Vicious Hearts: A Dark Enemies To Lovers Mafia Romance

This. This is where she lives. Where she sleeps.

My eyes stab through the darkness, then close, my nose inhaling the lingering, intoxicating scent of her in the air.

Relishing it. Luxuriating in it.

Turning, I creep silently across the floor to stand before the picture of myself on the wall. Me, as well as a myriad of other people I know and call family. Neve, Eilish, Castle, Ares. Christ, she’s even got the Drakos matriarch, Ares’ grandmother Dimitra. Though to be fair, that tiny little old Greek grandma might be one of the most fearsome individuals I know.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this “wall of targets”. Just as it’s not the first time I’ve been inside of Una’s shit-hole of an apartment.

Actually, it’s becoming a problem. I’ve been coming here far too often over the last two weeks.

At first, Club Venom was tight-lipped, even to me, when I made my request. After all, I’m hardly the only gangster who pays good money to be a member there, and their policy on tracking guests once they leave the club is crystal clear.

But then I took off my mask of humanity and gave the operating manager a small taste of the blackness swirling in my soul.

No, he’s not dead. There wasn’t even any blood. There very much was about to be. But the spineless little shit caved the second I locked his office door and pulled out my knife with the promise of separating him from one or two of his fingers.

That, or he finally realized exactly who I was. Either way, he was quickly able to confirm that, yes, a certain Jenny Miller had in fact left Club Venom the other night without turning in her red and gold bracelet at the front door on the way out.

And yes, certainly he could track its whereabouts via its chip, which is what led me here, to this shit-hole in Hell’s Kitchen, which is particularly shitty even by Hell’s Kitchen standards.

Where she—not Jenny Miller—lives.

The first time I saw her “wall of targets”, my first instinct was to put my entire family on immediate lockdown and suggest to Ares he do the same with his. But then I realized the significance of the circle around my picture, that it’s me in the middle of it all.

I’m first. And the more I look at this wall, the more I’m convinced there’s a hierarchy here.

Mine is the only picture on the wall that has a detailed list of my schedule, the places I go, the model of the car I drive and more listed next to it. The rest are just names and pictures.

She’s being methodical. Or maybe there’s some mental issue at play here. But whatever it is, I’m first, and she doesn’t appear to want, or even be able, to move down her list until I’m taken care of. Which is oddly comforting. Because I’m a hard fucker to kill.

So. The rest are safe so long as she doesn’t get me. And that’s the only reason I haven’t struck first and killed her. I need to trap her and see who she’s working with, or for.

Or at least…that’s what I keep telling myself is the reason I haven’t simply eliminated her already when I easily could have.

I step back from the wall, frowning.

Yeah, it’s becoming a problem that I’m here so often.

As if I need any more convincing of that, a fuzzy head rubs against my shin. I glance down, arching a brow at the black and white cat.

“Me again,” I growl quietly.

The cat meows, looking up at me hungrily. He’s also getting far too used to this.

I pull a can of wet cat food from my pocket. The cat licks his lips as I peel the lid back and pour the sloppy contents into his little bowl next to the tiny refrigerator. He immediately digs in like a ravenous beast as I step back, slipping the can into a ziplock bag and putting it back in my jacket pocket.

“Make sure to eat all the evidence.”

As if he needs to be told twice. I scowl when I open the cupboard and glare at the meager contents.

She doesn’t eat nearly enough.

In the bathroom, I poke through the trash, my scowl deepening when I find them: the two snapped burner phones from days ago, still in there. Which means her handler, or whoever is calling the shots here, hasn’t reached out since.

Interesting.

Back in the bedroom slash kitchen slash living room slash closet, I sit on the edge of her bed. I open the drawer of the bedside table, pulling out the little metal tin with a design of a ballerina on it. I open it, glaring at the blade sitting inside, neatly arranged next to a stack of band-aids, a little roll of gauze, and a small bottle of peroxide.

I don’t like that she does this. At. Fucking. All.

I haven’t watched her do it to escape yet—just as a dangerously arousing means of pushing herself over the edge when she makes herself come on this very bed. I’ve watched her do that twice in the past week—both times utilizing the little razor blade to push herself harder and deeper.

It’s intoxicating to watch her bring herself such pleasure from my perch on the roof across the street. Even if it makes me furious to see her mar herself.

It explains the little white lines on her thighs I noticed that night at Club Venom.

It doesn’t account for the crisscrossed pink ones on her back, though.

Frowning at the memory of those particularly brutal-looking scars, I tuck the case away and reach for her laptop. I quickly scroll through her recent search history and smile a dark, hungry smile.

Bad girl.

It’s all the same stuff she was watching on the porn site last week. Ultra hardcore, very realistic “consensual non-consent” porn. A smattering of BDSM. A few minutes of a young woman bound on bench on her hands and knees while a man in a black mask roughly—and I do mean roughly—fucks the complete shit out of her in…multiple holes.

My dick turns to steel in my pants as I picture Una lying in this bed, watching this.

Growing wetter.

Thinking perhaps of me, and the rough, punishing way I manhandled her that night at Club Venom.

It’s been illuminating to see that her interest in sadomasochism wasn’t just an act to get in the door that night. The band on her arm wasn’t a lie. She really does get off on this. What I did to her in that room really is what she craves.

And that’s something I probably shouldn’t know, considering Una is my enemy.

But I can’t stop thinking about it. Just like I can’t stop fucking coming here. Because even when she’s not here, this place has the same effect on me that she did. It’s as if her scent and the aura she has left behind calms me and soothes the demons inside as much as playing with her in the flesh did.

