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

  “Do you want anything to eat or—” He started to say, stopping when he saw me shake my head yet again in the darkness.

  “No, but I am interested in seeing your room.” A lie. I didn’t want to see this guy’s room, didn’t want to do anything with him. Hadn’t my body been used enough in the last twenty-four hours? Fuck. It was like this night would never end. It was the literal ass-crack of dawn, the hours before the sun rose in the east, and yet the night still stretched on indefinitely.

  Tonight was a night for mistakes and regrets, I guess. Why not go for the home run?

  He gave me a sheepish look, and soon enough we were tiptoeing upstairs. I’d taken off my heels at the front door at his insistence, leaving them near the pile of shoes that I assumed belonged to his roommates.

  One by one we went up the stairs, and I memorized my way back down, where the kitchen was. God, it’d been so long since I’d held a knife in my hands, so fucking long since I did what I wanted to do. The Lucianos had kept me so close that I’d lost all sense of self.

  Dickless No. 2 walked into the room at the far end of the hall. We passed two other rooms with shut doors, where his roommates must be, fast asleep. I stopped beneath the door frame, my lower face itching.

  The mask. I was subconsciously missing the metal mask Sylvester had gotten made for me, the one I wore to all of the jobs, at least when I wasn’t stuck on stage, singing and putting on a show.

  The fucking mask. I wished I had it, that I could’ve taken it somehow. Now, I’d never see that mask again, because if I did… well, they’d either kill me or shut me out after what happened. If Mike and Viper were dead because of me, there was no forgiving that. If Carter and Roman’s girl was hurt because of me, my time in this world was ticking. No, I honestly believed I would never see that beautiful, hand-crafted mask ever again.

  A pity. It was the best battle armor I could ever have wanted. It didn’t protect any vital organs, no—but what it did do was hide my pretty face and strike fear into anyone who looked at me. The mask did what a few gallons of blood could do, only it was a lot cleaner.

  Dickless No. 2 had turned his light on, and he’d finally noticed that I didn’t follow him into his room. He stood near the bed, turning to face me, his expression soft and full of concern. “Are you okay? We don’t—we don’t have to do anything—” He fumbled with his words, and as he did so, I studied the room.

  Clothes everywhere. It was a mess. What I imagined a room for a college student would be, or someone who just recently graduated. He had a TV on his dresser, along with pictures of what I assumed was his family on his nightstand.

  I met his worried eyes, and for a moment, I was taken back, back to a time that wasn’t so long ago, a time that had me face to face with someone I never wanted to see, not ever again. My breath caught in the back of my throat, and I fought the familiar feeling that crept up my spine and invaded my lungs.

  Stifling. Choking. No amount of air could put me at ease.

  “Can I use your bathroom?” I managed to say, sounding hardly like myself at all. Not the Lola Harding I was, nor the Dolly Queen I was pretending to be. I sounded like a little girl who was deathly afraid of what would come next.

  “Uh, sure, it’s—”

  “I saw it,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I said nothing else, turning on my bare feet as I moved through the dark hall. As I went, Dickless No. 2 angled his door shut, closing off some of the light from the hall, maybe to not wake his friends. Who knew? All I knew was that when I reached the bathroom door, I wasn’t going in.

  Oh, I’d flip on the light and shut the door, so it looked like I was inside, but I wasn’t actually going in there.

  When the light was on, with my hand on the doorknob, I tossed a glance over my shoulder, just to make sure Dickless No. 2 wasn’t looking. He wasn’t, so I shut the door and went down the stairs, past his roommate’s rooms. My feet drew me to the kitchen, and now my eyes had become more used to the darkness.

  Their kitchen was a mess. The sink was full of dishes, and I assumed it was due to the fact that this house had no dishwasher. Ugh, how miserable. That was one modern convenience that I would never go without, not if I could help it.

