Emperor of Rage: A Dark Mafia Enemies To Lovers Romance

Things have a way of…escalating when Annika and I get together.

Quickly.

But tonight may just set a new record.

A loud, alcohol-fueled snore pulls my attention around behind me. I snort as I glance at Annika, face down on one of two hotel beds, still in her party dress, her red hair spread wide around her like a crime scene.

The other bed is occupied by Hana Mori, Kenzo’s sister—who, it turns out, is super fucking cool. She’s also fast asleep after getting wasted with us. But unlike the hot mess in the other bed that is my best friend, Kenzo’s sister is her usual surgically put-together self.

Her silvery, white-blonde hair is perfect, tucked back and to the side across the pillow. The dress she wore tonight is hung on a hanger on the bathroom door. She’s actually under the covers, neatly, face-up, with her hands folded across her chest.

…I mean the girl is wearing a fucking eye mask.

I’ve dreamed of having my shit as together as Hana does when she’s even just fucking sleeping.

I too have been drinking all night. But I paced myself, which is good considering the whole car chase thing and crossing the border and all that.

I did say things had escalated quickly.

The night started innocently enough. Annika’s sister Taylor took Annika, her friend Fumi—who’s actually Kenzo’s half-sister, but that’s a long story—and me out for an insanely amazing dinner at an incredible three-star Michelin restaurant. Taylor and Fumi had to leave after dinner because they’ve got court early tomorrow morning, being hot-shot lawyers. That’s when Anni and I were joined by Hana.

I blame the karaoke that came next as the first domino that started everything that brought us here. The several rounds of drinks probably didn’t help. Neither did the three of us showing off our “hidden talents”.

Hana, for instance, can take a shot without using her hands. As for me, I found a group of drunk, stupid, horny finance douchebros and told one I wanted to connect with him later and let him “fuck me like an animal”.

…The epitome of my “dirty talk”. Lame, I know.

The point wasn’t to screw the douchebag. It was to get him to hand me his unlocked phone so I could give him my number.

Instead, I promptly Venmo-ed myself five grand from his checking account.

And that’s when Annika, Hana, and I decided to get the hell out of Dodge.

It was outside the club though that things really went south. Like an idiot, I told Hana that Anni was a master thief. That she could steal anything. “Even sports cars!” I bragged.

And it would seem Hana is as much a situation escalator as Anni and I are. Because soon we were basically daring Annika to break into the freaking Bugatti parked down the street.

Before I knew it, the three of us were joyriding around Lower Manhattan in a stolen three-hundred-thousand-dollar supercar, and the cops showed up behind us. To make it even more fun, I had a lit joint, and Hana had a gun in her purse that she didn’t exactly have a permit for.

Yeah.

If we were smart, we would have cut our losses and hired a good lawyer right then. But, screw that.

I exhale, taking a sip of the vodka in my glass, courtesy of the hotel room mini bar. I turn back to the window and lean my forehead against it, looking out over Montreal.

Yeah. Montreal.

Again, I can’t quite underline the word “escalated” enough.

A car chase to get away from the cops turned into a highway chase to get away from the state troopers. At that point, you might as well go for broke, right?

So that’s what we did. We just…booked it. An hour later, roaring up I-87, we’d lost them.

Thanks, stupidly fast stolen supercar.

Pretty soon, we realized we really weren’t that far from the Canadian border. And since it was a bachelorette party, and we were all hyped up on adrenaline, we said screw it and kept going. We ditched the car and Hana’s gun in a small border town, took a taxi through Customs, and pretty soon we were at a club in downtown Montreal losing our minds on the dance floor.

It’s worth mentioning that Annika’s wedding to Kenzo is tomorrow.

Oops.

The three of us have been avoiding all calls and texts from Kir’s and Kenzo’s camps, asking where we are. But those aren’t the texts I’m worried about right now as I stare out over the city.

I’m worried about the ones I ignored from him.

Mal.

Shivering, I glance down at Mal’s texts on my almost-dead phone:

Mal

I’m in your room with a very hard dick, ready to fuck you for the first time. And yet, curiously, you’re not here.

My pulse quickens.

Mal

I was very clear. Tonight is the night I’m going to tear through that pretty little pussy for the first time and make you scream for my cock. We had plans, Freya. Involving your virgin blood and my cum staining your sheets.

I mean Jesus Christ, who even talks like that?

Mal

Since you’re not here, I can only assume you’re ready to play out one of your other more…deviant…fantasies.

Mal

If you’re hiding from me, it means you want me to find you. And chase you.

My blood turns to fire as my eyes sweep over the texts again.

Mal

And when I catch you, I will pin you to the ground and fuck you however I want, in any hole I want, like the greedy little cumslut you are.

I want to be incensed. I want to text him back that he’s delusional, that our arrangement does NOT include him hunting me down to, well, yeah.

Except…

He’s not wrong. That is one of my—okay, my most—dangerous, dark fantasies. When the hardcore videos of rough sex and domination and submission aren’t enough, that’s where I go:

Consensual non-consent.

Primal play.

Rape fantasy.

I mean, I don’t actually want to be raped, for fuck’s sake. Even my questionable sexual fantasies and general state of mind have limits and lines, and that’s well past them.

