The voices echo through my memory like a symphony of damnation, each one more venomous than the last.
"You will burn in hell, James Trevills!"
"You're nothing but a parasite wearing a handsome face!"
"I curse the day I ever laid eyes on you!"
The bitter irony wasn't lost on me—it seems their collective hatred had finally manifested into something tangible. As I lay here, feeling my life seep away through the holes in my chest, I can't help but think that perhaps curses do have power after all.
Let me tell you about myself, though I doubt my story will inspire much sympathy.
My name is James Trevills, and I suppose you could say I was doomed from the start. Born into poverty with parents who had the courtesy to abandon me before I could even remember their faces, I spent my childhood bouncing between foster homes like a ball in a pinball machine. Each family that took me in quickly discovered what my birth parents had apparently already known—I was trouble.
But here's the thing about being unwanted: it breeds a particular kind of hunger. Not for food or shelter, though I certainly knew those hungers too, but for something far more intoxicating—power. Recognition. The ability to make others need you more than you need them.
My unknown parents may have left me with nothing but government assistance and hand-me-down clothes, but they did bequeath me two invaluable gifts: a face that could make angels weep and a tongue that could convince the devil himself to hand over his pitchfork.
I discovered these talents early. Mrs. Henderson, my third foster mother, once caught me stealing cookies from her jar. Instead of punishment, I walked away with an extra dessert and a kiss on the forehead. The other kids in the home looked at me with a mixture of awe and resentment that I found absolutely intoxicating.
By my teens, I had refined these natural abilities into surgical instruments of manipulation. The high school guidance counselor who should have been helping troubled kids instead found herself writing glowing recommendation letters for my college applications. The wealthy widow who volunteered at the local soup kitchen ended up paying for my first apartment. Each conquest was a stepping stone, each broken heart a rung on the ladder I was climbing.
The transformation didn't happen overnight. I spent countless hours in front of mirrors, perfecting every expression, every gesture. I studied people like a scientist studying specimens, learning their weaknesses, their desires, their blind spots. I read psychology books not to understand the human condition, but to exploit it more effectively.
By my mid-twenties, I owned a portfolio of properties that would make seasoned investors envious. I had a penthouse overlooking the city, a garage full of luxury cars, and a bank account that grew faster than I could spend from it. To the outside world, I was a young entrepreneur who had struck gold in real estate. The truth was far more calculated.
My method was simple but devastatingly effective: identify wealthy, lonely women; become exactly what they needed; extract what I wanted; disappear before they could see through the facade.
It started modestly with Mrs. Pemberton, the lonely wife of my junior high school principal. She was in her forties, neglected by a husband who cared more about disciplinary policies than his own wife's emotional needs. I was sixteen, working part-time as a groundskeeper at the school, when I first noticed how her eyes lingered on me.
"You work so hard, James," she had said one afternoon, bringing me lemonade while I trimmed the hedges near her office window. "Most boys your age are so irresponsible."
I looked up at her with practiced innocence, wiping sweat from my brow in a way that I knew would catch her attention. "Thank you, Mrs. Pemberton. I just believe in earning my way, you know? Not everyone has parents to take care of them."
The sympathy that flashed across her face was like blood in the water to a shark. Within three months, she was paying for my senior year expenses. Within six, she had co-signed for my first car loan. When I graduated, she handed me an envelope containing enough cash to cover my first year of college.
"Our secret," she whispered, her hand lingering on mine just a moment too long.
I smiled and nodded, already planning my exit strategy.
The pattern escalated with each subsequent target. Sarah Whitmore, daughter of the largest car dealership owner in the state, fell for my story about being a misunderstood artist who just needed someone to believe in him. She bought me painting supplies, paid for art classes, and eventually convinced her father to give me a job at one of his smaller lots. Three months later, I had worked my way into his good graces and walked away with inside information about upcoming property auctions that made me my first real fortune.
Then came Victoria Ashford, heiress to a textile empire, who was convinced I was her soulmate after a carefully orchestrated "chance" meeting at a charity gala. Helena Blackwood, whose late husband had left her with more money than she knew what to do with and a heart desperate for companionship. Margaret Sterling, the pharmaceutical heiress who thought she had found her Prince Charming in a man twenty years her junior.
