The Don's Dangerous Addiction
"Take them off yourself, or I will do it for you."
Ten sessions. Two hundred thousand dollars. Her brother's life for her body.
Dr. Avery St. Clair signed a contract in blood. To save her family, she has to fix the mind of Obsidian City's most feared monster, Dominic Kessler. He's a Mafia Don rotting from the inside out. A bullet gave him C-PTSD and a touch so sensitive he can't stand being touched. Avery is the only antidote who can calm him down. So he locked her in his villa.
But Dominic is playing a game he's already lost.
He doesn't know Avery is the woman from seven years ago. The stranger who saved him on that dark gambling ship and disappeared before sunrise.
He doesn't know the scar on his wrist is burned into her memory.
And most of all, he doesn't know the autistic little girl hiding in her clinic is his own daughter.
While Avery hides the truth behind her professional mask, their little girl feels his every nightmare. Every flashback. Every crack in his monster mask.
When the secrets finally come out, his empire will fall. He'll lose his sight. His throne. The only woman who ever made him feel human.
To win her back, he'll have to destroy the monster he became. And help her burn down the man who murdered her parents.
She won't make it easy.
This is not a love story. It's a monster learning to beg.
Why read this?
Obsessive Mafia Hero
Secret Baby with an Autistic and Gifted Daughter
Identity Reveal
"Touch Her And You Die" Energy
Massive Groveling and Revenge
A Heroine Who Fights Back
No Cheating. Happy Ending Guaranteed.
Chapters
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Chapter 5
"You're afraid of me."
He moved closer as he spoke. Close enough that she could smell the cedar on him.
Dominic reached out and pinched her chin, tilting it up. Her head was forced back. Her throat exposed.
His thumb pressed down on her lower lip.
"All talk."
She raised her hand to slap his away. He caught her wrist.
"You're shaking."
She tried to pull free. He held on tighter.
"I hate you."
"Lots of people hate me. One more doesn't make a difference."
He let go suddenly. Avery stumbled back a step and hit the door.
He stood there watching her, like a cat watching a mouse run two steps and stop.
"Your heart is racing. You'd better make sure you can still aim straight."
He turned, picked up a pair of medical gloves from the tray on the desk, and tossed them to her.
Avery caught them. She had no idea what was happening.
"You-"
"What did you think?" He looked back at her, smirking. "You thought I called you here to sleep with you?"
Dominic gave her a slow once over, then turned away with a soft snort.
"I'm not interested in stiff women."
Before Avery could react, he turned back and pushed open the metal box on the desk.
A syringe sat inside. Pale yellow liquid.
This drug... it was the same one she had injected him with yesterday.
The drug was still in trial phase. High risk. Highly addictive.
It couldn't be given this frequently.
He was the underground ruler of Obsidian City. Of course he could get his hands on this drug. But she wasn't about to risk losing her medical license by injecting him again.
"This drug hasn't finished clinical trials. You can inject it yourself. You don't need me."
"But I need someone who can read my heart rate and knows how much to push."
Dominic turned his face toward her. His gaze cut like a knife. "You know my case. You're good at this. And you did fine yesterday, didn't you?"
He slid the syringe to the edge of the desk. The metallic scrape cut through the dead silence.
"This drug is addictive, Dominic. You're playing with your life."
"Then don't inject me. If-" He walked toward her. His shadow pressed in with every step. "You can fix my chronic insomnia first."
Avery didn't respond. She kept breathing. Deep breaths. Her fingers clenched tight.
Dominic stopped in front of her. He looked down.
"Your brother's medication runs out tomorrow at ten in the morning."
Avery's blood turned to ice.
"Inject me or give me a plan. Your choice."
Dominic reached out. His rough fingertips brushed along the side of her face, barely there. A shiver ran through her.
Avery's palms were clenched. Between the threat of losing the medication and the risk of an uncontrolled drug, she didn't step back. Instead, she stepped forward.
Her fingertip drove into the nerve depression just below his collarbone. She pushed with all her strength.
Dominic's tall frame went rigid.
The blunt pain and numbness from the compressed deep nerve swept through half his body in an instant. His grip on her hand weakened.
"This dosage will build your tolerance. When that happens, no one can save you."
Avery looked up at him.
"I'm taking the drug. You'll get your plan tomorrow. As for whether you sleep tonight? That's up to you."
Before he could recover from the physiological numbness, Avery snatched the syringe off the desk, turned, and pushed out the door.
It wasn't until cold air from the hallway hit her collar that she realized even her fingertips were burning.
When she walked into her room, Dorothea was still awake.
The little girl sat on the floor, hugging her rabbit. A piece of drawing paper lay in front of her. When she heard the door, she looked up at Avery, then looked back down and flipped the paper over.
