by Zara Novak
Copyright © 2020 by Zara Novak
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Chained: A Dark Vampire Romance
Midnight Mafia Book 1
Zara Novak
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
Thanks for Reading
New release: Broken: A Dark Vampire Romance
Also by Zara Novak
Mailing List
Chapter 1
Rachel
“Are you sure this is the right decision?” I said, my voice shaking down the line.
“Rachel you need to relax,” Agent Harper said. “We’ll have an agent come over right away and you’ll be safe from there. Vincent Cartello might be a scary guy, but he is just a man. Remember that. You’re in good hands now, I promise. Do you want me to stay on the phone until my colleague gets there?”
“No,” I said and shook my head. “It’s okay. I’ll pack a bag quickly. Thanks for this.”
“No problem. Call me if you need me. Make sure you get what you can. There’s no going back after this.”
The line went dead and I set my cell down on the side. I was standing in the hallway of my small apartment, staring at the terrified girl in the mirror, wondering what the hell I had just done.
I had just decided to turn on the mafia. That’s what I’d done.
“Get a hold of yourself, Rachel, everything is going to be fine now,” I told myself. The lie didn’t sit with me for even a second. The truth was that I had just changed my life forever. The FBI would come and take me into witness protection. I would tell them everything I knew about the Cartello family and spend the rest of my life in hiding.
My life had actually changed the moment I decided to get involved with organized crime. I had known the risks getting involved, but I went ahead and did it anyway. The temptation of fast cash outweighed the reality of anything bad happening to me.
If you had told the teenage version of myself that I would one day rub shoulders with organized crime, then I would have laughed in your face. Rachel Chase was a good Christian girl that got her homework done, helped out at the retirement village on the weekends and helped her mom cleanup after dinner.
But here I was.
In fear of my life.
You might wonder how a ‘good girl’ even gets involved with something like this. The answer is always money. I was a first-year associate at a prestigious law firm, I had a promising career ahead of me and no blemishes on my record.
Apart from debt.
A lot of debt.
A lot of people assume that lawyers graduate college and become millionaires overnight. Ha. Yeah, right. Maybe in New York, but out in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere you start at the nearest respectable firm and pray you can one day work your way up.
So, I’d been doing public defense work on the weekends for extra cash. A girlfriend of mine had similar money struggles and was chipping away at her debt this way, after she had recommended it, I jumped on in and got to work. I loved it, but the money barely put a dent in my debts.
Then I pulled a miracle, I got a young juvenile off a bad rap charge and bartered him down from life to six months on probation. It was a miracle turn around, thanks to me uncovering some questionable evidence practice from the prosecution.
It turned out that juvenile was connected to the Cartello crime family. That was when they approached me with the offer of some simple legal work for fast money. The work was squeaky clean, they just wanted help with paperwork to acquire some retail property, in exchange I would get enough money to blow away nearly a third of my debt.
The ‘simple’ wasn’t so simple though, and it only took me a few minutes to realize this was a massive money-laundering operation. They wanted me to smudge the paperwork to cover it up, and things got even scarier when my girlfriend from the courthouse disappeared.
She’d been working for another mafia family. How long before I ended up vanishing, just like her?
Now I was here, shoving clothes into an overnight bag. There really wasn’t much I wanted to take with me from this apartment. The only thing I truly cherished was a photograph of my grandmother. She had been the only one to ever show me real love, and after she had died my parents only got worse. I stored the photo securely in my bag and zipped it shut. With the FBI minutes away from knocking on my—
Knock knock.
I stopped and turned towards the bedroom door. Could they really have gotten here so fast? Looking down at my watch I saw that I only placed the call three minutes ago. Did they really move that quickly?
“I’m coming,” I shouted, quickly zipping my overnight bag shut. I slung it over my shoulder, left the bedroom and glanced through the peephole of my front door to see—
Nothing.
Huh.
“Hello?” I said through the door.
“Ms. Chase?” a voice said on the other side. “It’s Agent Jones. We’re here to pick you up.”
Looking back through the peephole again I saw a man in a black suit holding a badge up to the peephole. It looked official. I let out a sigh of relief, unbolted the chain and opened the door.
The man I had seen in the peephole was gone. Standing in his place was a huge man dressed in black. I was staring down the barrel end of a shotgun.
“What the hell?!” I gasped, instantly throwing my hands up in the air.
“Ms. Chase,” the thug said. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m—is that a gun?”
It was a stupid question, it obviously was a gun, but it’s funny how your mind works when you think you’re about to die.
“Have you heard of the expression ‘shotgun wedding?’” he said with a dark smile.
“Put it down, Wardorf,” a voice said from down the corridor. “I’ll take care of things from here.”