  They didn’t have a knife block with a multitude of knives sticking out, so I had to go searching, being as quiet as I could. Quiet like a fucking mouse. After some searching in a few drawers, I found the silverware one, where they kept their mismatched knives as well. None of them looked particularly sharp or new—in fact, some of them had rust on them, which told me they were cheap as hell—but I pulled out the sharpest-looking one.

  It would do.

  And, anyway, as long as you stabbed in the right place, you could cut someone up with nearly anything.

  Gripping the semi-rusted handle of the knife, I pushed out of the kitchen and started up the stairs again. From what I saw, the upstairs was where the bedrooms were, while the downstairs was pretty much just the kitchen and living room. It wasn’t a big house; it was small and cramped, full of shit.

  Now, I know what you might be thinking, so let me put your goodie little two shoe mind at ease: I wasn’t going to kill Dickless No. 2. No, I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. The bastard seemed too nice, and after the night I had, I was not quite myself. My hunter radar must’ve been broken after everything, so instead of killing Dickless No. 2, I was going to do him a favor and kill his roommates instead.

  Surely that would make him happy, right? Surely it would free him from something or other. And, if it didn’t, oh well. At least I didn’t meet his roommates at the club. At least I didn’t know if they were good people or not. They’d be sleeping, and then they’d be dead. Simple as that.

  It took me but a moment to reach the first doorway, and with the knife in one hand, I quietly opened the door and went inside.

  You know what happened after that, right?

  You… you don’t? Well, I suppose I could explain how I went in and sliced the neck of the dude sleeping in that room. I could explain how the moonlight streamed through the curtains hanging over the window, how it gave me just enough light to see the blood oozing from the deep wound. He may have locked eyes with me, but by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late. I got that important artery, and he bled out shortly after that, his bed stained with the red stuff.

  Me, too. His blood had squirted out in a fountain of gore, gushing and spraying me, coating my chest and my arms with the wet, warm stuff. I couldn’t help but smile down at him, silently cooing to him as he breathed his last breath, pointlessly struggling even though his strength was gone almost immediately.

  That was blood loss for you.

  When he was dead, I went to his other roommate’s room, my feet moving silently across the carpet.

  Again, I was an angel of death. Again, I gave his roommate a sweet, semi-painful death. This one, I noticed after his eyes opened, had blue eyes. In the darkness, their color was almost like my brother’s. Such a pretty hue, so similar to mine.

  He tried to scream, and even though it was too late, even though his neck had already been cut, I held a hand over his mouth, leaping onto the bed and straddling him, holding his head still. He was weak, he would die in seconds, and yet those fucking blue eyes kept staring at me.

  Me. Me, me, me. It was always me, but why? Why the fuck couldn’t it be someone else for a change?

  My mind made no sense, and even though the action only got me messier, I brought the bloodied knife down to the man’s chest, stabbing him in the heart over and over—much like I did to my father years ago. Stupid eyes. Stupid hands. Stupid people who thought they owned the world.

  Thought they owned me.

  But no one could own me, and I would make damned sure the world knew I would have no leash. And if I did, if I went back to the Lucianos and they miraculously took me back into their chaotic fold, it was only because I wanted it, because I desired their control and their leash. There was a key difference there, clearl
y. Fucking consent.

  Consent was such a hard thing for people to grasp these days. Everyone was an asshole of their own making. No one was nice anymore. No one but Dickless No. 2. Why, oh why couldn’t he just be another prick? Why couldn’t he think with his dick instead of sounding so gentle and easygoing?

  Now his roommates were dead, and it was all because he’d brought me home.

  The guy in the sheets below me was long dead, his chest torn up with my knife. Blood had gotten everywhere on me, and I let my shoulders slump as I yanked out the knife. His body jerked, his eyes stuck open, pupils dilated. He definitely pissed himself, but the air was too full of the metallic twang of blood for me to notice.

  I took my time in sliding off his body, tripping somewhat as I landed on the floor. I still held onto the knife as I entered the hall, too lost in my own head to realize the light had been flicked on by someone other than me.