Each relationship followed the same arc: seduction, exploitation, extraction, abandonment. And with each broken heart I left in my wake, the curses grew louder, more desperate, more filled with genuine hatred.
"You destroyed my faith in love!" Victoria had screamed as security escorted her from my building after I had her served with a restraining order.
"I gave you everything, and you left me with nothing!" Helena had sobbed into her phone during one of her many desperate late-night calls.
"You're not human," Margaret had whispered when she finally realized the depth of my betrayal. "You're something else entirely. Something cold and empty."
But I didn't care. Their pain was simply the cost of doing business, and business was very, very good.
My ambition grew with my wealth. Why stop at individual women when I could manipulate entire social circles? Why settle for romantic conquest when I could achieve financial domination? I began targeting men as well—investors looking for the next big opportunity, politicians needing campaign funding, businessmen desperate to break into exclusive markets.
I became a master networker, the kind of man who could walk into any room and within an hour identify the three most important people present and their deepest insecurities. I collected secrets like trophies and used them as currency in a game only I fully understood.
The curses followed me everywhere. At parties, I would sometimes catch glimpses of former lovers glaring at me from across crowded rooms. I received threatening letters, had my car vandalized twice, and once found a dead rose on my doorstep with a note that simply read, "What goes around comes around."
I threw them all away and hired better security.
That should have been my first warning about Ashley.
Ashley Morrison was different from the others, though I didn't realize it at first. She was a successful model with her own career, her own money, her own carefully constructed public image. She didn't need me financially, which made her an interesting challenge rather than an easy mark.
We met at a fashion industry party in Manhattan. She was stunning in that effortless way that only comes from winning the genetic lottery—tall, blonde, with cheekbones that could cut glass and eyes the color of winter sky. But more than her beauty, it was her confidence that intrigued me. She moved through the crowd like she owned the room, which, given her recent magazine covers, she practically did.
"You're staring," she said, appearing beside me at the bar with a champagne flute in her manicured hand.
"I'm admiring," I corrected, giving her the smile that had launched a thousand heartbreaks. "There's a difference."
She laughed, a genuine sound that surprised me. Most women in her position would have simpered or blushed. Ashley just looked amused.
"And what exactly are you admiring, Mr...?"
"Trevills. James Trevills." I extended my hand, noting how she shook it with confidence rather than the delicate butterfly touches I was used to. "And I'm admiring your complete lack of interest in impressing anyone in this room."
"Observant," she mused, staring my face with the same intensity I was studying hers. "Most men here are either trying to get me into bed or onto their client roster. Which category do you fall into?"
The directness caught me off guard, but I recovered quickly. "Neither. I'm more interested in what makes someone so successful at such a young age completely unimpressed by a room full of industry titans."
That was the hook—appealing to her intellect rather than her vanity, treating her like a puzzle to be solved rather than a conquest to be won.
We talked for three hours that night. About business, about ambition, about the masks people wear in public versus who they really are in private. She was sharp, witty, and refreshingly honest about the superficiality of her industry.
"People think modeling is just standing around looking pretty," she told me as we shared a cab back to her apartment. "But the real skill is in becoming whoever the camera needs you to be. You have to be a completely different person for every shot, every campaign, every client."
I found myself genuinely intrigued by her perspective. Here was someone who understood the art of transformation as well as I did, though she used it for creative expression rather than manipulation.
Or so I thought.
Our relationship developed over six months of carefully orchestrated encounters. I played the role of the successful but emotionally unavailable businessman who was slowly learning to open his heart again. She played the independent woman who didn't need a man but was willing to let the right one into her closely guarded world.
The sex was incredible—intense, passionate, and surprisingly emotional. Ashley approached physical intimacy with the same fierce commitment she brought to everything else, and I found myself actually looking forward to our time together rather than simply enduring it as a means to an end.
But as our relationship deepened, I began to notice cracks in Ashley's perfect facade. She would sometimes stare at me with an intensity that felt almost desperate. She started showing up at places where she knew I'd be, always with plausible explanations but too frequently to be coincidental. Her questions about my past became more probing, more insistent.
The warning signs were all there, but I was too focused on the endgame to pay attention. Ashley had connections throughout the fashion and entertainment industries, connections that could open doors to levels of wealth and influence I had never imagined. Through her, I met producers, directors, venture capitalists—people whose money made my previous targets look like small-time players.
