Violent Heart: A Dark Reverse Harem (A Death So Sweet Book 3) Read online

  Violent Heart

  A Death So Sweet: Book Three

  Candace Wondrak

  © 2021 Candace Wondrak

  All Rights Reserved.

  Book cover by Melony Paradise at Paradise Cover Design – Premade Book Covers Group

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  Chapter One – Lola

  Chapter Two – Lola

  Chapter Three – Sylvester

  Chapter Four – Lola

  Chapter Five – Viper

  Chapter Six – Lola

  Chapter Seven – Maddox

  Chapter Eight – Lola

  Chapter Nine – Viper

  Chapter Ten – Lola

  Chapter Eleven – Lola

  Chapter Twelve – Lola

  Chapter Thirteen – Lola

  Chapter One – Lola

  Everyone steered clear of me on the streets, and that was exactly how things should be. No one should get within a few inches of me, their eyes eating me up like I was a piece of meat. No one should dare to look me up and down as if I was placed on this earth for them. I wasn’t. I was Lola fucking Harding, and I was here for no one.

  Of course, people were staring at me, but they gave me a wide berth as they did so, so opposite what usually happened to such a pretty face like mine. It might be because my feet were bare; I had no heels, no shoes. Not even any socks. My soles were rubbed raw a bit, after using them bare on the concrete sidewalk, but I couldn’t feel the pain.

  If you knew me by now, you’d know I didn’t really feel pain. Not in the sense that it hurt me, stopped me from whatever it was I was doing, or taught me a lesson. No, pain and I went way back, and honestly, I had gotten used to it. After drowning in so much agony and misery growing up, a gal kinda got used to feeling like she wanted to die, you know?

  That electric chair… oh, God, what I wouldn’t give to go back to a simpler time, when I wasn’t stuck between two warring mafia families, when all I wanted, when all I dreamed about, was getting caught and dying in one of the most public ways possible.

  I was a serial killer, in case you forgot. The Night Slayer. A girl who hopped from club to club and bar to bar and went on the hunt, turned things around on the men.

  Boo-fucking-hoo. Men had it good. They had it so good in this world they could pretty much get away with anything, and I was sick and tired of it… and that was another reason why everyone on the sidewalk halted in their tracks and hurried to move out of my way as I walked through the city’s streets on this fine, cool morning.

  I was covered in blood. The dress I wore was no longer elegant and refined-looking; it was a homage to what I was, a canvas that had been painted with a dark maroon. Still wet, too. Not dried. It was all so recent.

  Everything was.

  The lights were dark, but they flashed every few seconds, blinding if you stared directly into them. Multi-colored, they were reflected in the mirrors and glass on the walls near the bar, on all the sequins and fake jewels on the clubbers’ clothes. So many people were here to dance the night away, get wasted and hook up, and I…

  Well, I could hardly remember why I was here, how I got here. All I knew was that the night was winding down, so I had to make a move if I wanted to make this night special.

  The heels I wore clicked with every step I made, not that you could hear them over the music—the music was so loud and deafening in the club, you could feel the beat in your bones and your soul. If you had a soul, that was. Me? I’d lost mine a long time ago, but we already knew that, didn’t we?

  Yes, yes we did. We knew I was a soulless, sick thing. We all knew I was a girl that needed some help. A whole lot of it. All the therapists and drugs in the world, though, could not undo what had been done to me all those years ago.

  As I thought about it, as I danced and surveyed the club for my next target, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a diabolical sound, a mad giggle, or at least I assumed it was, since I couldn’t hear myself over the music. The laugh of someone who was completely and irrevocably insane, someone who didn’t give a shit.

  Because he was back. Because he was here. Because… because everything had gone to shit in one night, and it was all because of me.

  I could’ve gone back. I could’ve told the Lucianos all about what Bianca DeLuca had told me, what she wanted me to do—hell, I could’ve gone to the Lucianos and done exactly what she wanted me to, too. I could’ve killed both Maddox and Sylvester, and neither one of them would’ve seen it coming.

  But I couldn’t. As broken and as fucked up as I was, I couldn’t kill the men who’d brought me back to life. I couldn’t kill them, not after everything we’d been through, not after they’d made me theirs so frequently and violently. They were men after a heart, after a love that could not exist. Surely they knew that?

  Viper and Mike, Roman and Carter and their girl—who knew what happened to them. It’d been a, what did that bastard say? A three-pronged attack? It wasn’t just me they wanted to steal. They wanted to hurt the Lucianos while also getting me alone, and what better way than to hurt Carter’s girl?

  I felt kind of bad, but me feeling bad didn’t really say much. I always felt bad, you see. I hardly ever felt good. The only time I felt truly good was when I was with one of them. Maddox, Sylvester, even Viper. And now… now all that was over.

  It was. I knew it was. There was no way they would ever take me back, no fucking way they’d let me walk into their home as if I’d never left. Not after meeting Bianca. Not after learning the truth.