  “What the…” Dickless No. 2’s voice came from near his room, and I turned my head to see him standing there, mouth agape, watching me with eyes ridiculously wide.

  I gave him a smile, a smile I was certain looked quite crazy, and said, “You might want to call the police.” I said nothing else, and for a moment, we simply stared at each other. It was like he was afraid to break eye contact with me, lest I decide to lunge at him and kill him next.

  Nah. I’d gotten enough blood tonight, I think.

  Just to prove to him that I wasn’t planning on it, I dropped the knife. It fell to the carpet below, adding to its many stains by splattering droplets of blood as it collided with it. Still smiling, I said nothing, turning away from him and walking down the stairs. I didn’t plan on being here when the police came, you see. Nah, that wasn’t my jam. I wasn’t going to make it easy for them to catch the Night Slayer.

  If they wanted me, they’d have to figure out just who the fuck I was. As far as I was concerned, I’d made it easy for them. No wig tonight, and I wore the same dress I’d worn to the Gilded Rose’s opening night. My fingerprints were everywhere, as they usually were, and this time there was a witness who was still alive.

  Like, come on. They had to catch me after this one.

  If the police had me, Bianca couldn’t get her claws into me, and my brother… even Harding money couldn’t pay for bail for a fucking serial killer. People like me were a menace to society, a danger, and we were locked up and never let out.

  A part of me thought Dickless No. 2 would prove his name wrong and take the knife and try to stop me, try to kill me or something for what I did to his roommates—and also probably his friends. You didn’t live with people you hated.

  But he didn’t. He didn’t stop me, nor did he call out for me. I bet, once I was out of sight, he went straight for his phone and was currently calling all the emergency services that could come. The police, ambulances, the whole nine yards. In the end, it wouldn’t matter. Poor Dickless No. 2 didn’t yet realize his roommates were deader than a doornail.

  Or doornails, plural? Ah, you know what, I don’t even know, because I don’t understand that saying at all. Sue me.

  I walked out of the house, barefoot, not bothering to stop and pick up my heels. I walked out of that house covered in blood that wasn’t mine, grinning a psychotic grin, and for just a split-second, I forgot the night’s previous events, forgot the reason why I was here in the first place.

  Chapter Two – Lola

  But, you see, I can’t really forget it forever. Reality would come crashing down on me eventually, so it was why I was purposefully walking on streets that had cameras. Streets that had other people walking in the early dawn hours—the people who had to wake up and go a job at the ass crack of dawn but needed their fix of coffee first.

  Oh, yes. Everyone steered clear of the girl drenched in blood. I actually walked quite far, for so long the sun was starting to come up, for God’s sake. Like, did anyone bother calling the police, or was a pretty girl wearing red just a normal occasion for this fucking city?

  Eh, probably the latter, with how much of the city the DeLucas and Lucianos owned. Like, all of it. Even the police were in one pocket or another. I supposed attracting attention was the stupidest thing I could do, but at this point, what did it matter? All the running I’d done was for nothing, because my brother was here.

  He was here, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

  And Tony… I shouldn’t feel betrayed, but I did. I was stupid, I’d been so fucking stupid for believing he was different. I couldn’t even say why I felt like that, I just did. Tony had the game memorized; he knew what to say and how to say it to get you to do whatever he wanted. Manipulative little cur. I hated him almost as much as I hated my brother.

  And that was saying something, trust me.

  I eventually came upon a quaint little park area, where the flashy buildings of the city gave way to greenery and trees. With the sun rising in the distance, the sky was a watercolor of pinks and oranges, and I reveled in how empty the park was. No people nearby, none walking their dogs before work or getting an early-morning workout. Just me.

  Finding a bench, I sat down, facing the road. This way, I’d see whatever came for me. Whoever came, I mean. Whether it was the police or someone else, did it really matter? They would come, for I’d walked by dozens of people and cars. So many eyes had seen a pretty blonde girl covered in blood.

