Emperor of Rage: A Dark Mafia Enemies To Lovers Romance

The shrill ring of my phone rips me from sleep. I groan, rolling over in bed, my mind foggy. Daylight bleeds in around the edges of the blackout shades, making me squint as I silence the phone.

My skin already prickles with discomfort just knowing the sun is out there, waiting for me. Always waiting.

Xeroderma pigmentosum. A mouthful of medical mumbo-jumbo that boils down to one cruel fact: the sun is my enemy. I can’t repair the damage from UV light like most people can. The rays that most people soak up without a second thought tear me apart, cell by cell.

This is why I’ve learned to live in the shadows, to embrace the night. My day starts when other people’s ends.

To most of the world, I know I must look like a creature of the night by choice. Like I’m leaning way too hard into the goth aesthetic. But no. A life lived in the shadows and the darkness was decided for me long ago, when my symptoms first started manifesting. I was four.

Apparently, my great-grandmother had the same condition, which comes with the bonus of making me ten thousand times more likely to develop non-melanoma skin cancer, and two thousand times more likely to get melanoma.

Like, thanks, genetics.

I reach for my phone, trying to blink away the haze of sleep, the weight of my past clinging to me like a second skin. I think about how I used to be normal once—or as close to normal as possible when your last name is Lindqvist.

When I was little, I had a nanny that would read me bedtime stories about princes and princesses, and fabled kingdoms, and sorcerers’ curses.

I used to think that’s what plagued my family: a curse. Maybe even several of them. I knew far earlier than I should what my father did for a living, and where the big mansion, the cars, the lavish trips, the pool, the help, the nannies, and all the luxury came from.

There’s a reason I don’t use the name “Lindqvist”, and it’s not because it weirds out people who are unused to anything but “U” following “Q”.

My father was a terror: a ruthless, uncaring, mafia strongman. And if the way he ruled over his own family was any indication, I can only imagine how awful he was to the outside world.

You see, I never once thought of us as the fairytale kings and queens from the bedtime stories. No, I knew my father was the evil wizard in the black tower, who fought the “good guys”.

And because of that—my father being the monster that he was—I knew young that we’d been cursed.

It was the only explanation for the cards we’d been dealt.

My issues with the sun. My mother dying so young. Learning that I too, like my brother Nils, had inherited further darkness from our father.

Huntington’s disease attacks the neurons in the brain, causing them to slowly break down and die. Your arms and legs stop working correctly. So do your lungs. You lose the ability to think or live in any real capacity. It kills you, horribly and painfully, sometimes as early as forty.

There is no cure.

Yeah. My family is so terrible that I got two curses: the sun wants to kill me, and my body will finish the job anyway, probably in the next fifteen years.

No one, not even Anni, knows.

My mother was the last tether our family had to anything resembling “good”. Dad ruled the house with the same iron fist he used to rule the Lindqvist criminal empire. Nils was the golden child, following in our dad’s footsteps: cold, cruel and merciless, just like him.

Me, I was the burden. The sick girl destined to die young, the one who would never be strong enough, fast enough, ruthless enough. After my mother passed, I don’t think I ever even felt like I was part of a family. More like an unwanted houseguest that was being “allowed”, begrudgingly, to overstay her welcome.

I was thirteen when the verbal abuse and the general disdain my brother and father held for me turned into something far darker. More evil.

More…physical.

At first it was waking up with my heart in my throat, my father silhouetted in the bedroom door, reeking of vodka, watching me.

He never came further than the doorway.

But Nils did.

There’s a reason I’m twenty-six and have never sought out physical intimacy with another person.

I mean I like the idea of sex. I want sex. But the hands that touched me even when I said no, and the threats of even worse if I told anyone, chased away any thoughts of actually exploring those desires with a partner, even now.

Eventually, when I was fifteen, it’s what drove me from my home. My brother’s “visits” were getting more frequent, and he was pushing things further. On top of that, I could see the dark road my father was driving his empire down. No longer satisfied with petty mafia shit like protection rackets, he was dipping a toe into the weapons trade, smuggling drugs, and bringing prostitution under the family business umbrella.

That’s when I ran and never looked back, disappearing before they could turn me into one of them, or break me in the process.

I thought I had escaped. Then my father proved how wrong I was.

Two years after I left, he murdered my brother before taking his own life, writing in the note he left behind it was to “save them both” from the horrors that Huntington’s would eventually wreak on them.