  And the truth? It was messy. I was used to messy truths after my childhood, but the water here was murky and muddy. Bianca had a sister, and she was Maddox’s mother. Bianca had orchestrated her death, just as she was behind getting Tony to convince me to poison her father. The Bloody Princess had earned her name, truly.

  I should’ve killed her, but everything had come as a shock to me, so I did little more than sit there and listen to her, let her threaten me with helplessness. As if the bitch thought she could threaten me, me, a goddamned serial killer, into doing her bidding. She and I could have a wonderful partnership, sure, if I laid down like a dog and did as she wanted, whenever she wanted.

  I wouldn’t. I refused. And, like I mentioned before, I should’ve stuck a knife in that bitch’s stomach and watched her squirm.

  Who did I blame for my lack of action? Not myself, because hello, I was never to blame for anything. Duh. No, the person I mostly blamed for my zoning in and out was the traitor. The traitor and his hands, among other things. Hands which I so desperately wanted to see again, if only so I could cut them off and make it so they never touched anyone ever again.

  Hated hands, I really did. I hated them all. The things hands could get away with… they were not like dicks. They weren’t tucked away at most times, forgotten about. No, hands were always there, always visible, and they always had a way of lying to you.

  Speaking of…

  Two strong hands found their way to my sides as an equally strong body slipped behind me, grinding against me. I’d long since gotten rid of the gloves I’d worn, an
d I knew the dress on my body was just a bit too fancy for a club like this, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. It wasn’t like I had a full wardrobe to choose from. Not right now. Right now, I was on my own, as if time itself had rewound and plopped me back into my hunting days.

  Back to the good ole days when I hated men and everything they stood for, because they could get away with it all. Who believed the victim? Who believed the ones meant to protect the little girls of the world only ended up hurting them? No one wanted to face the truth, so I did. I faced the truth, held it before my victims, and then listened to them drown in their own blood.

  It was a sight to see, trust me. You didn’t live until you watched someone die, all the while knowing that the world would be a better place without them in it.

  I’d been in the club a while, got a few drinks from some men who were trying to get lucky. I had the drunk girl act down pat by now, having practiced it for so long. When you did nothing but put on a show for other people, you tended to be a great actress. I owed that to my lovely parents, I suppose, so thank you, Mommy and Daddy.

  Thank you and fuck you.

  With the stranger’s hands on my sides, I tried losing myself to the rhythm while keeping myself just a hair unsteady and off-beat. Just a few seconds slow, enough to let the man behind me believe I was almost done partying for the night and that tomorrow’s hangover would be legendary.

  My mind blocked everything out as I thought: he’s here.

  Well, not here here, but the bastard was in town. I’d seen him. I’d spoken to him. I’d… let’s just say I hadn’t done nearly enough. I didn’t do anything. Even after all this time, it would seem Aiden Harding still had power over me, as pathetic as it was. And it was pretty damn pathetic.

  After everything that monster had done to me, under his blue-eyed stare, I still felt like the little girl who didn’t dare scream at night, because it was pointless. My parents never came to my aid, they never helped me. In fact, they thought taking me to a doctor and having him sterilize me was helping me, the twisted fucks.

  I was too crazy for kids, I know. I wouldn’t make a good mother. If I could have children, I would be deathly fearful of being a worse mother than my own was. There was no way in hell I would ever trust myself with the well-being of a child.

  But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t ever the point. The point was, that should never have happened to me. My parents knew what my brother was doing to me, and they should’ve helped me. They should’ve stopped him. Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. Indeed, they should have done all those things, because now they were dead.

  Ugh, fuck them. Fuck my brother. Fuck Tony. Fuck every single man who thought he had the right to put his hands on me and his dick inside of me because I had a pretty face. Fuck this fucking face and the big blue eyes on it that seemed to be an open invitation for the sleazebags of the world. I was so tired of all of it.

  I turned around, grinding against the man’s front, finding that my new dance partner was a rather tall fellow. I stared at his chest, at his Adam’s apple and the way it bobbed up and down with each swallow. He wasn’t exactly my kind of attractive, but he wasn’t bad. His dick was semi-hard after dancing with me, so I figured he was just waiting for what he thought was a signal from me.

  A few more songs, a harder cock… we danced until the club closed down and everyone who was left was pushed outside by the bouncers. By that time, the man had his arm around me, helping to keep me steady as we walked down the sidewalk, away from the club’s doors.

  “You parked around here?” he asked.

  I shook my head, taking a bit of a stumble on my heels as I said, hiccupping first, “I took the bus.”

  “I could take you home, if you want—”

  My eyebrows furrowed, and I tried to push the confusion away. That wasn’t right. He was supposed to take me back to his place so I could kill him. Didn’t he know how this was supposed to work?

  I turned my head up at him, leaning my head on the arm he had wrapped around me. “Why don’t we go back to your place?”