She’s got a delicious darkness in her. Maybe that’s it. Perhaps that’s what calls out to my own fucked-up-ness and assuages the roaring.

She’s a beautiful, broken doll. One that I want to possess. One I’m determined to claim and keep all to myself. But first I need her to bring me to whoever is pulling her strings.

I just don’t know how much longer I can stop myself from taking her.

I get up. Before I leave, I open one of her dresser drawers and run my fingers over the lace I find inside. My finger hooks through the gusset of a tiny little thong—blue, with black palm trees on it.

It gets tucked into my pocket.

I nod to the cat, pleased to see that he’s finished his meal. When he looks up at me, I drag a finger across my lips.

“Not a word.”

Then I’m gone.

Back on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, I head toward the black GTO I left parked in the alley behind Una’s building. Two random fuckers are standing in the opening of the alley, smoking and talking shit to each other. I pay them no attention as I pass, heading toward the car.

That is, until I hear it.

“She told me she lives with her boyfriend when I asked.”

“Nah, man. That’s fucking bullshit. It’s just her and this stupid black and white cat up there.”

I tense, slowing to a stop as I fade into the shadows against the alley wall.

“So, no guy?”

“No guy. No roommate. Just the cat. I’m just saying, bro, it’d be so fuckin’ easy. She cuts through this alley a lot, too.”

The first guy chuckles darkly. “What a fucking stupid cunt.”

“Her stupidity’s our fucking gain, though, right?”

My eyes turn to slits, watching the first guy rub his hands together.

“Or else we just go up to her apartment and pretend to be with the landlord or something. Bet she’d open up, no problem.”

“Oh, she’d open up all right,” the second guy snickers. “For my fuckin’ dick.”

Rage boils inside of me.

“Dude!” The first guy laughs, taking a swig from a bottle in his hand. “Who says you get first dibs?”

“Fuck off, man. That bitch’s fuckin’ ass is mine—”

“Tell me.”

They both start at the sound of my voice. Slowly, I step out of the shadows as they nervously glance at one another, then at me.

My darkness flexes, throbbing just beneath my skin.

“Excuse me? Tell you what—”

“Tell me that you promise to stay away from her. Tell me that you swear you’ll never even look at her, or think of her again, so long as I spare your pathetic, worthless lives.”

The two dipshits glance again at each other, scoff, and then turn back to me.

“Who the fuck are you, her boyfriend?” the second guy snickers.

“Nah, bro,” douchebag number one drawls. “Too old. He looks more like her sugar daddy.”

I roll my shoulders, cracking my neck as I slip my cigarette case out and place one between my lips. I light it with my Zippo without saying a word.

The second guy stares fixedly at me, shaking his head. “If you’re looking for promises like that, you can fuck right off and get your ass out of—”

“You misunderstand.” I drag slowly on my smoke. “I’m not looking to hear your promises. I’m looking to hear your lies. It makes it so much more fun, considering how easy this will be.”

They stare at me.

“Makes what more fun?”

“Yeah, what do you think is going to be easy, pal?”

“Killing you.”

They blink at my blunt words. I drag on my cigarette calmly, my green eyes stabbing through the darkness into them.

“I do so love it when they beg and plead and lie through their teeth.”

The first guy swallows. The second glances at his buddy, then at me. “Get outta here, you fuckin’ weirdo.”

My hand slides from my pocket. The blade glints in the dim light of a laundromat across the street.

The smirks drop from their faces.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” guy number one mutters coldly, lifting his coat slightly to show me the butt of the gun tucked into his pants.

“This is your last chance to walk away, man,” the second guy adds, glaring at me.

I smile thinly. “No… It’s not.”

“The fuck it—”

“It’s yours.”

They glance at each other.

“Man, fuck this guy.”

Problem is, douchebro number one is the kind of idiot who buys a gun for street cred, not because he actually knows how to use it. Or, for that matter, how to even remove it from his fucking pants with any sort of urgency.

Such a shame.

I’m on them in a millisecond, and the eyes of the guy with the gun go wide, his mouth sputtering open as my blade sinks into his stomach. Then again, and again. My knife flashes across his throat, turning his gasp into a wet gurgle as he falls to the ground.

His gun still isn’t out of his pants. Guess it won’t ever be, now.

I whirl on the second guy, easily dodging his wild punch before I grab him around the neck from behind. My blade presses to his throat as he sputters and chokes.

“Please! Please, man! I swear, we were just talking shit about that girl! Just bullshit! I swear to fucking God—”

“God isn’t here right now.”

The blade presses to his jugular.

“Please! I swear I’ll do anything you say! I’ll never look at her! I’ll never even think about her!”

Lies. Desperate, desperate lies.

They always taste so sweet.

“I’ll never come to this fucking neighborhood again, I promise!”

Well, he’s not wrong there.

My arm yanks. Blood spurts against the brick wall beside us. Then I let the sack of shit drop to the ground next to the first.

My cigarette fell out of my mouth somewhere in the last ninety seconds of mayhem. So I pull another out of my case and slip it between my lips. I spark it and inhale slowly, looking down thoughtfully at the two fuckers dead on the ground.

I drag them to the dumpster at the back of Una’s building and cover them with trash. How fitting. I use a half-empty bottle of soda from the same dumpster to wash the blood from the bricks and the ground by the end of the alley. But it doesn’t matter too much. Not in this neighborhood.

I use the sanitizer and wipes I keep in the trunk of my GTO for exactly this purpose to clean up. Then I get behind the wheel and start the engine.

My monster is still growling.

My darkness is still surging and ravenous.

The need is still there, and apparently, simple bloodletting doesn’t do it anymore. It won’t satisfy me.

Not when I’ve tasted her.