"Mommy, the people inside the walls are still walking."
Avery walked over and sat down next to her. She looked at her daughter's fingers. Small. Pressed against the floor, like she was listening. Avery reached out and took the little hand in hers.
"Dorothea, Mommy needs to tell you something."
The little girl looked at her. Her big eyes sparkled.
"Some of the people here are helping us. Some aren't. Mommy has to make a lot of decisions every day. Some are right. Some are wrong. But no matter what, Mommy has to make them."
Dorothea blinked. She nodded slowly, like she sort of understood.
"What you hear, you tell only Mommy. I'll decide what to do with it. Okay?"
"What about that uncle? Is he helping us?"
Avery knew exactly who her daughter meant. She was quiet for a moment.
"He's helping Mommy. But that doesn't mean he's helping you."
"Why?"
"Because what he wants isn't the same as what Mommy wants."
Dorothea hugged her rabbit a little tighter. She rested her chin on its head. She looked at Avery for a long time.
"Is his head still a mess?" The little girl pointed at her own.
Avery didn't answer. She reached out and tucked Dorothea's hair behind her ear. "Mommy will handle it."
Dorothea didn't ask more. She buried her face in the rabbit's fur. After a while, her breathing slowed.
Avery picked her up, put her in bed, and pulled up the blanket. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her daughter's face. So small. So quiet. Her eyelashes were long, like two little fans.
She hadn't injected Dominic like he asked. Instead, she used the vagus nerve anchoring technique. Fingertip pressure on the nerve point below his collarbone. Stable tactile guidance to regulate his breathing.
Within moments, his overstressed autonomic nervous system had shifted from extreme agitation into sleep. She knew that for his severe PTSD-related insomnia, it was only a temporary fix. But at least, before he did something desperate and destroyed himself, she could keep him steady.
She pulled the USB drive from her pocket. The one she had gotten from Wenger. She plugged it into her computer.
Inside were seven full years of Dominic's treatment records.
The screen lit up. Files arranged by year. The earliest entry was from seven years ago. Dominic was twenty-two.
The first document was an admission record. No name. Just a number. The medical history column read: Stress response disorder. Sleep deprivation. Somatic symptoms. The treatment column had two words: Micro electric shock.
Her fingers stopped on the mouse.
She scrolled down.
Next page. Then the next. Wenger's notes, dense. Medications, reactions, dosage adjustments. Some pages had yellowed edges, like they had been turned many times.
She turned to one page. A diagram of a human body. Front and back. Red dots marked the wrists, the chest, the inner knees. A line of small handwriting beside it: Vagal nerve sensitivity test. Used for forced sedation and emotional blocking.
Avery's breath caught.
The spot on the wrist. The star-shaped scar. She recognized it.
So it wasn't an ordinary scar.
She looked down at her hand. The same fingers that had pressed below his collarbone. His skin's warmth still lingered. Her stomach turned. Bile rose in her throat. She covered her mouth and gagged. Nothing came out.
She closed the laptop. The room went dark.
The next morning, Avery went to his room as usual.
When she pushed the door open, Dominic was already awake. He sat on the edge of the bed, hair still messy. When he heard the door, he looked up.
"Morning," she said.
He didn't answer.
Avery walked over and stood in front of him. She reached out and pressed her fingers to his wrist. His pulse was better than yesterday.
She let go and stepped back.
"No anchoring today. You slept enough last night, so you won't need a nap during the day. Let's adjust the plan. We'll start with-"
"What did you look at last night?" Dominic cut her off.
Her fingers paused. "The files on the USB."
"What was in them?"
Avery looked at him. His expression hadn't changed. He was just waiting.
"Treatment records. Medications, dosages. Wenger's notes." Her voice was flat.
"And?"
"Nothing else. The later files were locked. I didn't have access."
He didn't push. He stood up and walked to the window, his back to her.
"Tell me today's plan."
Avery nodded. She explained the plan she had written the night before. Breathing exercises. Daytime nap rhythm. No drugs. No needles.
While she talked, he kept his back to her. He didn't turn around. When she finished, she waited.
"Dominic."
"Mm."
"You need rest today. No work. No meetings."
"I know."
She stood there, looking at his back. His shoulders were broad. A crease ran down his shirt from his shoulder blade to his waist. She thought of the red dots on the diagram. Something clogged in her chest.
The next two days, Avery continued his treatment as usual. The eighth session. In her opinion, it was neither good nor bad.
On the third day, after treatment ended, Avery went back to her room. Dorothea grabbed her leg.
"Mommy, you're different today."
Avery's fingers tightened. She closed the door, sat down, and pulled Dorothea into her lap. "Different how?"
Dorothea tilted her head and looked at her. She didn't explain. Then she stopped suddenly and turned to look at the door. She held her breath and didn't move.
