HATE ME HARDER ( a dark revenge romance)

Raven Noir, stolen and sold at birth, a lethal assassin scarred by a decade-old rape, infiltrates billionaire Damien Blackwood's elite nightclub empire as stripper, her cover to get close enough to torture and kill the man who unknowingly fathered her daughter. Damien, captivated by her icy control and commanding presence, pulls her deeper with lucrative nights and charged intimacy. But when he encounters her identical twin, the buried memories flood back. Mistaking the twin for his victim, guilt drives him to propose marriage. Devastated, Raven faces an impossible choice: expose the truth, seize her revenge, or let obsession destroy them all in a dark, slow-burn thriller of betrayal and forbidden desire.

Chapters

Chapter 6

Chapter 6:

RAVEN'S POV

The SUV dropped me three blocks away from my apartment at the early hours of the morning.

I walked the rest, hood pulled low, heels swapped for sneakers in the back seat. The duffel over my shoulder felt heavier tonight, cash bundles from three private rooms, the mask and wig stuffed deep, the faint scent of cigar smoke and client cologne still clinging to my skin.

My jaw ached from the last booking, thighs burning from kneeling on hardwood, but the real pain was deeper, seeing damien from a very close range and not gutting him out burned on me like a brand I couldn't scrub off.

I turned the corner onto my block and froze.

Exotic cars lined the curb. Not the usual rusted sedans or delivery vans.

Fleets of them, matte-black G-Wagons, gleaming Lamborghinis, a Bentley with windows so dark they swallowed light.

Seven in total, parked like a silent army.

No plates visible.

Engines off, but the air felt alive with threat.

This street didn't see cars like this and it troubled me.

Panic surged through me, cold, sharp, flooding my veins like ice water.

Lila.

She's alone, i left my daughter all alone for the night.

My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I tasted copper. I dropped low, using a parked junker for cover, scanning windows, rooftops, shadows.

No drivers visible, no movement.

My hand slipped to the thigh sheath, fingers brushing the blade.

Pulse kicking to ninety, then one hundred. I forced it down. Control, i always control myself.

But the fear was alive now, crawling under my skin, whispering, too late, too fucking late.

I moved fast, sticking to shadows, circling the building. Back entrance clear.

Up the fire escape, rusted metal creaking under my weight, each groan sounding like a gunshot in the quiet. My window was locked, curtains drawn. No breach.

Front door then.

I circled back, breath shallow, heart hammering so loud I swore the night could hear it. The building door was propped open, just an inch. Someone had jammed the lock.

Panic took full control. Visions flashed, Lila's room, small and safe, her bear clutched under chin, gray eyes wide with fear.

I shaked the off my head as fast as it came.

No. Not her. Not my baby.

Composure snapped into battle mode. Knife out, gun corked, I pushed the building door open with my boot, body angled low. Hallway empty. Stairs clear. Third floor, my door.

Slightly open. Two inches. Light bleeding from inside.

Fear for Lila's safety clawed at my throat, rawl.

I swallowed it.

Pushed the door open with the knife tip, hinge creaked. The living room came into view,table lamp on, tea mug steaming on the table. Lila wasn't on the couch. No blood. No struggle signs. But the air smelled wrong, expensive cologne, cigar smoke, danger.

I stepped inside, knife low, gun raised high, and the door clicked shut behind me.

Oscar lounged in my armchair like it was his throne.

Black silk shirt unbuttoned at the chest, sleeves rolled to reveal forearms corded with old scars and faded tattoos.

Dark hair slicked back, eyes black as bottomless pits.

A predator wearing human skin, smiling that slow, thin smile that showed too many teeth.

He swirled a glass of my cheap bourbon, ice clinking like tiny bones.

"Hello, pet."

The word slithered through the room, deadly and intimate.

I kept the knife raised, gun aimed at his chest. "We had a deal," I said, voice flat but edged with steel. "You never show up in front of my daughter."