  Tick, tock went the clock. I tilted my head upwards, humming to myself, a faint smile on my lips. Someone would come. I knew they would. You didn’t walk through a city while drenched in blood and not hear sirens eventually. That, or have a gun pulled on you.

  Oh, how fun that would be, huh? I wondered what it felt like to be shot. I’d felt so many things in my life, so the possibility of being shot was more of a curiosity than anything else. Yeah, yeah, we already knew I was fucked up. Moving on.

  I thought back as I lowered my gaze to my hands, which sat on my lap. Palms up, fingers outstretched, they were bloodied hands, the one a bit scarred up from my freak-out session in the bathroom at the Luciano house, but all in all, they were pretty, dainty hands, covered in blood as they were.

  Why wasn’t I strong enough to act? I had a shot, had a clean shot. I had quite possibly the only chance I’d ever have, and I let it slip through these fingers like my chance was nothing but air, ungraspable. I was a fool, a fool who was nowhere near as strong as she thought she was.

  I was weak. So very weak.

  Weak and stupid, because I knew since I didn’t act, history would find a way of repeating itself, and when it came to my history, none of it was good. You’d think I would’ve known by now to act, to do something, but when the moment came, when I had a clean shot at him, I froze. I choked up. I acted like the me of ten years ago instead of the me I knew today. God, I was so pathetic.

  Even though it was the last thing I wanted to remember, I pictured him.

  I’d just walked out of the hotel, just left the gaudy and shiny place full of lights, and I’d rammed myself into a stranger’s chest. At least, until I laid eyes on him, I’d thought he was a stranger.

  He wasn’t, though. He was the very opposite of a stranger, so familiar to me it was like a weird sense of deja vu had swept over me, devouring me whole.

  His arms had shot out, hands gripping me to help steady me. Maybe he’d thought I was a stranger too, a stranger who wasn’t looking where I was going. It didn’t take too long for him to realize that I was not just a random blonde girl wearing a fancy dress. I was his dear sister.

  Aiden Harding’s blue eyes widened somewhat, his grip firm on my arms as his lips slowly curled into a smile. The night’s wind ruffled his short blonde hair, a shade darker than mine. He was tall, thicker than I remembered him being. The nose that used to seem a size too big for him, he’d grown into these past few years.

  He no longer looked like a rich, spoiled boy. He looked like a haughty, smug, rich man.

  “Lola,” he spoke, drawing out my name almost excessively, as if he couldn’t
believe I was here. “Sister, how I’ve missed you.”

  I said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Perhaps he had missed me, or rather, missed the nights when he would sneak across the hall and slither his way into my bed, put his hands on my mouth and tell me through whispers that everything was okay, that he loved me, that he needed me.

  They would’ve been sweet words, had they come from another lover, but from my brother? They were ugly, hideous words that still haunted me to this day.

  And his hands. God, his fucking hands felt even stronger than they did before. How was that possible?

  Actually, no. Scratch that. How was any of this possible? The mere fact that Aiden was here, so far from home, coming to the exact hotel I was leaving after I happened to stumble upon it after basically being kidnapped… I mean, what were the odds? Literally, tell me the fucking odds, because I bet it was pretty damn astronomical.

  Or was it miniscule? Whatever.

  My tongue refused to work. I could say nothing, only stare up at him and blink as if I was currently laying eyes on a ghost. He might as well be. I wished he was. My baby brother, here. This could not be happening.

  But it was. It was happening, and with everything else that had already taken place earlier tonight, I could feel what little grip of my sanity I had left slipping away. This was crazy. This was… fuck. What was I going to do?

  What would he do? Would he try dragging me back home? Would he want to have me locked up in some asylum or something because of what I’d done to our parents? He had to know it was me; why else would I have disappeared the same night my parents were killed? It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

  “What?” he spoke when I could not, after a hard minute had passed between us. “You don’t seem happy to see me.” The way he said it, as if he just could not understand why it would be I wasn’t thrilled to see his face here. He would never admit to any wrongdoing. In his eyes, nothing he’d ever done to me was bad or wrong.