I was so close to achieving everything I had ever dreamed of. One more step up the ladder, one more perfect manipulation, and I would have it all.
That's when I made my fatal mistake: I underestimated just how deeply Ashley had fallen in love with me.
The night I told her it was over, she didn't cry or scream like the others. She just sat there in my living room, perfectly still, staring at me with those winter-sky eyes.
"You're serious," she said finally, her voice eerily calm.
"We both knew this wasn't permanent," I replied, using the same script that had worked dozens of times before. "We're different people heading in different directions. It's better to end things while we still care about each other."
She nodded slowly, stood up, smoothed down her dress, and walked to the door. Then she paused, her hand on the handle.
"James?"
"Yes?"
"You're going to regret this."
It wasn't a threat. It was a promise. And unlike all the others who had made similar declarations, Ashley had the resources and connections to make it come true.
Over the next three months, my carefully constructed empire began to crumble. Business deals fell through at the last minute. Properties I had been negotiating to purchase were suddenly sold to other buyers. Investors pulled out of projects without explanation. My social invitations dried up, and former associates stopped returning my calls.
At first, I thought it was just bad luck or a temporary downturn. But as the pattern continued, I began to realize that someone was systematically destroying my reputation and my business relationships. Someone with enough influence to whisper in the right ears, plant the right doubts, and turn my own weapons of social manipulation against me.
I hired private investigators, but they found nothing concrete—just a trail of conversations and meetings that Ashley had attended, always appearing innocent and concerned about the "troubling rumors" she had heard about James Trevills.
She was better at this game than I was, and she had one crucial advantage: she genuinely believed she was the wronged party. Her pain gave her performance an authenticity that my calculated manipulations could never match.
As my business empire collapsed, something even worse began to happen—my past victims started coming forward. Women I had wronged years earlier suddenly found their voices, and their stories began appearing in gossip columns and social media. A pattern emerged that painted a picture of a man who made a career out of exploiting vulnerable hearts.
The final blow came when Margaret Sterling, the pharmaceutical heiress, held a press conference announcing a class-action lawsuit against me for fraud and emotional manipulation. She had somehow convinced six other women to join her, and together they presented a compelling case that I had systematically defrauded them under the pretense of romantic relationships.
I should have seen it coming. I should have realized that Ashley wouldn't be content with simple revenge—she wanted complete and total destruction. She had reached out to every woman I had ever wronged, offering them solidarity and legal support, turning my own history into the weapon that would destroy me.
The lawsuits froze my assets. The media attention made me a pariah. Within six months, I went from penthouse to a modest apartment, from luxury cars to public transportation, from master manipulator to social outcast.
But even then, even as my world crumbled around me, my ego refused to let me accept responsibility. It was their fault for being so easily manipulated. It was Ashley's fault for taking things too seriously. It was society's fault for being so judgmental about a man who had simply played the game better than everyone else.
I told myself I could rebuild. I always had before. I just needed to lay low for a while, let things blow over, and then start again somewhere else.
That's when I hired the bodyguards.
Marcus and Steven came highly recommended by a security firm that specialized in protecting high-profile individuals during scandal periods. They were professionals—former military, trained in everything from close protection to threat assessment. They moved into my apartment building, established security protocols, and assured me that no one would be able to get close enough to cause me harm.
"We've seen this kind of situation before, Mr. Trevills," Marcus had told me during our initial meeting. He was a mountain of a man with intelligent eyes and a calm demeanor that inspired confidence. "Scorned lovers, business rivals, media attention—it creates a perfect storm of potential threats. But we know how to handle it."
For three months, they did their job perfectly. They screened my mail, monitored my communications, and accompanied me whenever I left the building. They were polite, professional, and utterly reliable.
What I didn't realize was that they were also human beings with their own moral codes.
It started with small things. Conversations that stopped when I entered a room. Meaningful glances exchanged when they thought I wasn't looking. A subtle shift in their attitude from professional respect to something closer to professional tolerance.
I should have paid attention to these warning signs, but my ego wouldn't let me believe that two men I was paying generously would dare to judge me. After all, everyone had a price, and I was paying theirs.
The truth was, they had been watching me for three months. They had seen how I treated the few people who still came to visit—the condescending way I spoke to my cleaning lady, the cruel dismissal of a former business partner who came begging for help, the complete lack of empathy I showed when discussing the women who were suing me.