So even though the monsters are dead, they’re a constant reminder of the fate that awaits me, one that I’ll never escape.

The phone screams at me again. I groan as I grab it off the bed next to me, frowning at the unknown number on the screen.

Strange. I hacked my own phone years ago and put a perma-block on it, barring any number but those in my contacts from getting through.

So who the fuck is this?

I silence the ringer and let the call go to voicemail before I close my eyes again and turn to snuggle back into bed.

A text notification dings in the temporary silence, shattering it. Grumbling, I snatch the phone up, and instantly freeze at the text on my screen.

Unknown

Perhaps it’s my fault for not laying out the specifics of this arrangement before.

My spine snaps to attention as any last vestige of sleep drops from me.

It’s Mal. It has to be.

Unknown

Don’t blame yourself. I should have been clearer. I’ll correct that now.

Unknown

When I fucking call, you answer. When I tell you to do something, you fucking DO IT, immediately. Do us both a favor. Don’t play stupid. I know, Freya. I know your every dark secret. Every sin.

Unknown

And I know that Kir does NOT know that his favorite adopted goth princess comes from the family that murdered his sister.

My blood turns to ice as I stare at the screen, my throat slowly closing.

Unknown

I fucking OWN YOU.

I’m shaking as I pick up the phone and type a quick reply.

Me

I understand. I was asleep when you called.

The phone is silent for a full minute. Eventually, I stop staring at it and drop it onto the covers, rolling onto my back in bed and looking up at the ceiling.

That’s when it rings.

“How late you sleep in isn’t really my concern.”

I shiver as Mal’s dark, slightly accented voice rumbles like velvet, gravel, and smoke through the phone.

“I wasn’t…”

I bite my lip.

I wasn’t sleeping “in”, I was just sleeping, as per my normal schedule. But just as I’m about to say that, it occurs to me that telling this monster any of my habits is probably not a smart idea.

Because he’ll use them against me. And I’m already at a serious disadvantage in whatever battle this is.

“I’m sorry I missed your call,” I mutter quietly.

“I’m going to text you an address. Be at it in half an hour,” Mal growls, his voice dark and smooth with an unmistakable commanding edge. Even over the phone, I can hear the demand beneath the surface, the implication that this isn’t a request.

I close my eyes, irritation bubbling up from underneath the sleep still clouding my brain.

“No.”

There’s a brief pause, and when he speaks again, his voice is quieter. More dangerous. “Excuse me?”

“I said no. I can’t.” I push myself up in bed. “I can’t come to you right now.”

Like, literally. Actually. Physically.

“You can and you will,” Mal growls, the sharpness in his voice cutting through any leftover fog in my mind.

“No,” I repeat, this time more firmly. Yes, I could just tell him about my condition and how dangerous it is for me to be outside during the day. But I don’t want to give him that power over me, don’t want him to have another way to control me. Instead, I just say it again: “No.”

There’s a tense silence on the other end of the line, but then his voice returns, low and icy.

“You’re testing my patience.”

I tighten my grip on the phone, feeling my pulse quicken. Then, with a sharp exhale, I stab the end call button before he can say anything else.

The silence in the room is deafening, the echo of my defiance hanging in the air. My heart is still racing in my chest, adrenaline coursing through me in a strange, heady rush. Every survival instinct I have screams that hanging up on Mal won’t end well.

I don’t care.

Right now, all I want to do is crawl back into bed and sleep.

And after turning off my phone, that’s exactly what I do.

The sun has finally sunk behind the horizon by the time I crawl out of bed again.

The shadows are long and comforting, wrapping me in their dark embrace as I move through the penthouse.

Annika and I might be set free from this place soon. It’s looking more and more like the assassination attempt may have been just run-of-the-mill mafia-related violence. Kir has a ton of enemies. So do Sota and Kenzo.

It feels weird to shrug off being shot at. Maybe that’s what happens when you’ve been involved with the Bratva world for so long.

I smile fondly as I hear the low, rumbling tone of man speaking Russian in the other room.

Speak of the devil…

I find Kir sitting in the library of the two-story penthouse. He’s in the chair behind the big desk, his back to me and his feet up on the credenza by the window as he looks out over the glittering Manhattan lights.

Kir has always been—well, not quite a father to me, but something close—more like a cool uncle, a protector who understands me better than most. I distinctly remember meeting him for the first time, when Damian finally introduced Annika and me to his uncle.

