Shadowed Heart: A Dark Reverse Harem Romance (A Death So Sweet Book 1)

by Candace Wondrak

  “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, frowning. There was no point in arguing with my brother right now; especially if our father was the one who sent them all out in search of me, they wouldn’t stop until they brought me back. It was best to just go back to the house, tell my father I was fine and dandy. Fucking peachy, really.

  Fucking peachy. If that didn’t describe the state of my life, I didn’t know what did.

  My father might’ve yelled at me a bit. Yeah, he fucking yelled, like I was some child, like I didn’t know right from wrong and went against his wishes or something. I was twenty-six years old; I didn’t need to be confined to this house. I knew how to take care of myself. I wasn’t like Mario. He needed to realize he wasn’t going to lose me, too.

  Although, I was sure he used to think that about Mario, too.

  He had a glare that could cut like a knife, my father. When the gang brought me back to the house, he’d been waiting for me in his office, sipping whiskey from a small glass, literally waiting to pounce on me.

  My father never dressed down; every single meeting was always like a business meeting. He wore a suit that definitely cost over four digits, his black hair trimmed short and slicked back. His eyes were even darker than mine, so dark you couldn’t tell where his pupils ended and the color began. A deep cleft sat in his square chin.

  Richard Luciano was not a man you wanted to fuck with, but even though I knew how the rest of the world saw him, how the others saw him, he was my father. It was near impossible to not sound like a petulant child trying to explain myself to him.

  Again, I was fucking twenty-six years old. I could do whatever the fuck I wanted.

  “You can’t keep me locked up in this house like a child,” I stated, feeling my blood pressure rising the longer I stayed in this office.

  “I am well aware you are an adult, and you are free to do whatever it is you want to do, but you must be smart about things now,” my father told me, his hands clenched as he leaned on his desk, glaring at me. He hadn’t touched the whiskey glass for a few minutes, all his focus on me.

  I laughed, though it was laced with bitterness. “You’re not seriously lecturing me on this when you’ve allowed Mario’s killer to live here, are you?”

  His jaw clenched. “I’m not happy about that either, but Sylvester is handling her well enough. She’s proven she can be relied on for certain jobs, and she is worlds more expendable to me than you or your brother. It’s always good to have bullet fodder, Maddox. That’s something you should know by now.”

  He planned on feeding her to the wolves eventually. Of course the logical part of me knew that, but still, why not kill her now? Why not end all of this now? Surely there could be other bullet fodder we could find.

  “Now is not the time to be reckless,” my father hissed out the words, baring his teeth at me. “Now is the time to be smart.” He pushed off his desk, giving me his back. “But I suppose I should expect this from you; you were never the smartest. Sylvester always had you beat there.”

  His words felt like a knife cutting against my skin, the rage inside of me building. If there was one thing I hated being compared to, it was Sylvester. Oh, Sylvester was so fucking smart, he could never do anything wrong. Sylvester was the star child of the Lucianos, even though he was technically nothing more than a street rat my father had decided to pick up and groom.

  Was I bitter? Yes, but most of the time I didn’t let it bother me. Now, though, after what he’d just said, it nagged at me like an annoying fly that wouldn’t go away.

  “Is that all?” I growled out the words, knowing if I said anything more, it’d only be taken as a challenge, and challenging my father to anything was not something you did if you wanted to live to see tomorrow.

  With his back to me, he muttered, “Yes. Go.”

  I didn’t wait a moment longer; I left the room, fuming at his words. As I walked down the hall, I wondered how the fuck he could compare me to Sylvester. After all these years, didn’t he realize we brought different things to the table? I was the one who went off, while Sylvester sat and calculated everything in his head before making a move. Sometimes, though, you didn’t have time to sit and think. Sometimes you had no choice but to act.

  My destination was my room, and I paced it. Back and forth, riling myself up further. No matter what I did, I couldn’t shake my father’s words, and I felt like it was all pointless. Fucking pointless. How could I ever compare to the amazingness of my brother?

