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 9

Chapter 9:

Raven's POV

The contract landed in my encrypted inbox at 2:17 a.m.

three days after I walked out of Darkar with Oscar's grin still crawling under my skin and his last words ringing like a death knell: "I kept a surprise for you."

Target: a woman.

Age: 68.

Location: private residence, Southampton, Hamptons.

Payment: $750,000 on confirmation.

Notes: advanced dementia, make it clean, no witnesses, no trace.

A photo of a woman was sent, a basic floor plan, security rotation, and a single line: "She's kept on the second floor, east wing, white room."

I didn't hesitate.

Another message popped up my phone, another photo Oscar sent me, i opened it and it was an image of Lila asleep in her bed, taken from outside her window. A reminder, one wrong move and my daughter becomes payment.

The house was a fortress pretending to be a beachside estate. White stone, manicured lawns rolling down to the Atlantic, windows that caught moonlight like knives.

Perimeter cameras every twenty feet, motion sensors buried in the grass, eight armed guards on rotation, two Rottweilers patrolling the grounds.

I spent two nights in the dunes with binoculars and patience, memorizing patterns.

The woman never left the second floor, curtains always drawn, no visitors, only a maid who brought trays and left with them untouched.

I took the maid on the third night.

She was leaving through the service gate at 11:43 p.m., trash bag in one hand, phone in the other. I came up behind her in the shadows of the hedge, arm around her throat, blade to her kidney. "Scream and I open you from the back," I whispered.

She froze, muffling down a scream down her throat, trembling like a leaf.

I dragged her into the dunes, zip-tied her wrists, taped her mouth, pressed the blade against her throat until she nodded frantically.

"Where is she kept?" I asked, pulling the tape down just enough.

Tears streamed. "Second floor... east wing... blue room... please... I have kids..."

"Code to the service door?"

"7-4-9-2."

"Guards on that floor?"

"Two. One outside the room. One in the hallway."

I taped her mouth again, zip-tied her ankles, left her bound behind a dune. She'd be found in the morning, alive, i don't kill innocents unless I have to.

The service door code worked, i slipped inside, kitchen dark, stainless steel gleaming under moonlight through the window.

I moved up the back stairs, avoiding cameras, sticking to shadows. Second floor hallway marble, crystal chandelier, oil paintings worth more than my life.

One guard at the far end, back to me. I came up behind him, arm around his throat, knocking him out blade pressed to his kidney.

He dropped without a sound. I dragged him into a linen closet, zip-tied him, gagged him with a towel.

The white room door was unlocked. I pushed it open.

The woman was in a wheelchair by the window, facing a small portrait on the nightstand.

Thin white hair, frail shoulders under a pale blue robe, hands folded in her lap like she was praying.

An elderly?

The room smelled of lavender, old paper, huge bed in the corner, IV stand empty, She didn't turn when I entered. Just stared at the portrait, a soft, vacant smile on her lips.

I stepped closer, knife low, one cut, quick, clean, that's all it would take.

As i got closer and took a proper look at her, She looked... harmless. Plain, lost, dementia, the brief said.

She didn't even know I was there. Her fingers trembled as she reached for a portrait, a boy maybe eight years old, dark hair, serious eyes, storm-gray gaze staring straight at the camera.

My breath caught.

The eyes.

Lila's eyes.

The same shape, same intensity, same impossible gray. But a younger male.

The woman whispered something soft, broken words I couldn't catch. She stroked the frame like it was alive. Eyes glistering with unshed tears. "My boy... my sweet boy..."

I looked around the room. No other photos.

Just this one boy. And a single silver frame on the dresser, the name "Eleanor Blackwood." Inscripted on the frame.

the elderly woman but, younger, smiling, arm around a man who looked like an older version of the boy in the portrait. The man's face was scratched out, deliberately, viciously.

The realization hit like a blade between my ribs.

Eleanor Blackwood.

Damien Blackwood.

The uncanny resemblance between the young boy in the portrait and my daughter Lila.

She was Damien's mother.

The contract was to kill Damien's mother.

I stood there, knife in hand, staring at the woman who had no idea who i was or what i was about to do.

Lila's life was along the line, and i can't let anything happen to my daughter!

*******************************************

DAMIEN'S POV

I woke up with a sharp pang of pain on my entire body.

Blood had soaked through my shirt, drying in stiff patches that pulled every time I breathed. My wrists were tied behind an iron chair, cold metal biting into skin.

The room was concrete bare bulb overhead, no windows, smell of rust and damp and old blood. A basement, or a warehouse.

I tested the ties, too tight, my gun was gone, phone gone, jacket gone, shirt torn open, wound exposed.

bullet entry, no exit. Through-and-through. Bleeding had slowed, but infection would start soon if it hadn't already.

I felt my head banging terribly, like I fell into a ditch head down.

I heard Footsteps approaching, faintly at first but it grew louder with each steps and within seconds, the door flew opened.

Two men stepped in, masks pulled down around their necks. One tall, lean, scar across his cheek. The other shorter, heavier, knuckles scarred. They carried batons and knives.

"Ohhh, the prince of Manhattan is awake," the taller one said, grinning. "Look at him. All tied up like a present."

The short one laughed. "Pretty boy thought he owned the city."

I didn't answer. Just watched them, calculating how i would gut them if i ever broke free. The door was steel, bolted from outside. One way out.

Tall one walked closer. Baton tapping his palm. "Boss says you're valuable. But not so valuable you can't bleed a little."

He swung. Baton cracked across my ribs.

Air exploded from my lungs. Pain flared white-hot. I bit down on a grunt.

Short one grabbed my hair, yanked my head back. "You like pain, rich boy?" he asked.

Another swing. This one to the thigh, my muscle cramped, and i tasted blood as i bit my tongue.

Tall one leaned in. Breath hot. "You fucked with the wrong people. Now you pay."

He drove a fist into my wounded shoulder. I roared couldn't stop it. Vision tunneled. Blood seeped fresh.

Short one laughed. "Look at him. Bleeding like a stuck pig."

They took turns. Baton to the kidneys. Knife tip dragged across my chest, shallow cuts, just enough to sting. Fists to the face. Blood in my mouth. Vision blurring.

I kept my mind sharp, counted blows, waited for an opportunity.

When they stepped back, breathing hard, I lifted my head. Met their eyes.

"You're dead," I said quietly, spitting out blood.

They laughed hard.

I opened my mouth to speak again, then the door flung open.

Gunshots, sharp, fast. Tall one dropped first, head snapping back. Short one spun, reaching for his gun, but he was too slow.

Two more shots and he fell, dead.

Silence.

A figure stepped in, dark silhouette, gun raised.

I squinted through blood and sweat.

A woman's voice "you belong to me." She said.

Darkness rushed in again.

I lost consciousness.

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 9

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