Taste of the Dark - A Mafia Romance
I tried to quit.
My boss said no.
When you work for billionaire restaurateur Bastian Hale, every day is an exercise in endurance.
He screams at you in front of half the staff? Endure.
He tears your work to bits and tells you to start again? Endure.
He surprises you shirtless in the office late one night? Endure... then go home and die of embarrassment.
I've endured six years of Bastian Hale.
I can endure anything.
... Until my doctor tells me I'm going blind in ninety days.
Suddenly, enduring isn't the goal anymore.
Living is.
Seeing everything I can before the lights go out forever.
And that means one thing: quitting the job that's consumed my entire adult life.
There's just one problem:
Bastian doesn't accept my resignation.
Instead, he shreds my letter to pieces...
Offers me a million dollars to stay...
And vows to make my last ninety days of sight worth remembering.
The man is arrogant. Brutal. Cold as the walk-in freezer.
But his hands are warm.
And in the dark, he teaches me things my eyes never could.
I wanted one last look at the light.
I got a taste of the dark instead.
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Chapter 5
"KPIs for everything," Tony adds, wiping tears from his eyes. "Customer satisfaction scores."
"'Your moaning was only at seventy percent capacity.'" Chef Rubio mimics Bastian's clipped tone perfectly. "'I expect excellence in all areas, Ms. Hunter. This is simply not good enough.'"
I snort-laugh so hard cappuccino nearly comes out my nose. "He'd probably write NGE on my ass with a Sharpie."
That mental image sends everyone into fresh hysterics. One of the prep cooks is literally on the floor, clutching his stomach.
"Stop, stop," the French stagiaire gasps. "I cannot breathe!"
"You know he'd time everything," I continue, emboldened by their laughter and the sugar rush from the bite of kouign-amann I just stole. "Foreplay: twelve minutes and not a second more. Any longer is just poor time management."
Chef Rubio scoffs. "Girl, you're being generous. That man would schedule sex like a business meeting. 'I have an opening between my 3 P.M. conference call and my 3:45 portfolio review.'"
"Forty-five minutes?" Tony shakes his head. "Nah, he'd block fifteen, tops. Five for the act, five for a critique, five to check his emails."
"While still in bed," Samuel adds.
"While still inside you," I correct.
Everyone guffaws; meanwhile, I'm trying to ignore the way my whole body feels like it's been dipped in hot sauce. Making fun of Bastian like this feels dangerous, thrilling. It's playing with matches next to a gas leak.
Part of me wonders what he'd think if he could hear us. Would those ice-blue eyes narrow in that way that makes my stomach do weird jumping jacks? Would his jaw clench? His hands tighten? His eyes burn?
"You know what the worst part would be?" I say, riding the incomparable high of making your coworkers laugh while you talk shit about your tyrannical boss. "Bastian would take one look at you and-"
"Ahem."
I hear a throat clear, and even as I start to turn, I know what I'm going to find.
Sure enough, I do.
Bastian Hale stands framed in the kitchen doors, impeccable as always in a powder blue shirt with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows. His scowl is at full force today. That ten percent smirk from last night is nowhere to be found-it's pure venom, pure heat, pure what the fuck do you think you're doing?
Our eyes meet across the kitchen.
The laughter dies in my throat.
"Don't stop on my account," he growls. "Tell me, Ms. Hunter: what would I take one look at you and do?"
If spontaneous human combustion were real, I'd be a pile of ash right now. If only that were so.
Everyone turns in slow motion, like those dreams where you're trying to run but can't move fast enough. The horror on their faces might be comical if I weren't experiencing my own personal apocalypse.
"Mr. Hale!" Chef Rubio recovers first and tries to jump to my rescue. "I was-"
"Not you, Chef." He steps into the kitchen, and everyone takes an unconscious step back. It's like watching a nature documentary where the antelope sense the lion approaching and wait to see which poor sucker he'll be turning into lunch. "Please, Ms. Hunter-continue."
I want to die. I want to melt into the floor and become one with the tiles. I want to reverse time and tell past-me to keep her stupid mouth shut about what Bastian Hale may or may not do while he's still inside of you.
But I can't do any of those things.
All I can do is squeak out a pathetic "I'm sorry" that crashes and burns before it even makes it halfway across the kitchen.