Oscar's smile widened, eyes glinting with amusement and something darker. "Ohhh, my pet..." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, glass dangling loosely.

His voice was velvet over razor blades, low and predatory, like he was toying with prey before the kill. "But you broke your part of the deal first."

I didn't move. My mind raced. Lila's door was closed, but Oscar's men were definitely outside. If he wanted her, he could have taken her.

"I don't whore for you," I said, words sharp. "I only kill for you. You do not own me or my body Oscar!"

He chuckled, low and wet, like blood bubbling in a wound.

"Ohhh, but you got it all wrong." He said, setting the glass down with deliberate slowness, stood in one fluid motion that made the room feel smaller. Taller than most men i know, shoulders broad, moving with the grace of a panther stalking. The air thickened with his presence, cigar smoke, expensive leather, the underlying threat of violence. "I own you.

Everything about you. Your hands. Your blades. Your nights. Your secrets. You work for me."

Tension coiled in my gut. "What do you want?"

"I heard news." He said, circling me slowly, predatory, never touching but close enough I felt the heat from his body. His breath brushed my neck as he paused behind me.

"Unpleasant ones, Raven. You've been playing in someone else's sandbox. Damien Blackwood's little playground.

Letting rich men drool over what belongs to me."

My jaw clenched. "It's a cover Oscar, It gets me closer to a target."

"Closer to a target?" Oscar stopped in front of me, leaning in, his face inches from mine. His eyes locked on, unblinking, deadly. "Or closer to a cock? I saw the footage, pet. The way you drop to your knees. The way you control them. Very... professional. But you forgot who taught you control."

I pressed the gun to his throat, steady, not shaking.

"How did you get those videos? Is Damien aware of it?"

"Don't pet."

"I have eyes all over the country, even men like Damien's world can still be penetrated."

He didn't flinch. Just smiled wider, pressing into the edge enough to draw a thin line of blood.

"Your daughter is ten already." His voice dropped to a velvet growl, dangerous and intimate. "Stick to your part of the deal... or she will complete it for you."

Cold sweat broke across my back, my forehead. "Please," I whispered, the word tasting like ash, breaking from my lips despite the gun in my. "You won't do that to me."

Oscar tilted his head, studying me like prey, his smile predatory, eyes gleaming with cruel delight. "Begging already? That's new." He reached out, slow, brushed a knuckle down my cheek, gentle, almost tender, but the touch felt like poison.

"Seems like your little night at Velvet reservoir already softened you.

Come to Darkar. Tomorrow by midnight. We can discuss there. Just you... and me."

He stepped back, casual, as if he hadn't just threatened my child. "Midnight tomorrow. Bring nothing but yourself. I'll send a car."

He moved toward the door. Paused. "And Raven?"

I didn't answer.

"Don't make me come collect what's mine."

The door opened. Closed. Silence rushed in.

I stood frozen, gun still in drawn, breath ragged.

Then the soft creak of a door handle.

Lila's bedroom door swung open.

My daughter stepped out, rubbing sleepy eyes with one fist, stuffed bear dangling from the other hand. Hair mussed, oversized T-shirt slipping off one shoulder.

"Mommy?" Her voice was small, thick with sleep. "Why are you standing there with that?" she said pointing at the gun in my hand.

My heart cracked open.

I dropped the gun. It clattered on the floor.

Lila blinked, confused. "Mommy?"

I crossed the room in three strides, dropped to my knees, pulled her into my arms so hard she squeaked. Buried my face in soft hair that smelled like strawberry shampoo and safety.

"I'm keeping for a friend, baby," I whispered, voice breaking for the first time in years. "I'm right here."

Lila hugged back, sleepy and trusting. "Was someone here? I heard voices."

I closed my eyes. "Just a bad dream."

I held tighter.

But the fracture in my chest was now a canyon.

And midnight tomorrow was coming fast.

