The Bad Guy

Reviews

• Cenigh

  Finished March 22, 2026

  3.25⭐ Sebastian was diagnosed as a psychopath as a child. His father has done everything he could to raise him to be an upstanding person and run his business together. He experienced no real feelings until he met Camille. He is crazy in his obsession with her, yet also calculated and somewhat controlled. How to make her his is calculated like everything else he does in life. He tries to figure out and predict outcomes based on people's actions & behaviors. She has a boyfriend who works for his company; there is no real deterrent in his mind. He plans to get the girl no matter the means, and those means just happen to be kidnapping. He actually isn't that bad of a guy at all, just a bit obsessed. Part of his plan is to make it look like she died in an accident, not sure why, since he thinks she will eventually accept her life with him. And she definitely would not be happy if she could never contact her friends or go back and teach. He was able to sense her emotions most of the time, which he had never been able to do with anyone else. The deals they negotiated for things were amusing, but since she didn't like them, he got rid of them with her promise to give him a chance to get close to her. He wasn't even mad when she tried to poison him, he was happy she didn't give him enough to kill him, ofc he knew beforehand her plan The author gave mixed signals at the beginning, him loving her to fear him, also his inner monologue saying he didn't want to hurt her, yet... But this never came across in his actions or later in the story. Not far after that, he tells her he never wants to hurt her, which coincides with his actions and feelings. I was a bit disappointed with the story. I also was disappointed with Camille not being nearly as into Sebastian as I thought she should be. My father had worked on my finesse, as he called it, for years, to the point that I was the puppet of perfect manners, a marionette on a genteel string. Pull here, I smiled. Pull there, I offered condolences. No string led to a kidnapping option. But I still had a few tricks of my own. I performed a brief calculus, trying to decide what a normal man would say in this situation, which string to pull. It was an equation I’d learned from my earliest days—figuring out what people expected so that no one would notice there was something wrong with me. She was mine. Even if I had to steal her. “All you need to know is that you belong to me.” “What?” She tried to shake her head. “No.” “You were always meant to be mine.” “Please, let me go.” Her blue eyes watered. “Never.” “I told you I’d never hurt you. I don’t want to take anything from you that you aren’t ready to give.” As if proving his words, he edged away from me, his warmth fading. “What if I’m never ready to give you a damn thing?” “You will be.” His smug satisfaction rankled. “You so sure?” “Yes. You and me. The end.” He pulled the blanket up and tucked it around my shoulder. “You’ll see.” I didn’t respond, just stared into the murky room. “And one day, sooner than you think”—his voice dropped—“you’ll give me everything.” So many times I wanted to touch her, pull her into my arms. But she’d fight me, which I didn’t mind. She could also hurt herself, which I did mind. I had to wait for her to come to me. It was agonizing to think of the time we’d waste with her being angry, the eventual escape attempts, and the recriminations about me stealing her. Her feelings were warranted, at least that’s what my dad would have said. I had no idea if they were or weren’t. A thrill shot through me, and I hated myself for it. He was horrible, a kidnapper, a stalker—every bad guy rolled into one. So why did he bring my emotions to the surface far easier than Link ever did? “Where you’re concerned, I’ll be as creepy as necessary to make you happy.” “I won the moment I found you.” His tone was soft, and his eyes were uncharacteristically warm, as if he believed I was some priceless treasure he’d stumbled upon. “I’d do anything for you. Except let you go.” “Love?” He followed me again, refusing to give me any distance. “I don’t know what that means.” His eyes darted to my lips, and a hungry glint flashed in his eyes. “I just know you’re mine.” Something sparked in my chest, an echo of his madness finding a match inside me and striking it. I glanced “No. I just want you to be you. You don’t have to act in any way to please me, because when you’re being yourself, you already do. I don’t need a deal for that. “Once again, I find the fact that you can quote American Psycho quite telling.” It tells me I’m the only man for you. “Do that again, and I’ll be forced to bury my face in your cunt until you learn how to behave.” Please do it again. “You’re all I think about.” “Does that seem healthy to you?” He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. I knew it then, and I know it now. You belong with me.” “You can’t decide that for me.” “I haven’t. Don’t you understand? I’ve done all this so you can find out the same thing I already know. It’s like a shortcut.” The way he said it made it seem so rational, even though the words were far beyond the pale of reason. “I don’t have you.” He kissed my forehead. “You’re free to do what you want.” As if to prove it, he stepped back. “Run if you want.” I didn’t move, only stared up at him as my world rattled off its hinges. He returned, pressing against me, one hand at my throat. “But I’ll always chase you. I’ll never cage you again, but I can’t stop my pursuit. It isn’t possible.” “This is the obsession thing your dad mentioned.”

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