Corrupted Heart: A Dark Mafia Enemies To Lovers Romance
Corrupted Heart: Chapter 1

A chilling sensation drags up my spine, razor-sharp as the tip of a knife. I can feel my throat constrict, as if an invisible, malicious hand is squeezing. The fine hairs on the back of my neck prickle as my eyes widen.

He’s getting closer.

His hand is on the bedroom door now. The knob twists silently, shadows lengthening over the bed like funeral shrouds as he billows into the room, a cloud of black smoke⁠—

“What the fuck are you reading?”

It takes everything I have to stifle the scream that rises in my throat. My heart literally stops for a millisecond and pure adrenaline explodes through my system as I whip around, almost dropping my tablet on the dressing room floor in the process.

Alicia’s staring down the bridge of her nose at me, wearing her trademark haughty, smug look that would give Regina George a run for her money. As usual, her number two, Irena, stands next to her and just a few deferential inches behind her.

Can’t upstage the queen herself, after all.

I glance around the backstage dressing room, realizing I’m the last one here aside from Alicia and Irena. The wall clock, under which Madame Kuzmina has pinned a sign that reads “time is everything”, tells me rehearsal ended forty minutes ago. But I left off on a cliffhanger earlier, and I had to read the next chapter as soon as rehearsal ended. So I stayed.

“Seriously,” Alicia cocks a well-manicured brow, tucking a lock of blonde back into place. “What the fuck is that?”

I can feel my face blush darkly. “Nothing. It’s just⁠—”

Before I can finish my sentence, she snatches the tablet out of my hand. Irena crowds closer to her, their eyes fixated on the e-book open on the screen. Immediately, they both make grossed-out faces and then start to laugh.

“Bitch, you cannot be serious with this.”

My mouth tightens slightly. “It’s just this book⁠—”

“About a girl getting hacked to death in her own bed by a psycho?” Alicia raises her eyes from the screen to my face. “Bianca, hon, this is why you’re single. FYI. This horror shit is creepy as fuck, and honestly, it’s super weird that you read it.”

I frown as I snatch the tablet back. “It’s not horror. It’s true crime.”

Alicia and Irena share a look.

“Like, it’s not fiction,” I try to explain. “It’s about a real murder, a girl named Rachel Dawson⁠—”

“Yeah, so, anyway…” Alicia says quickly, cutting me off. She arches her brow again as she cocks a hip. “Whatcha doing right now?”

I hate the spark that ignites inside me. I hate that I’m excited that it really sounds like she’s about to ask me to hang out.

All of us who dance with the Zakharova Ballet are the best of the best. I mean I probably learned first position before I could even walk. I’ve poured hundreds of thousands of hours into honing my craft, and given up so much to be here.

I’m good. I’m really good. The Zakharova, under the frosty and merciless direction of Madame Kuzmina, is one of the top ballet companies in the world.

But Alicia Houghton, disproving everything you want to believe about karma, is the best of us. Yes, she’s kind of a bitch. She can be mean, catty, and haughty, and is acutely aware of her position as the most likely to be the next one promoted to soloist.

Because of that, she’s also the reigning queen bee of the corps de ballet, surrounded by her little posse of suck-ups like Irena.

The thing is, Alicia’s just snooty enough to be annoying. But she’s not cruel enough to make you want to avoid her completely. The fact that she’s supremely talented, beautiful, and cool makes it even harder to ignore her.

You kinda want to hate her. You also kinda want to be her. Which is why despite part of me wanting to have nothing to do with Alicia, the other part of me perks right up when she asks what I’m doing.

That’s the allure of cool.

None of us is immune to it.

“Nothing?” I shrug.

It’s not a lie, either. I had plans to do something with Milena and Naomi after rehearsal. But Naomi got called in last minute to cover at the bar she works at, and Milena had a family thing she couldn’t miss.

…And by “family thing”, I assume she means “mafia thing”. That kinda goes without saying when your father is Marko Kalishnik, head of the Kalishnik Bratva.

I mean, I get it. My dad, Vito, is the don of the Barone family, after all.