The thug instantly complied. He lowered the shotgun and stepped back. As he did so I saw another man standing behind him, a vicar. The vicar had a Bible in one hand, and he was looking down at the floor. Footsteps echoed down the hallway and another figure came into sight.
He was…
Beautiful.
He stopped at the threshold and quickly glanced into the apartment before allowing his eyes to settle on me. He was tall with dark hair, pale skin and eyes that seemed to twinkle like rubies. He wore a simple suit and shirt without a tie, looking like a model from a high-end fashion magazine. His tussled brown hair was swept back, and I found my eyes lingering on a sharp jawline that looked like it was cut from marble.
“Do you know who I am?” he said very calmly, his voice smoother than the richest velvet.
I had never met him before, but I had heard enough about the man at the head of the Cartello Mafia to know that this was Vincent Cartello, the man that I had just tried to betray.
“Don Cartello,” I stammered, my heart beating in my temples.
“Correct, and so respectful. Well done, Rachel. Do you mind if I step inside?”
“I’m—” I stuttered again. I was shaking so badly I could barely talk. “I’m about to meet someone.”
“Oh, I know.
You see, we’ve been watching you Rachel, quite closely. I’ve had my eye on you since you started working for me.”
“M—Me?”
“Invite me in please,” he said, not yet crossing the threshold.
“Come in,” I answered.
And then it was as if a weight in front of me vanished. I felt a pressure dissipate and blow past me, a gust sweeping into my apartment. The burning red eyes of my guest seemed to brighten, like coals on a fire under a firm breeze.
He stepped inside and I immediately found myself stepping back from him, like the pair of us were locked in some hypnotic dance. He flicked his hand through the air and the door closed behind him. It moved fast enough that I expected a bang, but it shut without a single sound.
I had walked back a dozen paces and was now standing in my small kitchenette, my guest only a few steps away in front of me. He stopped and looked around the apartment before letting those eyes settle on me once again.
“You betrayed me,” he said simply.
“I’m sorry,” I managed, my voice still shaking with nerves. “I’ll leave town, I won’t say anything. They’ll be here any minute, you should—”
He snapped his fingers and my lips sealed shut. I couldn’t explain it, it was like he had stopped me from talking.
“The agents won’t be a problem. They will run into some unexpected car problems. We have a few minutes before we need to leave. Here’s what’s going to happen.”
The Don walked right up to me, only stopping a few inches from my body. It wasn’t just my lips that were frozen, my whole body was locked in some sort of terrifying trance. He looked me up and down, those strange red eyes slowly burning over my body with a fierce and ferocious intensity that almost made me feel naked.
“Naked?” he said, as if my thoughts had been said out loud. “Now there’s an idea. I am incredibly curious to see that body of yours. Show me.”
With the final two words the spell on my lips seemed to break. I took a gasp of air and felt his hand upon my body. As I looked down, I realized it wasn’t his hand, it was mine.
“What’s happening?!” I said, watching in horror as my thumbs slid the straps of my top down over my shoulders. My hands carried on moving of their own accord, thrusting my top down to my skirt. Before I could stop myself, they took my skirt down too, pushing it over my hips and letting both garments drop to the floor.
I was now standing before him in just my bra and panties. Fat. Curvy. Exposed. Stripping myself for a mob boss.
And I had no idea why I was playing along.
Some semblance of control seemed to come back over me. I covered myself with my hands and turned so I wasn’t facing him. I was scared and confused, and I wanted to know how he was doing this.
“What the hell is going on here?!” I demanded.
“I’m looking at a beautiful woman,” he said simply. “The woman I’m going to marry. The woman that is going to give me an heir.”
The words beat through the air as notes of dread, spoken with such utter confidence that they shook me to my core. “Excuse me? Marry? Heir?”
“I’ll spell it out for you,” he said, turning and walking to a bookshelf on the wall leading into the lounge. It was the bookshelf where I kept my Bibles and religious studies. At the center there was a large cedar cross which was about the height of a small lamp. It was a confirmation gift from my parents, given to me when I was younger.
The Don stopped in front of this cross, held out his hand and then I heard the faintest hissing sound. I then saw smoke rising from his hand. He turned back to face me, and I saw a red band of burning skin across the center of his palm. My brow knotted as I fixated on the bizarre sight, which only got stranger as it rapidly started to heal.
“I don’t understand—” I began to say, but the words were cut short as he suddenly flashed across the apartment with enough speed to make me scream. He moved as a blur on the air. One second he was by the bookshelf, the next he was right in front of me.