Continue to next part

My entire family was slaughtered three years ago by Alistair Kirkland, the usurper who stole the underworld throne. I was the only survivor. Smuggled out of New York as a child, I was trained in the shadows to become a flawless weapon. Now, at sixteen, I returned to the city that was supposed to be my graveyard. But the New York I returned to was a suffocating cage. Kirkland didn't just wipe out the Valenzuela bloodline; he branded my few surviving loyalists as traitors. He paraded my men down the streets in heavy iron chains, letting the very people we once protected hurl rocks at them. He bought the doctors, ensuring my wounded soldiers would bleed out in the dark. Even worse, the mother of my only ally—Julian Morgan—secretly sold us out to a Chicago warlord just to keep her archaic grip on power. I stood in the shadows, watching an eleven-year-old boy get his head smashed with a jagged stone just for defending his father's honor. How could the city my grandfather built cheer for our extermination? Why did the old guard prefer to cower and die in the dark rather than fight the monster who stole our home? "Ghosts don't knock on my door, Athena. What do you want?" Julian asked me. I tossed a blood-stained ledger of Kirkland's deepest secrets onto his desk. "I'm here to help you take back what's yours, and burn Alistair Kirkland's empire to the ground."

Action Mafia Modern

9.0

Jilted Bride's Revenge: The Valkyrie Awakens

9.0

I had been a wife for exactly six hours when I woke up to the sound of my husband’s heavy breathing. In the dim moonlight of our bridal suite, I watched Hardin, the man I had adored for years, intertwined with my sister Carissa on the chaise lounge. The betrayal didn't come with an apology. Hardin stood up, unashamed, and sneered at me. "You're awake? Get out, you frumpy mute." Carissa huddled under a throw, her fake tears already welling up as she played the victim. They didn't just want me gone; they wanted me erased to protect their reputations. When I refused to move, my world collapsed. My father didn't offer a shoulder to cry on; he threatened to have me committed to a mental asylum to save his business merger. "You're a disgrace," he bellowed, while the guards stood ready to drag me away. They had spent my life treating me like a stuttering, submissive pawn, and now they were done with me. I felt a blinding pain in my skull, a fracture that should have broken me. But instead of tears, something dormant and lethal flickered to life. The terrified girl who walked down the aisle earlier that day simply ceased to exist. In her place, a clinical system—the Valkyrie Protocol—booted up. My racing heart plummeted to a steady sixty beats per minute. I didn't scream. I stood up, my spine straightening for the first time in twenty years, and looked at Hardin with the detachment of a surgeon looking at a tumor. "Correction," I said, my voice stripped of its stutter. "You're in my light." By dawn, I had drained my father's accounts, vanished into a storm, and found a bleeding Crown Prince in a hidden safehouse. They thought they had broken a mute girl. They didn't realize they had just activated their own destruction.

Action Modern Romance

9.7

Mafia's Captive Desire

9.7

He leaned in, inhaling her sweet scent as his hands traveled from her back to her waist, and then down to her thigh. She felt her breath hitch as she let out a small gasp. "We shouldn't be doing this." She said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Then tell me to stop." His voice was low, daring, as his fingers traced slow circles on her skin. *** Lucy had always lived life on her own terms, until the night everything changed. One moment, she was free; the next, she was bound to Barry Cooper, a cold, dangerous man who ruled the underworld with an iron fist. She never expected to be trapped in a world of power struggles, deceit, and unspoken desires. But as the lines between captor and captive blur, Lucy realizes she's caught in a deadly game, one where trust is a luxury and survival is not guaranteed. Will she escape the ruthless mobster who owns her... or will she become his greatest obsession?