They had also been doing their own research, reading the court documents, the media reports, the testimonies of women whose lives I had destroyed. Piece by piece, they had assembled a picture of the man they were protecting, and they didn't like what they saw.
The final straw came when Ashley called my apartment directly, somehow bypassing all their security protocols.
"James," her voice was different—harder, more focused. "We need to talk."
"We have nothing to discuss," I replied, gesturing for Marcus to trace the call.
"Oh, but we do. You see, I've been thinking about our relationship, about what really happened between us. And I've come to a realization."
"Which is?"
"You never loved me. Not even a little bit. I was just another mark to you, wasn't I? Another stepping stone to whatever came next."
I could have lied. I could have fed her some story about being afraid of commitment or not knowing how to love properly. Instead, my ego chose honesty.
"Ashley, love is a luxury I never learned to afford. I needed what you could give me. The fact that you needed something from me in return was... unfortunate."
The silence that followed lasted so long I thought she had hung up. When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.
"Thank you for that. For finally being honest. It makes what I'm about to do so much easier."
The line went dead.
I turned to Marcus and Steven, expecting to see them already mobilizing to trace the call and increase security measures. Instead, they were looking at me with expressions I had never seen before—a mixture of disgust and disappointment that hit me like a physical blow.
"What?" I demanded.
Marcus shook his head slowly. "Nothing, sir. We'll double-check the building's security."
But I could see it in their eyes. For the first time in my life, I was facing people who saw exactly who I was and found me completely wanting. Not just morally objectionable, but genuinely pathetic.
They continued to do their job for another two weeks, but the dynamic had fundamentally changed. They were no longer protecting someone they respected; they were performing a service for someone they had come to despise.
When Ashley finally came for me, they simply weren't there.
I had been in my bedroom, reviewing legal documents and trying to figure out a way to salvage something from the wreckage of my life, when I heard the front door open. My first thought was that Marcus or Steven had returned early from their patrol.
"Is that you?" I called out, not bothering to look up from the papers scattered across my bed.
The answer came in the form of three gunshots that sent me sprawling across the mattress, my chest erupting in fire and blood.
Ashley stood in my doorway, still wearing the elegant black dress she had worn to the courthouse earlier that day for one of the lawsuit hearings. She looked beautiful and terrible, like an avenging angel descended from heaven to deliver divine justice.
The gun in her hand was small, elegant, and still smoking.
"Hello, James," she said, her voice steady despite the tears streaming down her face.
I tried to sit up, but the pain was extraordinary. I could feel my life leaking out through the holes she had torn in my chest, could taste the copper tang of blood in my mouth.
"How did you get in here?" I managed to gasp, though I already suspected the answer.
Ashley's smile was cold and bitter. "You mean your bodyguards? The same ones who have been watching you treat everyone around you like garbage for months? The same ones who read every court document, every testimony from every woman whose life you destroyed?"
She moved closer, and I could see the madness dancing in her eyes—not the madness of insanity, but the focused madness of someone who has finally found their purpose.
"They let me in, James. Walked me right up to your door and wished me luck. Seems like even the people you pay to protect you think the world would be better off without you."
The betrayal shouldn't have surprised me. After all, I had built my entire life on the principle that everyone had a price and everyone could be manipulated. But I had made the fatal error of believing that money alone was enough to buy loyalty. I had forgotten that some things—dignity, self-respect, moral conviction—couldn't be purchased.
Marcus and Steven had decided that some people didn't deserve protection, and I was one of them.
"You... you ruined me," Ashley continued, her voice breaking as the full weight of her actions began to sink in. "You made me believe in something that never existed. You made me love someone who never existed."
I laughed, and blood sprayed from my lips across the white sheets. Even dying, even facing the consequence of my entire life's work, I couldn't resist one final manipulation.
"Ashley," I whispered, beckoning her closer with what little strength I had left.
She approached hesitantly, the gun still trained on me but her resolve wavering as she saw how much damage she had done.
"What?" She breathed.
"You want to know the truth about us? About what we had together?"
Her eyes widened with desperate hope. Even now, even after everything, part of her still wanted to believe that what we had shared had been real.
"Yes," she whispered.
I smiled, tasting my own blood, preparing to deliver one final devastating blow to the woman who had destroyed everything I had worked for.