Bastian nods like he expected no less. He takes another meandering step into the kitchen and his gaze sweeps around as if to memorize every flushed, guilty face. "How thoughtful of you to cater a breakfast party, Ms. Hunter. I wasn't aware we'd restructured the morning schedule to include social hour."
The kouign-amann in my hand wobbles. "It's not-" I start. "I just thought-"
"You thought." Another step closer. "You thought it would be appropriate to distract my entire kitchen staff during extremely important crunch time hours with... " He picks up a box and examines it like it contains evidence of a crime. "Pastries."
"Mr. Hale," Chef Rubio tries again, "we were just-"
"Getting back to work, I assume." He doesn't even look at her. His eyes stay on me, and there is nothing-nothing-of last night's warmth in them. "Unless Ms. Hunter has also taken it upon herself to do that for you? Perhaps she has opinions on the tasting menu for the investor dinner? Well, Ms. Hunter? I'm all ears."
My face burns. Everyone is staring at their shoes, their half-eaten pastries, anywhere but at us.
"I was trying to be nice," I croak.
"Is 'nice' anywhere in your job description, Ms. Hunter?"
"No, but-"
"But nothing." He drops the box on the ground and a donut goes rolling mournfully into the distance. "You're not special, Ms. Hunter, and you are not exempt from the rules or from the work. You're an employee. One of many. And like every other employee, you're expected to focus on your actual job instead of playing food fairy to people who should be working."
Who is this man? I want to scream and ask anyone who will listen. What happened to the bright-eyed tease from last night? Who is this asshole, this tyrant, this stranger?
And who am I?
Last night, I felt-stupidly, maybe, or naively-but I felt like I was somebody to him.
This morning, I am nothing. Just another employee. A food fairy getting her wings plucked off.
My eyes burn. Do not cry. Do not cry in front of Bastian Hale and the entire test kitchen staff.
"I came in early," I manage. "On my own time."
A surge of angry heat passes over his face. "If you have enough of that, perhaps we're not challenging you sufficiently. I'll have to adjust your workload."
"I should go," I say, in a horrifyingly sad echo of last night.
"Yes," he agrees. "You should."
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9.6
In the two years after I married Daniel Carter, my private photos had gone viral nine times, and Daniel had been taken into custody ten times.
Because every time his mistress, Emily Morgan, was unhappy, she would leak my private photos all over the internet.
I, Claire Parker, never let it slide. I reported every shady business Daniel was involved in and personally sent him behind bars.
That lasted until an unexpected kidnapping. I took a bullet for him, one aimed straight at his heart, and he shielded me beneath his body, taking the brunt of the explosion for me.
After we survived, the man who had always been so cold-blooded knelt before me, his voice hoarse beyond recognition.
"Honey, let's leave the drama behind. I just want a peaceful life with you."
Right in front of me, he ordered his men to send his mistress out of Northhaven and never let her appear before him again.
In the third year after we reconciled, I carried my eight-month pregnant belly and brought him lunch.
But on the way there, I was hit by a car. The hospital issued three critical condition notices, yet they still could not save the baby.
Daniel rushed over, but he did not even spare me a glance. Instead, he pulled the woman who had hit me and her child into his arms, soothing her in a low voice.
"Don't be scared. I'll protect you and the child."
Only then did I realize that the woman who had hit me was the very mistress he had sent away three years ago.
When I demanded an explanation, Daniel brushed it off as if it were nothing. "She didn't do it on purpose. Don't take it out on her and her son. You can have a baby another time."
At that moment, I finally understood. They had gotten back together long ago.
I looked at him and nodded. "Don't worry, this will never happen again."
8.8
I am the best esports jungler in the league, but I've been hiding a severe wrist injury just to keep my team alive in the semifinals.
Right in the middle of the crucial tie-breaker game, our mid-laner deliberately walked into the enemy team and died without casting a single defensive spell.
He was match-fixing for offshore betting sites, throwing away our entire season for a massive payout.
Because of his betrayal, we had to sub in two terrified rookies, and we were absolutely slaughtered. The stadium crowd booed us out of the arena. The internet exploded with pure vitriol, trending hashtags calling me a washed-up fraud who hid on the bench to save my own stats. The media demanded I retire immediately. My physical therapist gave me a grim ultimatum: my shredded nerves only allow me four hours of playtime a day before my right hand completely locks up.