Action Adventure Mafia

8.6

Marrying His Rival: The Jilted Wife's Sweet Revenge

8.6

"Her blood type is a match. It’s the only option." I froze outside the conference room door, the quarterly reports digging into my ribs. I knew that voice. It was Ben, my husband’s best friend and doctor. But the next voice, cold and devoid of warmth, shattered my world. "Then we do it," my husband Ethan said. "Chloe cannot wait any longer. If Ava is the match, then Ava is the solution." For the past month, Ethan had been obsessed with my health, insisting on daily "vitamins" and endless checkups. He called it love. Standing in that hallway, I realized he was actually shopping for spare parts. "She is your wife, Ethan," Ben argued weakly. "You can't just harvest her like a crop." "She became my wife because she was useful," Ethan replied, his indifference cutting deeper than any scalpel. "Now, she can be useful for this." The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. The nausea I’d been feeling wasn't stress. I was pregnant. And those "vitamins" he fed me every morning? They weren't supplements. They were poisons designed to ensure I remained a viable donor. He was killing his own child to save his mistress. To him, I wasn't a partner. I was livestock. An asset to be liquidated for parts. I didn't burst into the room. I didn't scream. I walked away in silence, my hand hovering over my stomach. He wanted my kidney? He wanted to carve me up? I decided right then. I wouldn't just leave. I would terminate the pregnancy, fake my death, and burn his entire world to the ground.

Action Modern Romance

8.9

Pregnant With The Ruthless Billionaire's Secret

8.9

Aubree Hamilton was the top-tier executive assistant to Wall Street's most ruthless titan, Beck Franco. A month ago, she made a catastrophic mistake and spent the night in his bed. Thinking she had erased the mistake with a morning-after pill, she panicked upon his return and lied about being engaged to push him away. But Beck, a man who despised disloyalty above all else, immediately suspended her and ordered her escorted out of the building. Her nightmare only escalated when her toxic ex-boyfriend attacked her on the street, tearing her purse open and exposing the empty morning-after pill box to the public—and to Beck, who was watching from his penthouse. After having his security rescue her, Beck trapped her in his car, ruthlessly tearing apart her fake engagement. Later in her apartment, the suffocating tension between them almost ignited into a kiss, but a violent wave of nausea suddenly hit Aubree. She shoved him away with all her strength and violently threw up in the bathroom. Beck took it as the ultimate physical disgust. He walked out, deeply humiliated and dangerously obsessed, unleashing his resources to investigate her every move. Left alone and trembling, Aubree finally checked the crushed white box. The pill she took had expired a month ago. Staring at the two bright pink lines on the pregnancy test, she made a desperate vow: Beck Franco could never know she was carrying his child, and she had to disappear before he found out.

Action Billionaire Mystery

9.4

Taming The Sinner: The Doctor’s Cold Game

9.4

I stood before the double doors of the master suite, my hand hovering inches from the polished brass. As a surgeon, I was trained to steady my heart before a cut, but the silence in the Alexander estate felt like the heavy, oppressive pause that always preceded a scream. I pushed the mahogany door open to find my fiancé, Authur, tangled in Egyptian cotton sheets with a woman named Jasmine. The air was thick with the scent of expensive cigars and a floral perfume that wasn't mine—a brutal reality check just twenty-four hours before the merger meant to save my family from total ruin. Authur didn't look guilty; he looked amused, coldly telling me to close the door because I was letting in a draft. When his parents unexpectedly arrived, I was forced to hide his mistress and pretend our "intensity" had ruined the room, donning his discarded shirt to look disheveled just to protect the Lawrence family stock price. The humiliation only deepened on our wedding morning when Authur issued a sadistic ultimatum over the phone. "Wear your scrubs to the altar—the ones covered in blood—or I'll watch your father's company go belly up by lunch." He wanted to turn our wedding at St. Patrick’s Cathedral into a public execution of my dignity. I walked down the aisle in shapeless navy cotton and crimson stains, enduring the horrified gasps of the elite who labeled me an "insane gold digger." Authur stood at the altar, reeking of whiskey and malice, certain he had finally broken me and turned my professional oath into a circus act. But as the priest began the vows, I looked at the man who thought he owned me and realized I wasn't his victim—I was his surgeon. I had the footage of his debauchery ready to play for the world, and as we shared a punishing, hateful kiss for the cameras, I knew the real war had only just begun.

Action Modern Romance

HATE ME HARDER ( a dark revenge romance)

Chapter 6

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