Vicious Hearts: A Dark Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance

As mentioned, a dark, snarling savagery lurks beneath my skin, like a monster prowling the shadows. And most of the time, I keep him buried. But when he knows I’m going to let a little of that fury come out to play in one of my carefully controlled ways, he rises up, like a tiger pacing and snarling at the bars.

Looking for an opening.

Looking to break free and hunt.

Which is exactly what I’m currently doing.

From deep in the shadows next to the dilapidated garage, I watch the three men jostle each other, laughing as they stumble their way from the street to the front door of this place, not fifteen feet from where I’m blending into the night.

A jumpy, eager, exhilarated energy begins to hum through my veins. My finger strokes the handle of the switchblade in my pocket.

New York City likes to think it cleaned itself up in the late nineties. That all the grime and grit was washed away. But all they really did was paste over the filth with hipster bars and overpriced organic grocers. The darkness and the evil are still there, they’re just better hidden.

And fuck me, it’s made the hunt more exciting.

The three men shuffle closer, laughing and red-faced as they crack jokes. They’re drunk. And while part of me feels cheated that this tips the scales a bit more unfairly in my favor, I’m not—strictly speaking—on the hunt tonight as a means of escape, or to feed my monster.

I’m here tonight for fucking answers.

It’s been two weeks since the tiny girl with the delicate throat, the incorruptible defiance in her eyes, and the intoxicating fragility emanating from her skin left me for dead. Since then, I’ve kept a low profile, staying mostly out of the public eye.

Although I recently bought a new place for myself across the river in Brooklyn—finally, after almost a year Stateside—I’ve been staying back at the Kildare family home on the Upper East Side these past two weeks.

Only Castle and Hades know what happened that night at Club Venom. And I’m keeping it that way. No one needs to know about the girl with the knife. And that’s not my pride talking, or my ego.

It’s because of what she said right before she left me to bleed out.

“The blood of the innocent washes away the sins of the wicked.”

I’ve heard those words before. From the devil himself.

From Seamus O’Conor.

An Seiceadóir.

The Executioner.

Seamus is dead, of course. Definitively so. Ares killed him after he’d kidnapped Neve, exacting his vengeance. And that’s something I saw with my own eyes: Seamus, his eyes staring wide and unblinkingly up at the sky, face white, surrounded by his blood, with a gaping hole in his chest.

But while The Executioner himself may be dead, what happened the other night, or more specifically what that little psycho who knifed me said after she did it, confirms a nagging, lingering feeling I’ve had for months.

That Seamus was only the tip of the iceberg. That he didn’t work alone, as everyone assumed he did.

Years ago, when my half-brother Declan made the deal with the FBI, it was a last-ditch resort. For decades, Seamus had been the absolute top, most vicious and prolific hired killer the Irish mafia had ever known. I mean, this was a man who was literally kicked out of the Irish Republican Army during the Troubles for “cruel and barbaric conduct”.

You have to be on a whole other level to be deemed too extreme by the fucking IRA. And eventually, the extremism Seamus brought with him to the States when he was working as a killer for hire became too much.

Seamus didn’t just go after his targets. He, unsanctioned, went after their families as well—their wives, even their fucking children—in barbarous ways. A religious fanatic, Seamus had a mantra of “bleeding the innocent to wash away the sins of the wicked.”

I mean that quite literally. Seamus’ modus operati involved fucking crucifying the families of his targets, and literally bleeding them out.

For years, this habit was overlooked by the Council of Clans, due to his connection to the Kildare name by way of my half-brother Declan, who was a product of my father’s improprieties with a woman named Sheila O’Conor.

As in, Seamus O’Conor’s sister.

Translated: my half-brother was Seamus’s nephew.

But at a certain point, even given the family connection, enough was enough. Add in the fact that Seamus was not even discreetly trying to build his own empire, and the Council finally put their foot down. That’s when Declan made his deal, and Seamus was thrown into ADX Florence supermax prison.

And then a few months ago, he was killed.

But.

After hearing those words from the little psycho’s lips the other night, I’m not positive his would-be empire died with him. And the stitches still in my side would like to know for sure.

I need to know what’s out there in the shadows. I need to know if there’s still danger lurking around the corner, waiting to try and hurt my family again. And the three men currently stumbling their way back to their garage-slash-chop-shop—or at least the one unlocking the door—are going to tell me that.

I mean, maybe they won’t.

But that would be a very messy mistake on their part.

Because I already fucking know the knife she used on me came from Aaron, a small-time stolen car broker and arms seller. I know because he’s a fucking egotistical dumbass and has a habit of etching this stupid symbol—an “A” for Aaron, with an overlaid upside-down second “A”, for Armstrong, his last name—into the weapons he sometimes sells.

I mean the dumb fuck sells illegal arms, and literally writes his name on them.

Whatever happens to him tonight is fucking mercy.

I wait until all three of them have lurched inside before I surge out of the shadows. My foot hits the door right by the knob, slamming it inward, sending it cracking into Aaron’s face.

He squeals like a stuck pig, clutching his smashed, bleeding face as he topples backward onto the grimy floor. His two buddies stare at me with looks of panic, fear, and utter disbelief, instantly sobering. Then they’re rushing me.

The monster in me flexes and rises up, grinning.

Smelling the blood in the water even before I strike.

The first one gets my fist to his throat, followed by an elbow across the face. He gurgles, going down hard as the blood streams beautifully from his nose. Idiot number two pulls a knife, and I smile icily.

I was hoping they’d be this stupid.