"The truth is... you were the best I ever had."
It wasn't the cruel revelation she had been expecting. Instead, it was something far more dangerous—a small piece of genuine honesty that rekindled the flame she had been trying so hard to extinguish.
Ashley's composure cracked completely. The gun wavered in her hands as she fell to her knees beside the bed, her carefully constructed facade of righteous vengeance crumbling into desperate, irrational love.
"James, please," she sobbed, reaching for me with trembling hands. "We can fix this. We can start over. I'll call an ambulance, we'll get you help, and we can try again. I'll forgive you for everything if you just promise to love me back."
She pressed her lips to mine, and I could taste her tears mixed with my blood. In that moment, I saw the full scope of what I had done to her. I hadn't just broken her heart; I had shattered her entire sense of reality. She had lived in a world where love was real and meaningful, and I had convinced her that she had found it with me. When that illusion was destroyed, she had nothing left to believe in except the desperate hope that somehow, some way, it could all be made real.
"Ashley," I whispered, letting her lean close enough to hear my words.
"Yes?" She breathed, her eyes bright with manic hope.
I looked into those beautiful, broken eyes and delivered my final gift to the world—one last act of pure, undiluted cruelty.
"You were just another mark. And you're still pathetic."
The hope died in her eyes, replaced by something cold and final. She pulled back, raised the gun, and for a moment I thought she was going to finish what she had started.
Instead, she stood up, smoothed down her dress, and walked toward the door.
"Wait," I called after her.
She paused without turning around.
"You're just going to leave me here to die slowly?"
"Yes," she said simply. "I want you to have time to think about everything you've done. Every heart you've broken, every life you've ruined, every person who loved you that you threw away like garbage."
"Ashley, please—"
"No." Her voice was steady now, purged of all emotion. "You made your choices, James. Now you get to live with the consequences. Or die with them."
She walked out, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
I lay there in the spreading pool of my own blood, feeling my strength ebb away with each labored breath. The pain was becoming distant now, replaced by a strange floating sensation that I recognized as the approach of death.
For the first time in my adult life, I was completely alone. No one was coming to save me. No one cared whether I lived or died. The bodyguards I had paid to protect me had betrayed me. The woman who claimed to love me had shot me and left me to die slowly and painfully.
I had spent my entire life believing that I was smarter than everyone else, that I understood human nature better than the people I manipulated. But in the end, I had completely misunderstood the most fundamental truth about human beings: that love and hate are not opposites, but two sides of the same coin. And when you turn love into hate, you create something far more dangerous than mere indifference.
The irony was perfect. I had lived by manipulation and died by it. Ashley had played my own game better than I had, using my arrogance and my need to have the last word against me.
As my vision began to blur and my breathing became more labored, I found myself thinking about all the curses that had been laid on me over the years. All the women who had wished for my destruction, who had prayed for justice, who had demanded that I pay for what I had done to them.
Maybe curses were real after all. Maybe the universe had a sense of poetic justice. Or maybe I had simply pushed too hard, manipulated too many people, and created too many enemies for the house of cards to stand forever.
In my final moments, I realized that I had one more choice to make. I could die as Ashley's victim, letting her have the satisfaction of being my executioner. Or I could die on my own terms, maintaining control until the very end.
The gun had fallen from Ashley's hand when she knelt beside me. It lay on the floor just a few feet away, still warm from being fired.
With tremendous effort, I rolled off the bed and crawled toward it, leaving a trail of blood across the hardwood floor. Each movement sent waves of agony through my chest, but I forced myself to continue. I would not give Ashley the satisfaction of killing me. I would not let anyone else control the final chapter of my story.
I reached the gun just as my strength gave out completely. With shaking hands, I raised it to my temple, thinking about the life I had lived and the choices I had made.
I had no regrets. That was the most damning thing of all—even facing death, even seeing the full consequences of my actions, I felt no genuine remorse for the pain I had caused. I was sorry that I had been caught, sorry that my plans had been ruined, sorry that I was dying alone and in pain.
But I wasn't sorry for who I was.
Maybe that was my real curse—not the bullets in my chest or the hatred of those I had wronged, but the complete inability to feel genuine human connection or remorse. I had been born broken, and I would die broken.
With my last breath, I whispered a final truth into the empty room:
"I regret nothing."
BAAANG!!