I destroyed my own body for this team, only to be sold out by a coward and crucified by the very fans I bled for. Why should my legacy end in total disgrace because of someone else's greed?
I refuse to step down. I forced the traitor out, ignored management's safe roster choices, and locked my eyes on the most toxic, universally hated streamer on the platform.
"He's a walking PR nightmare," my coach warned.
I don't care. He is an arrogant, unhinged killer in the game, and I am going to make him mine.
8.1
One wardrobe malfunction.
Two people who don't belong together.
Three awful "Be my wife."
Everyone else is at this party to marry the host.
I'm only here until I can get a ride home.
When my dress rips in the world's worst-timed wardrobe malfunction,
I go find somewhere quiet to fix it.
So I'm standing there in nothing but my heels when,
As my luck would have it, the door opens...
And the man of the hour walks in.
I wish I could say I played it cool.
But it's been a looong time since anyone has seen me in my birthday suit...
Much less the hottest man I've ever laid eyes on.
All I want to do is fix my dress, click my heels three times, and be back on my couch in fuzzy slippers.
But Ivan has other ideas.
He's decided who he's taking to the altar...
And I don't have a choice but to say "I do."
7.6
When the Pollard family kicked Alyssa out into the freezing rain, Walter threw a ten-thousand-dollar check into a dirty puddle.
"Take it and get out. Don't ever come back," he sneered.
Her adoptive mother and stepsister stood on the mansion's porch, mocking her as a worthless country girl who tarnished their wealthy name. They laughed, claiming she wouldn't even be able to afford community college and would be begging on the streets in a week.
They looked at her cheap clothes and worn backpack with absolute disgust.
They were completely unaware that for the past five years, Alyssa was the secret mastermind who had built their failing gallery into a multi-million-dollar investment empire.
Every key investment, every fortune they made, came from the anonymous notes she had slipped into their unread books. They genuinely believed they were business geniuses, while treating the true architect of their wealth like a stray dog.
Looking at their smug, arrogant faces, Alyssa didn't feel a shred of sadness, only a cold, sharp irony.
They actually believed they had raised her.
She stepped close, whispered the master code to Walter's most secret offshore account, and watched the blood completely drain from his face.
"I raised you," she said, turning her back on the mansion without hesitation.
Walking into the storm, she pulled out a heavily encrypted phone and gave a single, cold order.
"Initiate a full hostile takeover of the Pollard Group."
It was time to end this little game and step into her true life—as the world's most elusive medical genius, and the long-lost billionaire heiress of the Summers dynasty.
7.4
I thought my life was over when my sister died, leaving me to raise her two babies in a world that wanted to swallow us whole. Then I made the mistake of a lifetime: I left a bold, humiliating voicemail for the one man I should have feared most.
Anton Oryolov.
The ruthless king of the Oryolov Bratva. A billionaire monster who rules the city with ice in his veins and blood on his hands.
I expected him to fire me. I expected him to destroy me. Instead, he gave me a choice that felt like a death sentence: sign a contract and become his.
The rules were simple. I belong to him. I live in his shadows. In exchange, he protects the children. But as the doors of his mansion locked behind me, I realized the "forced proximity" wasn't just a business arrangement. It was a cage.
He thinks he can use me as a pawn in his dark mafia games. He thinks the children are just leverage to keep me in line. But he's starting to look at me with a hunger that isn't in the contract, and I'm seeing a man beneath the monster that I never expected to find.
In the Cruel Paradise of the Bratva, loyalty is a lie and love is a weakness. Our deal is signed in ink, but it's going to end in blood.
He owns my signature. He owns my safety. Now, he wants my soul.
8.1
Samira James has two weeks left.
Two weeks until she turns eighteen.
Two weeks until everything changes.
And a few months left trapped in high school with the boy she hates most.
Calvin Simms has been her enemy for as long as she can remember. Popular, untouchable, and the living reminder of a childhood misunderstanding neither of them ever corrected. Their interactions are sharp, heated, and carefully controlled.
Until they aren't.
As months pass, tension replaces silence.
Jealousy replaces indifference.
And lines blur where hatred once lived.
With rivals watching, secrets resurfacing, and temptation growing harder to ignore, Samira must decide if sticking to her rules is worth denying what her body and her heart are already choosing.
Because some mistakes feel too good to stop.
And sometimes...
you don't fall for the person you want.
You fall for the one you swore to hate.