The snapping sound of his wrist echoes almost as loudly through the room as his scream when I yank his arm to the side. In one motion, I’ve knocked his legs out from under him, whipping him around to face his buddies, and brought the blade of his own knife up to his throat.

Aaron’s eyes go wide as he tries to drag himself up from the ground.

“You don’t have to do—”

The man in my hands gurgles, choking on his own blood as I slice the blade through his jugular and windpipe in one move, letting him fall to my feet like a gutted fish.

“I’m sorry, you were saying?”

Aaron stares at me in horror. The other guy looks like he’s going to throw up as he holds his smashed nose.

I feel less than nothing about the man drowning in his own blood at my feet. For one, because, well, I’m me.

But I also feel less than nothing about this particular sack of shit because the world will not miss one George T. Guitanno, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. A man who mostly seemed to get his pleasure in life from drinking, being a collector for some two-bit no-name Italian gang, and beating the living shit out of his wife and kids.

I might be a monster. But I’m a specific sort of monster. And there are other sorts I have no tolerance for.

Plus, I mean…a man’s got to have some standards.

“Mr. Kildare…” Aaron bleats, looking like he’s just seen the grim reaper himself walk through his front door.

If he doesn’t play his cards right in the next two minutes, that’s exactly what I’ll be to him.

I reach into my pocket and pull out the little gold-handled knife—the former occupant of my ribs. I hold it high, letting the overhead lights of the garage glint off it.

“I’d like to know who you sold this to.”

Aaron swallows, his eyes darting side to side.

Please.

Please be fucking stupid.

Please lie to my fucking face so that I can feed the blood lust inside of me.

“I’ve never seen that before in my life!”

I smile widely.

Thank you, Aaron.

In a second, I’m storming over to his buddy and grabbing him by the wrist. The man squeals and writhes, kicking and screaming as he tries to get free of me.

Yeah, no. That’s not going to work.

I drag him across the chop shop to one of the giant metal table drills. He screams as I slam his hand down across the drill hole with the giant bit, an inch in diameter, poised above it. He hollers and pulls and twists.

But my grip is strong.

He’s not going anywhere.

“I won’t ask again, Aaron.”

“Mr. Kildare, please. That’s my cousin!”

I kick on the machine. A horrendously loud metallic whirring sound fills the garage as the menacing drill spins to a blur above Dear Cousin’s hand.

“I swear! I’ve never—”

Thank you again, Aaron.

I grab the drill handle with my free hand and yank it down.

The sound is very…wet.

The screams are all-consuming.

“OKAY! OKAY! STOP!”

I step on the floor switch, killing the drill with the bit still through the man’s hand. Smiling and clearing my throat, I turn to a horrified-looking Aaron, ignoring the sobs of his cousin.

“Was there anything else you wanted to say, Aaron?”

He nods vigorously, his face white.

“Okay, okay. Look, Mr. Kildare, I’m sorry, okay?! But he threatened to—”

“Whatever it is, I know you know my punishment will be much, much worse.”

Aaron swallows thickly, nodding his head.

“Who.”

“I—I never saw his face. He wore a hood and like a…like a mask of some kind.”

My brow furrows.

“You keep saying ‘he’.”

“Well, yeah.”

“He’s a he.”

He nods.

“Not a hundred-pound blonde girl.”

Aaron gives me a puzzled look, but I ignore it.

“Name. What was his name.”

Aaron’s eyes dart nervously side to side before they center on me.

“He just called himself Apostle.”

My brow arches incredulously.

“You know,” Aaron blurts nervously. “Like Saint Paul—”

“I’m fucking Irish Catholic, you dumb twat. I know what a goddamn apostle is. Who the fuck is he?”

Aaron shakes his head. “I don’t know. Honestly, Mr. Kildare…” he glances pitifully at his bleeding, bleeding cousin pinned to the industrial drill. “I really, really don’t. Like I said, I never saw his face. Didn’t even hear his voice.”

I frown. “Excuse me? You just said—”

“Yeah, guy talks through one of those robot things. Like those guys in the anti-smoking ads talking outta a hole in their throats.”

Interesting.

“He paid cash every time.”

My eyes snap to Aaron’s. “Every time?”

He nods eagerly. “Yeah, he was a repeat customer.”

“What else did he buy?”

He swallows.

“What. Else.”

“A forty-five with a bunch of ammo, some remote detonators, and a Barrett M82.”

My mouth thins. “You sold him remote detonators and a fucking sniper rifle?”

He swallows again, nodding.

“Okay. Wears a mask, uses a voice changer, pays cash,” I growl. “You’re sure there’s nothing else you can give me?”

Aaron shakes his head. “No, Mr. Kildare, I’m sorry.”

“That’s really too bad.”

I turn, pulling the gun out of my jacket and leveling it at the man pinned to the drill. Aaron screams as I put a bullet through his cousin’s head. His grieving doesn’t last long. A second bullet turns his own face to mush about a half second later.

And that’s that.

Like before, I feel absolutely nothing. And like before, it’s for the same reasons as the first man I killed when I walked in here. One, because it’s me we’re talking about. And two, because the world will not miss, and does not even need, men like Aaron and his cousin Brian over there.

Brian also enjoyed beating up the women he was married to. Like the one that “ran away” five years ago and no one seems to be able to locate, or wife number two who’s perpetually sporting black eyes and busted lips.

And Aaron? Well, Aaron likes—liked—his internet pornography with a dash of particular heinousness.

Children.

Again, there are types of monsters I have no patience for and will give no quarter to.

Monsters like my father.

And they make fantastic sacrifices to my own bloodlust.

I make a quick pit stop at Aaron’s office computer to delete the security records of my mayhem.

Then I’m gone.