But as good as Milena, Naomi, and I are, we’re not Alicia-level good. We’re also not in her band of mean-girl suck-ups. Actually, if you want to cast this whole thing as a high school movie, my two friends and I would probably be the freaks in black who sit at the weird-kid table in the lunchroom and don’t get invited to parties.

“Well, you’re doing something now,” Alicia grins at me. “C’mon.”

She turns on her heel, along with Irena, and starts to waltz out of the dressing room. Like that’s the end of the conversation.

“Um, what?”

Alicia sighs heavily, stopping and turning to give me a look that says I’ve just committed the ultimate social faux pas.

“Are you in or out, Bianca?”

I’m smart enough to know that asking “for what” pretty much guarantees this conversation is over and that I will not be going with Queen Alicia on whatever her adventure is. So I shrug as casually as I can and slip my tablet into my bag.

“Oh, in. Totally in.”

She grins. “Good. C’mon.”

I glance down at my “outfit” nervously before raising my eyes to her. Alicia looks great, of course. She’s already showered, her hair is done immaculately. Her makeup is perfect, and her outfit is cute. Irena’s the same.

I, on the other hand, am in B-team leggings and a hoodie, with my long hair up in its usual bun, with zero makeup. I also didn’t shower after rehearsal, because I don’t shower here.

I can’t.

“I… Should I go home and change⁠—”

“You’re fine. C’mon.”

I know Milena would roll her eyes hard enough to sprain something if she saw how quickly I jump to my feet. But she’s not here, and you know what, give me a freaking break. I mean I love the friends I have. But it’s not like you make a lot of them when you’re a mafia don’s daughter with three extremely overprotective older brothers.

I leave my dance bag in my locker and quickly follow the two of them out of the dressing room. We exit out the back of the Mercury Opera House, which houses the Zakharova Ballet, and then climb into Alicia’s Tesla. I manage to hold my tongue for all of three minutes more before I clear my throat.

“So, where…”

Irena grins as she lifts her eyes to the rearview mirror, looking at me in the back seat. “An adventure.”

My brows knit as I chew on my lower lip. I glance out the window as Manhattan passes by us. Then I open my damned mouth again. “What, uh… What kind of adventure?”

“The mayhem kind,” Irena grins.

I’m pretty sure she didn’t say that to calm my nerves. In which case, bravo. Anxiety gnaws at my stomach as I glance out the window again. Irena is Russian Bratva-adjacent. Her cousin, Grisha Lenkov, besides being a major creep, is an avtoritet for the Chernoff Bratva.

He’s also Alicia’s on-again/off-again boyfriend.

Remind me why I got into this car?

Alicia drives us over the Williamsburg Bridge, then deeper into Brooklyn, until the hipster bars and ironic coffee shops have given way to a truly industrial area. Alicia pulls into a dark parking lot next to a closed-down diner and turns off the car.

I now fully regret agreeing to this.

“Um…”

“Don’t be such a scaredy cat. It’s fine,” Alicia sighs as she steps out. Irena shoots me a mean-looking grin before she gets out, too. I slowly follow suit as Alicia hefts a duffle bag out of the trunk.

“Alicia.”

She turns to me. “Yes?”

“What are we doing?”

She sucks on her teeth, grinning a little. “Just something for Grisha.”

My stomach knots as my eyes drop to the duffel bag.

“Don’t…” Her grin fades as she shakes her head. “Don’t ask. Seriously. But it’s going to be fine. He wouldn’t have asked me to do this for him if it was dangerous.”

Bullshit.

I’ve met Grisha once or twice before when he’s come to pick Alicia up after rehearsal. Calling him a “creep” is like calling Jeffery Dahmer “a guy with strange eating habits”. He’s a dick to Alicia, rude to pretty much everyone he sees, and almost definitely arrives early to pick her up just so he can walk into the dressing room while everyone else is still changing.

Alicia closes the trunk and hefts the duffel bag again. “C’mon, let’s go.”

She starts to walk across the empty parking lot and around the side of the shuttered diner. Irena is right behind her, with me hanging further back.

“Okay, seriously…” I look around nervously as we come around to the back of the diner: an alley with brick walls, a rusted-out dumpster, and only one way in…or out. “Alicia, what are we⁠—”

“So, Grisha sends his bitches to do his deliveries for him now?”