Avery followed her gaze. The door was closed. The hallway was quiet.
"Dorothea?"
The little girl didn't answer. She hugged her rabbit tighter, then lowered her head and buried her face in its fur.
Three seconds later, a knock came at the door. Light. Two taps.
Avery opened it. Dominic stood in the doorway. He didn't come in. His eyes went to Dorothea first, then moved to Avery's face.
"What is it?"
Dominic studied her. "You changed the plan today."
It wasn't a question.
Avery's heart slowed by a beat. "Just an adjustment."
"Did you." He smiled slightly. "You avoided the collarbone. Why?"
The air went quiet.
She stared at him. She didn't speak.
He walked inside. He picked up the USB drive from the desk and held it in his palm.
"Do you think," he said, "that you 'got' this from Wenger?"
He stepped closer. The distance collapsed.
"Do you really think I would let a variable control me for seven years?"
Avery's pupils contracted.
"Then tell me," he said slowly, "why wasn't the first layer of that USB encrypted?"
Last night, she had thought it was strange. Such sensitive files, and they opened right away. She had assumed Wenger hadn't had time to secure them.
"Because I made it accessible," he said.
She finally understood. She hadn't been investigating him. He had let her investigate him.
"What did you want me to see?" Her voice tightened.
Dominic looked at her. He didn't answer right away. He reached out and touched the spot below her collarbone. The spot she had avoided.
"I wanted to see," he said, "if you would use Wenger's method."
Her breathing broke.
He paused. His voice dropped lower.
"To kill me."
Avery stood there. She didn't move. Her fingers were still pressed to the spot his fingertips had just touched.
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9.4
I thought the Burch family gave me a loving home when they took me out of the orphanage.
But when the global deep freeze apocalypse hit, my adoptive parents mercilessly kicked me out of the bunker to freeze to death.
As I lay dying in the snow, covered in horrific purple frostbite, my adoptive sister Kendal walked past me in a pristine designer jacket.
Around her neck was my only childhood possession—an antique gold necklace my adoptive mother had ripped off my neck to give to her.
Kendal gloated, bragging that my pendant held a magical space with infinite supplies and fresh food while the rest of the world starved.
I realized I had spent years emptying my life savings to fund their luxury cars and fake medical emergencies.
They had drained my bank accounts, stolen my bloodline's heirloom, and used my magical lifeline to live like royalty while leaving me to die.
I took my last ragged breath in that blinding blizzard, consumed by a toxic hatred.
Why was I so hopelessly weak? Why did I let them take everything from me?
Opening my eyes again, the painful frostbite scars were gone. My skin was warm.
I grabbed my phone. The screen lit up: November 12.
It was exactly three days before the world ended.
When my adoptive mother called, faking a tearful emergency to demand another thirty thousand dollars, I smiled coldly.
"Just tell me where to send the money, Mom."
This time, I'm taking my space back, and I'm going to drain them dry.
9.3
Halie woke up to a sharp pain and a terrifying reality. She was in a new body, her face covered in a hideous web of scars, and her spiritual power reduced to a pathetic D-Class.
Before she could even process the memories of being framed, her bedroom doors were violently kicked open.
Her sister Seraphina sauntered in with a venomous sneer, followed closely by Halie's S-Class fiancé, Jett.
"Look at the disgrace of the Avila family. What a waste," Seraphina mocked, throwing a mirror at her bed.
"I can't be tied to a cripple. As an S-Class, I have to break our engagement," Jett added, his gaze full of disgust.
The nightmare didn't stop there. Her father called, screaming about how she had shamed the family name. He officially stripped her of her inheritance, froze all her accounts, and exiled her to the decaying Southern District to rot.
To make matters worse, a cold, mechanical voice suddenly echoed in her skull, warning her of an impending genetic collapse. Without an immediate energy infusion, she would face total organ failure in thirty days.
A ruined face, a treacherous family, a world that wanted her dead, and a literal death clock ticking in her brain. The original owner had died in absolute despair, a tragic victim of sheer cruelty.
But if they thought she would just sit there and die, they were severely mistaken.
Armed with a mysterious system and her brilliant scientist mind from her past life, Halie packed her bags. She chose the craziest survival quest: head to the slums, find the exiled, sterile S-Class "madman" Coleman, and cure him to harvest his life energy. It was time to start her counterattack.
9.4
My brother and his wife slapped the contract on the table, forcing me to marry Alpha Stone. He was a cruel monster known for breaking his mates' bones, and I was just the price for a new trade route.
Right before I surrendered, the legendary Blackwood Pack arrived. But they didn't offer a glorious rescue. They claimed I was the fated mate of Kaelan, a disgraced, wolfless Omega.
