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 6
I turn to leave, and the kitchen staff parts like the Red Sea. No one makes eye contact. Someone-I think it is the pastry chef who cried in her car-squeezes my arm as I pass, but I can't look at her. Can't look at anyone.
But as I'm passing by, Bastian's hand flies out and catches me by the wrist. It's like last night's fantasy, but turned into a nightmare. His palm is hot and heavy even through the wool of my sweater. I could almost swear I smell the fabric burning.
His eyes bore into the side of my face. I keep mine straight ahead, locked on the double doors that lead away from him, away from this.
"This is a place of business, Eliana. Not a charity. And certainly not a social club for employees who can't seem to understand their place in the hierarchy."
Last night, I touched his skin.
Last night, he touched me back.
This morning, he puts me firmly and brutally in my place.
3
ELIANA
de·glaze: /dēˈɡlāz/: verb
1: to add liquid to a pan to dissolve the browned bits and create a flavorful sauce.
2: to salvage something worthwhile from what appears to be completely ruined.
"He said what?!" Yasmin's voice carries across half the restaurant. Several heads turn our way in alarm.
"Yas, volume," I hiss. "We've talked about this."
Honestly, though, I'm grateful for her outrage. After this morning's humiliation, I need someone in my corner.
Even if that someone has the discretion of a foghorn.
We're at Noodle Theory, this cute little ramen place tucked between a dry cleaner and a tax office that serves steaming bowls of heaven for nine bucks a pop. It's become our spot over the past two years-close enough to our office building for lunch breaks, cheap enough that I can afford it, and loud enough that we can have actual conversations without corporate eavesdroppers.
"I don't give a rat's ass who hears me." Yasmin stabs her chopsticks into her tonkotsu like she's imagining them going through Bastian's eye socket. "The man's a sociopath. First, he's all flirty and shirtless 'n' shit-which, sidebar, we need to discuss that whole situation, you shameless tease-and then he publicly flames you for bringing pastries? Pastries, El! Pastries!"
"I know." I push a soft-boiled egg around my bowl. All morning long, my appetite has wavered somewhere between nonexistent and actively hostile. "I just don't understand what I did wrong."
"You didn't do anything wrong, babe. That's the point." Yasmin scowls at me fiercely. She's been my best friend since I started at Hale, the only other woman in our department full of frat bros in Patagonia vests who pop Zyns like it's a full-time job, the only one who understands what it's like to work twice as hard for half the recognition. "You know what this is? This is him putting you back in your place because you saw him vulnerable."
"He was just shirtless, not vulnerable. And given the way his abs look, he's not exactly-you know what, I'm getting off track here."
"Elly, the man runs this company like Seal Team Six. You've seen his calendar. You've seen his clothes. You've seen his whole, y'know, aura. And yet you caught him off-guard. That probably scared the shit out of him."
I want to argue, but something about what she's saying feels kinda right. The Bastian from last night was a completely different person from this morning's ice sculpture with an attitude.
"It doesn't matter anyway," I say, forcing myself to take a bite of noodles. They taste like cardboard, but that's not the ramen's fault. Everything has tasted like cardboard since Dr. Haggerty's life-ruiner of a prognosis. "He made it very clear where I stand. Just another employee."
"Fuck. That," Yasmin declares. "You want to know where you stand? You're the woman who walked into that building six years ago with a community college degree and holes in her shoes, and worked your way up to senior project manager through sheer fucking brilliance. You're a fuckin' rock star, El."
"Somehow, I don't think he sees it that way."
"So then quit! Screw him! He needs you way more than you need him. You'd find another job like that-" She snaps her fingers. "-because you're great and he sucks and them's the facts, girl."
Quit. God, that's a terrifying word. I've been thinking it all morning, this wild, reckless idea that keeps sticking a toe in the deep end of my mind. Quit. Walk away. Use these precious ninety days-eighty-eight and a half now-for something more fulfilling than dealing with Bastian Hale's temper tantrums.
"I can't quit," I whisper into my bowl.
"Why the hell not?"
"Health insurance, for one. Plus, y'know, like, rent, food, the radical idea that I need money to live."
"You're brilliant, Elly. Anyone in this industry who knows anything would be licking their lips at the thought of stealing you away from the blue-eyed bastard."
"Yeah, sure. I mean, maybe. But I-"
Yasmin puts her hand on mine. "Look, I've watched you kill yourself for this man," she continues, softer now. "Always first in, last out. You do the most and you never ask for the easy way out. And for what? So some trust fund sociopath can humiliate you for being kind? For caring? Nuh-uh. Again, I say unto you: Fuck. that."
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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.