Some people demand power. Others constantly try to cling to it. Kir simply is power. It exudes from his pores and he exhales it with his every breath. He’s the sort of guy who utterly commands a room just by walking into it and can silence a crowd with the slightest clear of his throat.

His eyes meet mine in the reflection of the glass in front of him. He swivels the chair, still holding the phone to his ear, a glass of whiskey in his other hand. He nods, giving me that small smile that never fails to make me feel safe.

“This conversation is over,” he growls into the phone in his distinctive, uniquely accented voice.

Like the man himself, the accent is a product of the two worlds that built him. The aristocratic British lilt to his tone comes from his years at Oxford University; but before that, Kir was shaped by the streets of Moscow, and branded and beaten in a gulag prison for his criminal connections. That’s the other facet of the man and the accent: rough, hardened, and distinctly, coldly Russian.

He ends the call and lowers the phone before he looks at me.

“You look like you’ve been through the wringer,” Kir says, his sharp eyes concerned. “Everything okay?”

I shrug, trying to shake off my earlier exchange with Mal. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

Kir studies me for a moment, steady and calm. “Come, join me,” he says, gesturing to the chair across the desk from him. “You’ve been hiding in your room too much lately.”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

He gives me a look. “I’m about ready to give the all-clear for you and Annika to go back out into the world. You know how it is, Freya. I need to make sure no one is specifically gunning for my family.”

My family.

I love that he unequivocally considers Anni and I as much family as he does Damian.

I take a seat, sinking into the plush leather chair. The weight of our relationship—the bond we’ve built over the years—settles around us, familiar and comforting. Kir has always been there for me, trusted me, believed in me when no one else did. In return, I’ve been fiercely loyal to him.

“You know me,” I shrug. “I don’t do well being cooped up.”

“I know,” he sighs. “And I’m sorry.”

“But not that sorry.”

He smirks. “Your and Annika’s safety is my priority. You’ll find no apology from me in that regard.”

I sigh. “It’s just…before the shooting… I’d been going to see Damian a lot.”

“I know. Soon, I promise. Damian’s in good hands, Frey. He’s got one more surgery slated for next week, and they’re extremely optimistic that he’ll be in full recovery after that.” He clears his throat: that’s his tell for switching the subject. “I wanted to ask you how the deep dive into Iosef Andreyev is going.”

There it is: subject officially changed.

I allow us to switch courses to the strategy we’ll use to blackmail the Bratva-connected head of a company Kir has his eye on acquiring, and we discuss some of the details of my work on that so far.

But my mind keeps wandering to Mal, and our phone call, and the dark energy that clings to him like a second skin. No matter how hard I try to shake it off, the tension lingers, settling in my chest like a leaden weight.

Kir leans back in his chair, watching me thoughtfully. “You’ve got that look,” he says, his voice calm but probing. “The one you get when you’re ready to fight.”

I smile faintly, but there’s no humor in it. “Guess it runs in the family.”

Kir chuckles, raising his glass to me in a mock toast. “That it does.”

This is a running joke between Kir, Annika and me. Saying dumb shit like “Good hair runs in the family,” as if either of us is actually related to the man who basically adopted us, or each other for that matter.

“By the way,” I frown. “Did you ever find what you were looking for in the data dump from Orlov Financial Solutions?”

I’d been waiting on Kir to tell me what specifically he was looking for in the information I gleaned from that disconnected server, the night I first crossed Mal’s path. But the other day, he just asked me for the whole pile of it, and said he could look through it himself.

Kir shrugs. “Yes.”

“And?”

He lifts a brow while keeping his lips sealed, in a very not so subtle way.

“You do know it makes my job a little easier if I know who we’re going after ahead of time? Are you trying to find something on the Grigorov Bratva?”

Kir clears his throat and pointedly asks me about another upcoming acquisition.

Goddamnit. This man and his subject changes.

But even as we continue talking, my mind is miles away, on Mal: a constant shadow in the corner of my thoughts, dark and unrelenting.

When I finally retreat to my room later that evening, I’m hoping to bury myself in work. Anything to take my mind off the tension coiled in my chest.

The moment I step into the room and close the door behind me, though, I freeze, my heart lurching into my throat.

A figure sits casually in the big chair in front of one of the huge floor-to-ceiling bullet-proof windows, dark against the neon flickering of the city behind him.

Mal.