and walked straight up the vertical surface like it was a gentle slope. 

A clean pivot, a soft landing, and she was back on the ground without a scratch. 

Maya stared with her mouth open. 

Her mother was superhuman. 

Wendy caught the awe in her daughter’s expression and told her with complete pride, “By the time you’re my age, you’ll be able to do all of this too. 

“I was supporting myself at 13.” 

She’d been completing assignments alone and without backup by that age. 

She’d expected her daughter to be impressed by that. Instead, Maya just leaned into her and said quietly. “That must have been really hard.” 

Maya didn’t think early capability was something to celebrate. 

Except in cases like Alfred, who was something else entirely. 

Any kid who grew up too fast had almost certainly paid for it with an unhappy childhood. 

2 

O OGR 

173 

12:49 Sat, May 2 

Chapter 52 Learning Girl 

Maya herself had spent her 13th year trying to figure out how to survive. 

Finished 

She’d thought about earning money on her own, about running away and taking her brother with her. getting out of that house entirely, but those people had never let her go. 

Wendy pressed her cheek gently against Maya’s and murmured, “Sweetheart.” 

Something about the way Maya had said it left a fracture in her chest she hadn’t expected. 

She had the persistent feeling that her daughter had carried a very long weight before finally finding her way to them. 

Wendy was, in many ways, ordinary in her heart. She’d been an orphan from early childhood, raised by the kindness of strangers. 

A child who grows up without parents tends to want, more than anything, a complete family of her own. She’d never wanted the constant movement, the jobs, the disappearing. She’d wanted a warm home. The home she’d built with Raymond, though, hadn’t turned out anything like the one she’d imagined. Raymond spent most of his time between jobs asleep. 

Their sons had all grown into personalities that were difficult to approach; each one closed off and unusually mature for their ages. 

As a mother, she’d often felt like she didn’t quite know how to reach any of them. 

Maya’s arrival had changed the texture of the household. The static, suffocating sameness had started to break up. 

And for the first time in a long time, Wendy had felt what it actually meant to be someone’s mother. 

After the warmth of that quiet moment together, they went back to training. 

Maya’s daily regimen focused on building raw strength and endurance. 

She was stronger than she looked, but she remained stubbornly thin no matter how much Wendy tried to feed her over the past year. 

Toby, for reasons that remained entirely unclear, had arranged for a nutritionist to come in during these past few days. 

For the week she spent recovering at home, every meal she had was carefully structured, nutrient-dense, and remarkably bland. 

She found herself deeply nostalgic for Wendy’s occasional home cooking, the kind that was heavy on fat and sugar and completely wonderful. 

A new week arrived, and the bruising across Maya’s torso had finally healed all the way. 

The comfortable haze of being home had to end. She shouldered her bag and made her way back toward 

2/3 

2 

O 

OG 

GR 

RII 

O < 

12:49 Sat, May 2 

Chapter 52 Learning Girl 

school. 

She walked with her habit of nudging a small stone along the path with her foot as she went. 

Then she felt it, a gaze pressing into her back with a focused, furious weight that was hard to ignore. 

Maya raised her head. Not far ahead, surrounded by a cluster of girls, Kaia was looking directly at her. 

The little girl was dressed like a princess today, as always, but the eyes that found Maya held nothing of their previous curious sweetness. There was only anger and open hostility now. 

Maya let out a silent, internal whistle. 

So the events at the party had done it. The naive, sweet-natured girl had genuinely come to hate her. Part of Maya wanted to say out loud that it really wasn’t worth it. Thomas wasn’t even her father. 

Her actual parents had been eliminated by Thomas’ people a long time ago. 

The man wasn’t her family. He was her enemy. 

Her real parents were somewhere watching her with profound disappointment. 

There were too many things to say and no clean way to say any of them. 

Maya went quiet and followed Kaia’s group into the classroom. 

She’d barely set her bag down when Jenny, who sat diagonally across from her, launched herself over like she’d just spotted her long-lost best friend. 

“Maya! You’re finally back!” 

Jenny grabbed her arm with both hands, her voice pitched high with urgency. “You have no idea how hard it’s been holding the line against Kaia’s whole operation while you were gone! They have numbers on their side! I was overwhelmed!” 

Maya nodded with great solemnity. “That sounds brutal. A one-woman war.” 

They shook hands with appropriate gravity, and then Maya settled onto her stool and did her usual sweep of the classroom, eyes moving from one corner to the other out of habit. 

594 

BAY 

2 

OGR 

111 

O 

< 

3/3 

12:49 Sat, May 2 

This Time. Ill Be the Villains Favorite Daughter