  Anger blinded me. I started tearing the room up, yanking drawers out of dressers and kicking the doors to the closet. I tore off the stupid pictures hanging on the walls and destroyed them. This house… it was nothing but a pretty cage, that much I knew. It’s why Mario never wanted this life, why he stuck to his guns and went off on his own.

  Could I go off on my own, as he did? Could I live a life separate from this fucking family and my last name?

  Not in this city. Everyone knew my face too well by now.

  I didn’t know what I was doing or why I was doing it, but the moment I pulled out one of the smaller drawers in my dresser, I spotted my collection of knives. Switchblades, daggers, hunting knives with serrated edges… I had a bit of everything, because you never knew when something would come in handy.

  The metal on the knives shone in my bedroom light. I reached for one, pulling out a switchblade, popping out the three-inch blade effortlessly. God, I could go for some cutting. Some killing. Something. Something violent and freeing.

  Maybe it was because I, to use my father’s words, wasn’t as smart as Sylvester, but I took that switchblade and left my room. Luckily for me, we had a houseguest who was not family nor a friend, so the rules didn’t apply to her.

  It was late. Sylvester had hopefully gone to sleep. Tony was sent home, while Viper had taken Big Mike’s place at Lola’s side before she was pushed off to bed. At least, I assumed she’d gone to bed, but I guess she was a bit of a night owl, being the Night Slayer and all.

  Hah. The fucking Night Slayer. What a joke. She was nothing but a pretty face, and I was going to cut that face up until she was as ugly as the bottom of my shoe, and then… then I wouldn’t waste a single second more thinking about her or imagining her body beneath mine.

  It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t care. My father’s words had put me on a warpath, and Lola was the only thing within reach that I could hurt. And, fuck, I wanted to hurt someone so bad.

  The hallway near her room was dark, and I paused as I reached her door. It was shut, but I knew Viper was just inside, as was Lola. I heard nothing inside the room, no sounds at all, which led me to think she was in bed, trying to sleep away her pain.

  That girl knew nothing about pain, but I would help open her eyes tonight.

  Breathing out, I reached for the knob and pushed, opening it just enough to slip in. The room was dark, but my eyes were already adjusted, and immediately Viper turned toward me, opening his mouth to probably ask what the hell I was doing here. I didn’t give him the chance, though. I grabbed his shoulder and hauled him from the room, throwing him in the hall and holding the switchblade to my lips, a gesture for him to be quiet.

  When Viper saw the blade in the darkness, he shook his head, reaching for me, but I pushed it out towards him, unafraid to cut him up a bit. He stopped then, sensing I was on a warpath. Anyone who knew me well knew to steer clear of me when I got like this.

  Which was probably too often, but whatever.

  Slipping back into her room, I closed the door and flipped the lock, just in case Viper got any ideas about being her hero. He’d spent more time with her than I had, so I could only imagine how much of his skin she was under, how much he thought about her, obsessed over her. How could he stand and watch her half the day and not let his mind wander to places it shouldn’t?

  Really, I was about to do us all a favor, here. Everyone should thank me after this.

  Everything had happened so quietly, the girl was still in bed. The curtains rema
ined open, silver moonlight streaming through the windowpane and giving me enough light to see her back was to me. Lola lay on her side, blissfully unaware of the attack that was about to happen.

  Sylvester would kill me once he found out what I did, but I didn’t care. If she was going to live under this roof, if we were going to feed her, use her, I had every right to do with her as I wanted. Her life meant nothing to me, so hurting her would mean nothing, too. It would simply be one of the greatest stress-relievers around.

  I stalked toward her bed, gripping the switchblade hard as I went, taking my time in moving to her bedside. Her blonde hair splayed on the pillow around her head like a messy halo, but she was anything but an angel. She was a temptress, a devil in her own way, and I didn’t like the power she somehow held over me, hated that my thoughts went to her too much, too often. She was my brother’s murderer, but my body and mind were swayed by that pretty face and that tight cunt.

