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 8

CHAPTER 8:

RAVEN'S POV

The car rolled to a stop at exactly 11:58 p.m. outside a hulking, windowless structure on the far edge of Red Hook, Brooklyn, former meatpacking plant turned fortress.

No signs, Just razor wire curling over chain-link, floodlights sweeping the perimeter like searchlights in a prison yard, and four armed bouncers at the gate who looked like they ate nails for breakfast.

The driver didn't speak. Just nodded once toward the entrance.

I stepped out, no weapons, that would be a very deadly idea. Just black jeans, long-sleeve thermal, boots, hair in a tight knot.

My heart was a war drum in my chest, but I kept my face blank.

I'd kissed Lila goodnight three hours ago.

Told her I had a late meeting.

Maya the only friend that i have had from horrible days at darkar, stayed over, eyes sharp with worry.

"If you're not back by dawn," she'd said, "I'm coming for you." I nodded once, didn't argue.

The bouncers didn't ask for ID. One of them, very huge, neck like a tree trunk, earpiece glinting looked me up and down, then jerked his head. "Boss is waiting."

They flanked me as we walked through the gate. Metal clanged shut behind us.

The air changed immediately, heavy with diesel, sweat, cheap perfume, and something metallic underneath. Blood, maybe.

The main entrance opened into what they called the clubhouse. Dim red lighting, bass so deep it vibrated in my teeth. Concrete floors sticky under my boots. A long bar lined with men in suits and leather jackets.

Girls moved through the crowd, collared, barely dressed, eyes vacant. Some on leashes. Some kneeling at feet, mouths working.

One girl was bent over a high-top table, skirt hiked, a man taking her from behind while his friends watched and laughed.

She wasn't moaning. She was rather making muffled broken sounds swallowed by the music.

I kept my eyes forward, trying to shut the memories of my horrible past here. The bouncers didn't let me slow.

We passed the main stage, three poles, three girls, all naked, twirling and shaking asses in perfect rhythm.

One dropped low, thighs spread, fingers sliding between her legs while men threw bills.

Another climbed the pole upside down, legs splitting wide, holding the pose while a client reached up and slapped her ass hard enough to leave a red handprint.

She didn't flinch. Just smiled, the empty, practiced smiles all girls were tortured into learning here.

The third girl was on her knees in front of a man in a booth. He had her hair fisted, forcing her head down, thrusting violently into her mouth. She gagged, tears streaming, but he didn't stop. His friends cheered. Money changed hands like it was a show.

My stomach turned. I'd killed men like these.

Seeing this all laid bare, raw, brutal, again made me remember the past.

What they had done to maya.

This horrible place wasn't anything like Velvet reservoir.

This was a slaughterhouse for girls.

The bouncers pushed me through a side door marked PRIVATE. The music muffled. The corridor narrowed. More doors lined the walls, some closed, some cracked.

Moans leaked out. A girl's scream cut off abruptly. A whip cracked somewhere. Flesh slapped flesh. Chains rattled.

We passed an open room, two girls on their knees, naked, hands cuffed behind backs.

A man in a white coat, doctor, maybe, examined them like livestock. Flashlight in one girl's mouth. Gloved fingers between another's legs. "This one's tight," he said. "Good price." The girls didn't move. Didn't look up. Just stared at the floor.

Another room, a girl tied to a cross, lashes across her back, fresh red welts overlapping old scars. She was shaking, sobbing quietly.

A man stood behind her, belt in hand, stroking her hair like he loved her. "You'll learn," he murmured. "You always learn."

I swallowed bile, and kept walking.

The corridor ended at a heavy steel door.

One bouncer knocked twice, opened the door and pushed me inside.

Oscar waited inside.

The room was larger than the others, high ceilings, massive bed in the center draped in red silk, chains hung from the ceiling, leather couch, bar, dim red lighting that made everything look bloody. No way to escape this deadly place except the door behind me, and the tiny window, big enough for a seven year-old to fit in.

He sat on the couch, legs crossed, same black silk shirt from last night, a big cigar in hand. Just him.

"Pet," he said, voice low, pleased. "You came."

I stood in the doorway, arms loose at my sides. "You didn't give me a choice.

Oscar laughed softly. "I always give you a choice. You just never make the smart one."

He gestured to the couch opposite him. "Sit."

I refused his offer, standing instead. "What do you want?"

He studied me for a long moment, eyes roaming my body like he was cataloging every inch.

Then he stood, slow, deliberate. Crossed the room, and stopped inches from me, close enough I could smell the alcohol on his breath, and the cigar on his clothes.

"I want obedience," he said quietly. "I want loyalty. I want you to remember who owns you.

His hand moved fast. Fingers closed around my throat, not choking yet, just holding, firm, possessive.

His thumb pressed against my pulse point, feeling it race. With his other hand he caressed, slow, deliberate, down my side, over my hip, up my waist, tracing the curve of my breast through the thin thermal.

His touch was light, almost gentle, but the threat was in the grip on my throat.

"I own you," he whispered, mouth close to my ear. "Every breath. Every heartbeat. Every secret you think you're hiding. You want to work for him. But you forget, you belong to me."

His fingers tightened slightly blocking my air-way.

My vision edged black. I didn't fight, not yet.

I let him feel the pulse under his thumb, fast, but steady.

"You think you can get Blackwood by whoring for him?" Oscar murmured, lips brushing my ear. "He will end you the moment he figures out who you are. He will take your precious daughter away from you pet. But i? I will protect you, the girl who crawled through broken glass at fifteen. The girl who killed for me. The girl who still comes when I call."

His hand slid lower, cupping between my legs, firm, possessive.

I stiffened, but didn't pull away. He pressed harder, rubbing once, slow.

"You're wet," he said, almost surprised. "Even now, in this situation, your sweet, sweet body keeps producing fluids. That's why I keep you, i can never get enough of you, my sweet pet."

I swallowed against his grip. "Let go."

He tightened instead. "Beg again. Like last night."

"Please," I forced out, voice hoarse. "Let go."

He smiled, slow, cruel. Released my throat, and stepped back.

I sucked in air, coughing once, hand rising to touch the red marks he'd left.

"Good girl," he said, returning to the couch. He sat, legs spread, glass in hand. "Now sit. We have business to discuss."

I stayed standing. "What business?"

"A contract job, i clean kill tomorrow night." Oscar sipped, eyes never leaving mine. "Client want's it as fast as possible.

Other details will be sent to you by morning.

I didn't react. This was what i do. Who i am.

A sharp tool, in Oscar's hand.

"Also, Raven, about mr Blackwood, something has to be done."

My stomach dropped. "No, nobody touches him except me."

"No?" He laughed, low, dangerous. "You forget. I own your daughter's life too. One word, and she disappears. Or worse. She completes your contract. Ten years old. Old enough to learn the trade."

Cold rage flooded me. "You touch her, I kill you slow."

Oscar smiled wider. "Then do what I say. Blackwood will be eliminated, you will back to me. Or lose everything."

I stared at him, heart pounding, fury twisting together. The room felt smaller, air thinner. I thought of Lila, her trusting face, her innocence.safe in her bed right now.

Oscar stood again.

Crossed to me, grabbed my throat once more, harder this time. Choked me with one hand while the other caressed down my chest, over my stomach, between my legs again. Pressing, rubbing, claiming.

"I own you," he whispered, lips against my ear. "Every inch. Every breath. Every tear.

After you mission, you will come back here. On your knees. Where you belong."

He released me. I gasped, coughing, vision spotting. He stepped back, satisfied.

"Ohhh sweet pet," he said, voice soft, almost tender, grinning wide. "I kept a surprise for you."

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 8

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