My heart lurches into my throat. Whirling, my face goes white when I see the two men now standing behind us at the entrance to the alley. They’re both built, with lots of visible tattoos on their necks and hands, and dressed in dark suits with no ties.

One of them is a bit taller than the other and seems to be the one in charge. He elbows the second guy and then nods his chin at us with a grin.

“So, you girls come with the coke or what?”

What the fuck.

My eyes rip sideways to stare at the bag in Alicia’s hand.

Coke? As in cocaine?!

Suddenly, I realize I vastly underestimated the bad juju vibes I got earlier when Irena said we were doing “mayhem” tonight.

This isn’t an adventure.

We’re doing a fucking drug deal for Alicia’s scumbag boyfriend.

For a second, I consider just bolting from this scene and not looking back. But even though I’ve never been at a drug deal before, I do know this world—at least, well enough to realize that running right now would be a very, very bad idea.

Alicia shrugs nonchalantly. “Yep. It’s all here. Seven kilos.”

Holy shit.

I don’t know much about drugs. But I do know seven freaking kilos is a ton of cocaine.

“Grisha said you’d have the money⁠—”

“You misunderstand.” The taller guy grins salaciously at us. “I didn’t mean did the coke physically arrive with you. I meant do you girls come with the coke.”

His grin widens, and suddenly, my blood turns to ice as he and his buddy pull guns out of their jackets. Alicia’s face turns white. Her lip trembles.

“I…Grisha said⁠—”

“Grisha’s a fucking idiot,” the shorter of the two guys chuckles. “Put the bag on the ground, sweetheart. And then—all three of you on your fuckin’ knees.”

Bile rises up my throat as he grins at his friend.

“Looks like Grisha sent us a thank you present for taking the seven kilos off his hands.” He turns back, his eyes landing on Alicia. “Dibs on the blonde.”

The taller one smiles darkly at me. “Fine by me. I get hard for Italian bitches.”

My gaze whips to Alicia and Irena, just as their horrified gazes turn to me, then to each other. The two men begin to approach us, when suddenly, Alicia winds back and hurls the duffle bag right at them.

“RUN!!” she screams.

For a horrible millisecond, I’m frozen where I am, unable to do anything but watch Irina and Alicia shove past the men and go bolting out of the alley. But then, I lurch into action. I whirl, sprinting forward to the mouth of the alley.

“Fucking bitch.”

My whole world turns to fear and ice as a strong arm wraps around my middle and yanks me back, hard. I scream as I’m thrown roughly to the ground, landing with a wince as gravel and grime bite into my palms and knees.

A weight slams into me, shoving me flat onto the ground as a gun cocks loudly.

“Please!”

The men chuckle. I choke in pain as my knee is torn up even more by the gravel, with the weight of one of the men on my back pinning me down.

“Since you asked so nicely, bitch,” one of them snickers. I hear the sound of a belt buckle opening. “You get both of us.”

Tires squeal on pavement, and my heart drops.

“Looks like your little friends left you, baby,” one of them growls darkly. “Guess it’s just you and us now.”

“Remind me to thank Grisha next time I see him,” the other guy chuckles as he starts to kneel down by my head.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God…

“Please—” I choke. “Please don’t…”

“Shut the fuck up and open your fucking⁠—”

His words abruptly stop with a sickening, gurgling sound. Wetness splashes the asphalt next to me before the man kneeling in front of me is suddenly yanked away sideways. The weight comes off my back, and I roll away and scramble to my feet.

To freeze in horror.

One of the men lies dead in a huge puddle of blood, his neck slit wide open. The other is a few feet up in the air, his eyes staring and terrified, pinned to the wall at his back with a hand wrapped around his neck.

A huge hand, at the end of a huge arm, attached to a huge beast of a man.

The guy squirming against the wall tries to raise his gun. Instantly, the huge man pinning him to the wall slashes with a blade. My would-be attacker screams, blood splattering the wall as he drops the gun and his arm goes limp. Deftly, the huge man slashes again.