  Nothing I could do about the cunt, but the face? That could be marred up, sliced and cut and scarred. I could make her unrecognizable, so hideous and ugly she would never be able to use her looks to lure any man in again.

  I debated on how to do it. Should I wake her up by cutting her? Should I wake her before doing it so I could see the pain flash in those blue eyes as I ran the switchblade across her pale skin? Decisions, decisions. I hated them, I did.

  You know what? I wanted to see her face when I hurt her. I got off on the pain, so why not enjoy myself to the fullest here?

  I reached for the sheets covering her body, tearing them off her, revealing her figure beneath them. She wore satin pajamas, a dark greyish black color in the night, some ridiculous matching set Sylvester had bought her when he got her all those clothes. Shorts that showed off her legs and gave just the barest hints of her ass. When I yanked the sheets back and exposed her, she didn’t move, which I wasn’t expecting.

  Normally, wouldn’t you freak out if you were woken up by someone violently pulling all the blankets off you? Unless…

  Unless she wasn’t asleep. Unless she’d been pretending to be asleep this whole time.

  “I was wondering how long you were going to stand there,” Lola whispered, still giving me her back. Her voice came out low and sultry, smoothing over me but only fueling my rage.

  Grabbing her arm, I turned her toward me, lugging her off the bed. She got to her feet before me, my fingers curled around her arm tightly, not having a choice in the matter. Her big, blue eyes looked dark, shadows dancing across her face as she leveled an emotionless look at me.

  “You think you’re so great,” I hissed out, nails digging into her skin beneath the satin sleeve of her pajama top. “You think you’re the talk of the fucking town. The Night Slayer.” My other hand held onto the switchblade’s metal handle so hard my knuckles were white, and I brought the sharp edge of it to her face, laying it on her cheek, just below her left eye.

  The bitch didn’t even blink, didn’t react at all when the cool steel of the knife touched her skin, and that angered me even more. Right when I thought I’d had enough of this, that I couldn’t possibly get more enraged by anything she did, Lola went and proved me wrong. So very, very wrong.

  She said nothing, though she did tilt her head upwards to watch me. She didn’t glare or do anything like that; she simply stared, acting too emotionless, too calm, considering I’d kicked Viper out of the room and held a switchblade just beneath her eye.

  What the fuck was wrong with this girl?

  A lot of things, clearly.

  My hand on her arm tightened even more. She felt so fragile, so thin, so fucking breakable. How the hell did this girl kill my brother? She looked unremarkable, if more pretty than the average girl. She didn’t have extra muscles, nor did she currently wear the annoying smirk she usually did.

  “Say something,” I hissed out. What fun would this be if I cut her and she didn’t even scream? Didn’t even struggle to fight to break free? Seriously, there’d be no fun in it; Lola would drain this experience of anything good, and I hated it. I hated it so fucking much.

  I hated her. Everything about her. Her looks, the way her body felt beneath mine, how she currently stared at me with dead eyes. I hated how she wormed her way into my head, refusing to leave it. Literally, I hated everything about her, and I wanted to see her burn for her crimes against this family.

  She didn’t belong here, not with us. What did it matter if she looked fucking sexy as hell hitting a man with a baseball bat? The answer: it didn’t.

  Or it shouldn’t.

  “Why?” Lola asked, hardly moving her lips as she spoke. “I have the feeling you’re not going to like anything I’ll say.”

  Growling, I withdrew the switchblade from her face, using my other arm to throw her away from the bed. She stumbled a bit, catching herself, but I was on her the next moment, tackling her to the floor. We lay on the carpet in the silver moonlight, and as I pinned down her legs with mine and held the switchblade against her throat, right where that special, messy artery was, something flashed in the blue of her eyes.

  Amusement? Contentedness? I still couldn’t read her, and it drove me nuts.

  Didn’t she realize what this was? Didn’t she know I was going to fuck her up so badly she’d be unrecognizable after tonight? Never again would she gaze in the mirror and see a pretty, flawless face. Never again would she be able to tempt any man with it. She should be writhing in fear, breathing hard, her heart pounding in her chest like it was going to pop out.