My family laughed in my face, eagerly taking the dowry and throwing me out like garbage. They mocked my miserable future, sending me off to a crumbling shack in the woods. When they later summoned us back to publicly demand a humiliating "tribute" to bleed us dry, they waited for me to break.
"Couldn't handle life in a shack with an Omega? Come crawling back already?" my sister-in-law sneered.
But I refused to let them shame him. I didn't understand why the Moon Goddess gave me an Omega, but Kaelan was kind, giving me the only bed while he slept on the cold floor. Why did my family value a cruel Alpha over a gentle soul? I declared to their faces that his loyal spirit was worth more than any title.
Then, a vicious rogue wolf threatened us at the local market.
My "wolfless" husband stepped in front of me and grabbed the rogue's wrist.
Suddenly, a suffocating, terrifying Alpha King's aura exploded from Kaelan, bringing the rogue to his knees in pure terror.
I stared at my quiet, supposedly weak mate in absolute shock. Who exactly did I marry?
8.5
After surviving years in the Alpha King's brutal prisons, I returned to my pack only to be stripped of my family home and exiled to a rotting cabin.
I accepted the humiliation in silence, until I found a dying baby girl abandoned in a trash-filled alley.
Taking her in awoke the terrifying, protective beast I had kept chained in my mind. The pack, fueled by rumors and a jealous woman's bruised ego, viewed us as abominations. They trespassed on my land to uncover my "dirty secrets," forcing me to build a massive stone fortress with my bare hands just to keep my daughter safe from their cruelty.
We lived in isolated peace for years, until the day I took her outside the walls to visit my parents' graves.
A convoy of royal Alphas arrived, and their Luna fell to her knees at my mother's cousin's grave, weeping and calling her "sister."
I didn't understand. Why was my forgotten family connected to the royals? And why did Cassian Vargan, the most powerful Alpha in the world, freeze in absolute shock the moment he realized who I was?
"You... are you Gideon Stone's son?"
The bloody past I had buried under a mountain of stone had finally found me.
I didn't answer him. I just pulled my daughter behind me and tightly gripped my knife, ready to slaughter a king if he took one more step.
7.6
I woke up to the suffocating smell of copper and sulfur, my fingers wrapped around a blood-soaked leather whip.
Hanging from an obsidian cross in front of me was a boy with silver hair and dead, golden eyes.
His pale chest was torn open to the bone.
I recognized those eyes immediately. I had spent three years describing them on my laptop.
He was Kamari Monroe, the tragic, overpowered protagonist of my own web novel.
And I wasn't just a bystander. I was Benedict Guerrero, the sadistic academy headmaster. The ultimate villain.
A reel of images flashed in my mind: my original ending. Kamari, fully awakened, skinning me alive and burning my soul in a furnace for forty-nine days.
My loyal attack dog, Gideon, stepped forward with a basin of glowing green liquid.
"Headmaster, let me wake him up with this bone-rot acid so you can resume."
If that acid hit Kamari, his hatred would become permanent. My gruesome death would be sealed.
But if I broke character and apologized, the magical world would sense the shift, and Kamari would just think it was a sicker, more twisted trap.
How was I supposed to survive a death sentence I wrote myself?
I couldn't show weakness. I had to play the monster to survive.
Suppressing my terror, I smashed the acid basin, healed his ruined flesh with agonizing dark magic, and lied straight to his face.
"Someone had to be the monster to push you into the fire."
This time, I will rewrite my own fate.
9.2
I woke up suffocating in the dark, only to find my mind trapped inside a tiny, plump, and entirely uncoordinated body.
A cold, mechanical voice echoed in my brain, announcing that I was dead in my original world and had transmigrated into a corporate revenge novel as the six-month-old illegitimate daughter of Edward McClure, the story's ruthless villain.
The system mercilessly outlined my doomed fate. Tonight, my cold-blooded father would abandon me to a state orphanage. By age two, he would officially sign my rights away, leaving me to die miserably at the hands of human traffickers. Outside my nursery, I could hear his terrifying footsteps approaching, his voice devoid of any human warmth as he debated throwing me out like garbage. I was completely helpless, trapped in a baby's body, staring up at a man who looked at me with pure, visceral disgust.
Why did I have to be reborn as the tragic cannon fodder of a tyrant destined to put a bullet in his own head? How was I supposed to win over a severe germaphobe when my unequipped infant reflexes made me literally pee and vomit all over his pristine Tom Ford suits?
"Your ultimate mission is to prevent Edward McClure's self-destruction. Step one: Survive tonight's abandonment crisis."
Hearing the system's terrifying ultimatum, I swallowed my adult panic, forced a pool of pitiful tears into my large eyes, and reached my chubby little hands toward the monster.