  The man, who must’ve been around my age, looked like he was unsure, which I found strange. Was my act not good enough tonight? Had tonight gone wrong? With everything else that had happened tonight, it wouldn’t surprise me, but come on. I wanted this. I needed this. Trust me, if there was one thing in the world I needed, it was to feel the smug satisfaction that only came with watching a douchebag die and his blood fill his sheets.

  “I have roommates…” He started, trailing off shortly after, as if the fact that he had roommates killed whatever was between us.

  Roommates, huh? Hmm. While I normally liked to be alone with my prey, perhaps him having roommates would make tonight a bit more fun. More of a challenge. Maybe it would help me forget how I got here in the first place.

  And by that, I meant who I was with before, whose face I’d stared at for the first time in years, a face I had never wanted to see again. A face that knew what I did, what he did, and was totally unapologetic.

  Oh, yes, seeing my brother had pushed me off the deep end, I was afraid. What Tony did led me to the edge, and Aiden pushed me over it without hesitation. I was falling, falling so hard and so fast into a pit of pure blackness, and I feared I would never see the surface again, never find my way out. I would forever be locked in this place, in this dark, dank place in my head, where all I wanted to do was find a release that was impossible for me to attain.

  Peace. I could never have peace.

  I set a hand on the man’s chest, purring out, “I don’t care.”

  And that was that. Whatever doubt I had about this guy faded; it sure didn’t take much to convince him to take me home, wherever home was. My conscience, how little and bleak it was, would be clear.

  He led me to his car, which was parked across the street, helping me into the passenger’s side before getting in. A regular car, not something anyone with money would have, which was good. No more killing the sons of high-profile families. Not me, anyway. Someone else could take up that mantle while I reveled in the people who didn’t have money flowing out of their assholes.

  I was glad to see the scenery morph from the downtown flashy buildings to a more homey district, a place where the houses were not three or more stories, where their yards were not acres upon acres surrounded by high stone walls and wrought iron gates. Just a normal neighborhood. Very average.

  Not once in my life had I ever known average anything. Being a Harding, things were kind of stacked against me from the beginning.

  He pulled into a driveway, parking behind two other cars that held quite a bit of rust on them. He looked almost sheepish as he glanced at me. “This is home,” he said. “My roommates are probably asleep.”

  “Do you go out clubbing by yourself often…” I let my voice stop, and when he told me his name—Nick—I decided I didn’t like it. He would be dubbed Dickless No. 2. Not too creative, I know, but I was rather fond of Dickless No. 1 and what killing him had done for me.

  Who knew? Maybe after killing this guy, other cool things would happen. Like, suddenly I wouldn’t be so psychotic anymore. A gal could hope, right?

  “I actually lost a bet with them. I don’t really get out much. They told me I couldn’t leave the club until it shut down…” He stopped himself from saying anything more, as if he thought he was digging himself into his own grave. He was; he just didn’t know it.

  “Your friends weren’t there,” I reminded him. “How would they know if you left the club early and went somewhere else?” Like a restaurant or a bar or something. But the more I looked at him, the more I realized neither of those places was Dickless No. 2’s kind of place. He was cute, yes, but he was kind of a nerdy cute, if you know what I mean. Nowhere near Sylvester or Maddox’s sexiness… or Viper—

  Fuck, no. I shouldn’t be thinking about any of them. Get them outta your mind, Lola, and get them out now. They are the last people you should be thinking of, after everything. Do
you think they’ll want you back after what happened? It was all because of you, because Bianca wanted you. Don’t be an idiot.

  A great pep talk, huh?

  Dickless No. 2 laughed quietly, and we both got out of the car, walking towards the front door as he fumbled with a key in his pocket. His erection had since disappeared, but it wouldn’t take much from me to make it come back, I knew. “I’m not really a liar—” This time he abruptly stopped, meaning it was time to tell him my name.

  “Dolly.” I decided to use my stage name from the Gilded Rose, not wanting to be Lola right now. The Night Slayer, yes, but Lola? Nah. That bitch could stay hidden for a while.

  The smile he gave me then was sheepish and innocent, and as I watched him unlock the front door to the house he and his roommates surely rented, I was frozen for a few moments, wondering if I should leave. If I’d made a mistake. If, somehow, Dickless No. 2 didn’t deserve the havoc I would wreak upon him shortly.

  He seemed kind enough, but I knew men enough to know that their kindness always came with a price. Surely he was acting so kind and soft-spoken because he wanted something from me. I… I didn’t know what I would do if he wasn’t trying to get a little action. But then, I supposed, it would be too late, so what would it matter?

  Guilt. Guilt wasn’t something I ever felt, so I didn’t have to worry.

  No lights were on inside the house. It was a pitch-black place, a small two-story home full of old furniture and pictures on the walls that I couldn’t quite see through the darkness. It looked like a cheap, old house a group of college students were renting because they couldn’t afford anything else.

  Maybe that’s what this guy was. Maybe he was in his last year of study. Maybe he was applying for graduate school or something. Maybe he would make a life for himself that was worlds better than the fate I had in store for him tonight.

  Too bad, so sad. He wouldn’t be getting it anymore. Not with me here.