“Are you getting there yet?” he said, his red eyes burning brightly as he grinned at me in a wicked manner. “I needed an invitation to step inside. I can control you with my voice. I’m not so fond of religious symbols—or silver. I possess speed and strength the likes of which you have never seen, I’m—”
“A vampire,” I said, finishing the thought for him.
Those perfect lips of his curled in the most wicked way. “I’m glad we got that out the way.”
“But—”
“We don’t exist. This can’t be real, this is just a dream, it isn’t happening.”
In another flash he moved on me, our bodies crushing together, and he took me in his arms and flew forward across the apartment. I hit the wall with a gentle thud and then he was kissing me.
The kiss was long, deep, and totally unexpected. My mouth opened up to him instantly, and I found myself hating how little fight I gave him. One of his hands was around the back of my head, his fingers threading through my long dark hair in a way that felt amazing.
The other was cupped gently over my panties.
Which appeared to be dripping wet.
It was over nearly as soon as it started. He broke away, looking like he had practically tore himself from me. With another flash he bolted to the other side of the kitchen and doubled over a counter, steeling his palms against the top.
His breathing was fast and deep.
“I’ve heard it all before, so spare me,” he said, his breath seeming to slow as he stood up again and faced me.
I was still reeling from the kiss. My heart was pounding, my nipples were hard, and I was undoubtedly wet for him.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
“There’s only one thing you need to understand,” he said calmly. “You have betrayed me, and marrying you is the only way you can begin to gain my trust back.”
I didn’t understand at first, but then the answer appeared to me.
“Because I can’t testify against my spouse,” I said. The law had lots of funny loopholes, but that was the oldest in the book. “But why not just kill me? Why do you need my trust?”
“Because I need an heir, and you are the only one that can give me that.”
That was the part that didn’t make sense, but it wasn’t like any part of my evening so far had been normal.
“Dress. Our time is running out.”
“But I—”
“Dress,” he said, this time the word left his mouth like the crack from an iron whip. My body was moving again, and I was dressed before I could even stop myself. As soon as I was clothed the Don waved his hand and the door opened. The large bald thug and the vicar were still waiting outside. “Invite them in,” he ordered.
“C-Come in,” I said, my voice shaking. The large man with the shotgun entered the apartment, followed by the vicar.
“Let’s get it over with,” Don Cartello ordered as he came to stand by me. The vicar stopped in front of us and cleared his throat.
“Dearly beloved—”
The huge man standing behind the vicar cocked his shotgun. “Express ceremony, father.”
“Got it,” the vicar said. He looked up at the man standing at my side. “Vincent Edward Cartello, do you take this woman, Rachel Emily Chase, to be your lawful wedded wife?”
“I do.”
The vicar looked at me. “Rachel Emily Chase, do you take this man, Vincent Edward Cartello, to be your lawful wedded husband?”
My throat went dry and tied itself in knots. I looked at the vicar, the thug behind him, and then at the man keeping me captive. This couldn’t be real, right? This wasn’t legal? You couldn’t force someone to marry you against your will.
Vincent looked at me. “We’re waiting, Rachel. Say the words.”
I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the fear of finding out what it felt like to get shot by a twelve-gauge shotgun. Maybe it was the fact that I had just crossed a fucking psycho vampire mob boss.
“I�
��I do,” I stuttered.
“Then I now declare you man and wife,” the vicar said. “You may kiss the bride.”
The Don moved like smoke, wrapping his hands around me and kissing me again, his lips delicately brushing against mine before he pulled away a second later.
Damn.
Why did I want more of that?
“That concludes our service,” the vicar said and he shut his Bible.
“Time to leave,” the big guy with the gun said. The vicar filed out, the big guy walking behind him, leaving me alone with my… husband. He held out his hand and looked at me, his bright red eyes burning with expectation.
“Ready?” he said.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Home. Your new home. Leave your things. You won’t need them.” He took my hand and then I was walking behind him. We stepped out into the hallway, the apartment door silently closing itself as we exited.
“But I—”
“You’re with me now, wife. It’s time we began our new life together. You have a lot of making up to do.”
“This isn’t happening,” I said. “This isn’t real.”
He just turned and smiled at me again, those bewitching eyes somehow keeping me from running. “It’s real, darling,” he said with a terrifying reassurance. “Til death do us part.”
We walked down the hallway; my hand sealed firmly in his. Every ounce of me was filled with terror. The desire to run was overwhelming, but my feet seemed only too happy to keep pace with his.
I wasn’t in control of myself. I wasn’t in control of anything.
It was at that moment I noticed my breath. Fast, short, terrified.
The hallway started to dim and one of my feet caught on the other. I was falling. Someone caught me.
Darkness swallowed me.