But the idea of taking that loss of control to a whole new level is…hot. The idea of someone hunting me down, and pinning me to the ground, and taking what they want?

Yeah.

As a fantasy, that is. In real life, it just sounds deranged, even to me.

Just as I’m about to pour another drink and see if the front desk has a phone charger I can borrow since none of us brought one, my phone pings with a new text.

Mal

You’re proving harder to hunt than I expected.

My pulse skips and I grin, flirtatious heat flooding my face. Hell, maybe it’s just the alcohol.

Maybe both.

I knock back the last of my vodka, my tongue swiping the last few drops from my lips before I set the glass down and bring up the phone.

Me

I’m far away from your clutches.

His response is instant.

Mal

You’re NEVER out of my clutches.

Feeling reckless from the booze and the adrenaline of the night, I type out another message.

Me

I’m out getting some air. Looking for a phone charger. How about you?

Okay, what the fuck is this. Our “arrangement” or “blackmail situationship” or whatever this insanity is between Mal and I is supposed to be just…well, I guess we’ve never exactly defined it, aside from “I do whatever he wants or he ruins my life”. But late-night flirting over text seems out of bounds.

Mal

And where exactly ARE you out, looking for a phone charger?

I freeze. Like hell am I telling him where I am. Not because I’m worried about the psycho coming to find me in another country…though I wouldn’t put it past him…but because the three of us are probably freaking out a lot of people back home, being that Kenzo and Annika’s wedding is tomorrow, and the bride has fled the country in a stolen Bugatti.

Me

Just out. God, you’re so needy.

I grin impishly as I send it.

Fuck me. I am flirting with him.

Mal’s response is swift, and sends a chill down my spine.

Mal

You should be careful. It’s nighttime. You’re alone. You never know what kind of monsters are lurking in the dark.

My fingers tighten around the phone, my pulse spiking and a prickling sensation creeping up the back of my neck. I tell myself it’s nothing, just Mal messing with me.

Then my phone buzzes again.

Mal

Your safe word will be “neon”.

The words hit like a punch, my stomach flipping as I jerk my head up, scanning the shadows of the room. My heart is pounding now.

I mean what the fuck.

Me

Creep much?

There’s no response. Not even any little dots. Though I can tell he’s read my text.

Me

Keep looking, psycho. I’m safe from you tonight.

He reads that one, too. Still no reply.

An hour later, there’s still no reply, and I’m getting antsy pacing the dark hotel room while my friends snore drunkenly in the background. The concierge downstairs does not have a phone charger I can use. But apparently the rooftop bar at the hotel down the street is open late-late, and they probably have one.

Perfect.

This Montreal jaunt wasn’t exactly planned. So I don’t have anything to change into. But my dress from dinner and karaoke earlier seems okay for a ritzy late-night hotel bar.

The streets are fairly empty as I head down the block, around the corner, and into the hotel. An elevator brings me to the rooftop bar, which is packed with late-night partiers.

I spend the next two hours sipping a few cocktails, politely—and then not-so-politely—telling a group of finance douchebags to fuck off and leave me alone, even doing a little work for Kir on my now-charged phone.

Must be guilt from ignoring his texts earlier.

At last call I grab one more drink, settle up, and make my way downstairs.

The streets are even quieter and more desolate now. A chill ripples up my spine, but I tell myself it’s just the temperature. I mean, I am in Canada.

I start to walk back to our hotel. But at the corner, that same group of douchebags from the club is hanging out, smoking cigarettes.

Yeah, hard pass on that terrible situation waiting to happen.

I backtrack to the hotel with the rooftop bar and walk around the block in the other direction. A row of buildings is under heavy construction, with scaffolding covering the front and one of those walkways they build near urban construction sites for pedestrians: basically a wooden hallway built around the metal poles of the lower scaffolding.

The temporary lights flicker as I step into the wooden hallway. I swallow nervously, glancing behind me and then to the entire block of covered walkway ahead of me.

It’s fine, I tell myself. You’re fine.

I start to walk, wishing I had my big set of keys with the little pepper spray can attached. But I left those back in New York.

I’m about a third of the way through the walkway when the lights flicker again.

Then I hear it—footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Closing in behind me.

I spin around with a scream on my lips.

…There’s no one there.

Silence hangs like a shroud around me. The lights flicker and buzz again. My breath becomes short gasps, my mind racing.

Fuck this.

I turn and prepare to run. Except I’m in stupid fucking heels. So I start to power-walk, trying to get out of this enclosed hallway as fast as possible. I mean fuck, I’d even take the finance douchebags at this point.

I’m nearing the end when I hear it again—footsteps, louder this time. Closer. Then, a shadow moves in the corner of my vision.

I whirl.

The scream gets trapped in my throat.

…And a figure in a black mask lunges out of the shadows at me, less than ten feet away.

Pure terror explodes through me. Without thinking, I whirl, my eyes locking on the thin film of plastic covering the workers’ entrance to the construction zone.

It’s closer than the end of the hallway.

I turn and bolt through the plastic film, hurtling blindly into the darkness beyond, my pulse thudding in my ears and a monster’s footsteps closing in behind me.