My eyes go wide and my whole world turns to ice as the giant’s blade rips open the other guy’s throat. Blood gushes out like a tsunami as the huge hand lets go, letting the second attacker drop to the ground.

Wordlessly, his back to me, the huge, hulking shape dressed in black with a hood up over his head walks over to the duffel bag. He turns it upside down, dumping seven bricks of white powder onto the ground. I’m still frozen and unable to form words or complete thoughts as I watch him slash each plastic-wrapped brick open and dump the contents down a sewer drain.

Slowly, he stands, flexing his shoulders and straightening up tall.

And taller.

And taller.

My feet are rooted to the ground as the man slowly cocks his head. He twists around, and suddenly, my hand flies to my mouth.

He’s not just huger than huge.

He’s wearing a mask.

All black, with two glowing white neon X’s for eyes, and a wide, demonic, smile, also etched in glowing white neon.

Holy fucking shit.

He turns to face me fully, his head cocking slightly to the side, as if he’s studying me wordlessly.

He’s still holding a knife in his hand.

It’s still dripping blood.

This is it. This is how I go, like one of the unsolved mysteries in my true crime books. Like Rachel Dawson. Another Jane Doe that will wash up a week from now on Brighton Beach without dental records or fingerprints.

He takes a step toward me. My pulse whines like a siren in my ears. My body goes both icy cold and explosively hot in the same instant as he continues to move toward me. My mouth opens and closes. My eyes bulge as the leering, neon mask of pure malice stalks closer and closer.

He doesn’t slow. He doesn’t stop. And when he’s inches away from me, I gasp sharply as his black-gloved hand jerks up and wraps like iron around my throat. I stare up—and I do mean up, he’s like a foot and a half taller than me—into the neon mania of that mask, with the throbbing pulse of darkness behind it burning into my soul.

“Phone.”

The word rasps like metal scraping against metal as it tumbles from his mouth. His voice is deep as thunder, and I can smell a slightly spicy, clean scent on him.

“Wh-what?”

“Your phone,” he rasps again, a little more edge in his voice this time. “Give it to me.”

I nod quickly, shaking all over as I jam my hand into my hoodie pocket and yank out my phone.

“Take it!”

I shudder when his other hand brushes mine when he tears it out of my grip. His head doesn’t move, those neon X’s just burning right into my eyes as he looms over me.

“Unlock code.”

I shiver.

“Code,” he snarls again. “Now.”

Somehow, I manage to remember my numbers, watching as he thumbs them into the phone, opening it. His neon eyes stay locked on me, but I’m sure his real ones—that is, if he’s not actually some sort of demon from Hell—are scanning my phone for God-knows-what as he taps away on it.

“I—I have money!” I blurt. “Like, my family does! Please! You can ask for whatever you want⁠—”

“I’m not robbing you.”

He suddenly thumbs the phone screen back to black and shoves it back into the pocket of my hoodie. His hand lingers there, and I tremble when I feel the back of it brush against my stomach though the fabric. He does it once more before drawing his hand out of the front pocket. He presses a finger lightly to my sternum, and my breath halts as he slowly drags it up—between my breasts and then higher before he wraps that hand around my throat.

His head tilts slightly to the side, and I can feel the psychotic wrath as whatever eyes lurk behind those neon X’s eviscerate my soul.

“What did you see here tonight?”

Even though I’m terrified. Even though I’m shaking. Even though my brain is almost numb trying to process this…

I’m not an idiot.

“Nothing!” I blurt. “I didn’t see anything.”

“What happened to those men?”

“Nothing!”

He stays rigid like that, his head still tilted at a slightly deranged angle, saying nothing. Finally, his hand drops from my neck, but not quickly. It’s more like a slow, almost sensual stroke of his gloved fingers over my soft skin and throbbing pulse as he releases me.

He steps back from me and his voice rumbles out again, like a boulder grinding a smaller rock to sand.

“Remember what you saw here tonight.”

“I didn’t see anything,” I whisper, shivering.

He’s motionless in the gloom of the alley.

“I’ll be watching you, prinkípissa.”

He steps backward into the shadows, sinking into them like black ink swallowing a white page.

Then he’s gone.