  But she wasn’t. She wasn’t fearful of her life right now, and that ticked me off even more.

  “Tell me,” she whispered, unbothered by the pressure of the blade against her neck or my body laying atop hers. “Do you plan on killing me tonight, or just cutting me up a little?” Lola felt so small beneath me, and she looked so helpless, contrary to the expression she wore. The last thing she was worried about was what would happen, why I was here, and I didn’t understand it at all.

  I leaned my face down to hers, baring my teeth as I replied, “I haven’t decided yet.” The more she gave me that look, the more I wanted to hurt her, the more I felt the beast inside and his hunger for senseless violence.

  This, though, wouldn’t be senseless. This was payback, revenge for what Lola had done to my little brother. This was comeuppance in the worst way.

  I sneered down at her, hissing out, “What? Nothing to say to that?”

  She swallowed, her throat bobbing beneath the blade. Such tender skin, so easy to cut with sharp steel; Lola was at my mercy here and now, but it didn’t seem to bother her in the least. She seemed to accept whatever it was I planned on doing to her, and that… that irked me to no end.

  Why wasn’t she fighting? Why wasn’t she trying to save herself the pain? Why not make this more of a challenge, more fun?

  “Is this why they call you Mad Maddox?” Lola asked. “Because you hurt everything? Because you want to see others bleed? That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You didn’t come here to kill me, not tonight. You came to hurt me, to cut me up and see the blood oozing from the wounds you create.”

  The more she spoke, the more I wanted to stab her—but, at the same time, the more she spoke, the more I realized she was right. And I fucking hated it.

  “Well,” she went on, her voice a bare whisper, so faint I could hardly hear it, and I was mere inches away, “you have me at your disposal. Now, what’ll you do with me, Mad Maddox?”

  I said nothing, though I did suddenly feel how very hard I was. How could I not get hard, having her body pinned under mine, her chest rising and falling, tits pressing against me every time she breathed? How could I not get rock hard when I imagined cutting that little body up and hearing her screams, picturing the stark contrast between her maroon blood and the paleness of her skin?

  Fuck. I came here to hurt her, not to have sex with her, but I might just need to.

  I hesitated. I didn’t know why, but I did. Maybe because this entire
thing wasn’t going how I thought it would, how I expected. Maybe because this girl was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. Maybe because a teeny, tiny part of me wished she hadn’t killed my brother, that we could’ve met under different circumstances. She was wild and carefree, sexy no matter what it was she was doing, the perfect girl for me.

  The perfect girl… and yet she’d killed Mario. How fucked up was I that I still wanted to feel that cunt wrapped around my dick, to have that mouth on my cock? How fucked up was I that I couldn’t stop thinking about her, no matter what I did—including trying to drown myself in another girl? I had plenty; Mina wasn’t my only one, and yet, now, for whatever fucking reason, Mina didn’t cut it. None of them did.

  The only one who could fill the desire in my body was the girl currently under me, the one I held a switchblade to, the one who was waiting for me to make a move.

  “Here’s a tip,” she muttered. Lola then did something I wasn’t expecting. She leaned her head up, pushing against the blade at her throat, causing its sharp edge to dig into her skin just a bit, to break through her soft flesh easily. “Don’t bring a knife to my room unless you plan on using it.” She spoke with the blade cutting her throat, and when she lay her head back down, a thin line of red formed where the switchblade had cut into her.

  Lola acted totally cool with the small injury on her neck, and I did the only thing I could think of to do: I used my other hand to grip that same neck after moving the switchblade aside, starting to choke her. My cock twitched, needing its release, but I was too busy dealing with Lola.

  Her lips parted, and as I choked her, she smiled.

  Ah, there that fucking smirk was, that expression that told me nothing I could do to her right now would affect her in any way. The smile that said, try your best, boy. A mad smile, a crazy one, one no normal girl would ever wear.

  But we all knew by now this girl wasn’t normal. She was a killer, crazy in her own way… just like I was.