Heart of a Monster (New Reign Mafia Duet #1)

by Shain Rose

“If you’re hurting, if you’re about to break, break me instead. I can handle it.”

“Kate-Bait, I will break you. And I won’t put you back together.” “I’m already broken,”

“My blood is your blood. I bleed, you bleed.”

. . . Maybe this was where our end began.

I pulled her down into the black hole. It swallowed us up and ate us whole. Our light was gone.

“Never let them see you cower or back down, Katalina. You are better than everyone.”

“You’ll live. Because if you don’t, you’ll die.”

“Yeah, you’ll live. Remember that the best of us go through the worst.”

Cleopatra wasn’t as pretty as she is on your necklace. It was her intelligence that allowed her to rule. She knew over a dozen languages and communicated effectively in all of them. When your dad is gone, remember that.

I find we’re all missing something, and maybe that makes us all a little mad.

“The world should have given you every opportunity. They should have seen that different makes you beautiful.”

You’re beautiful. I choose death so you can live. I won’t tell you to stop working with them. I know you’re in too deep. Make me proud, Katalina. Show them you were meant to stand out or get out from under them.”

“It’s a blood oath. Family first, honey. You don’t get out. You bleed, we bleed. You die, we die.”

Women fight to survive. If we don’t, we die,”

Yet we mixed ourselves up in each other like a toxic drink, one that was bound to kill us if we kept tasting it.

My little Cleopatra was just as fucked in the head as I was.

She made a man want to protect her, but then she morphed into a vicious siren, ready to devour those who did. She didn’t need protecting, and it made me want to protect her even more. Or strangle her, depending on the day.

I had a chain and a trick up my sleeve too, but I was sure none of it would save me from the one thing I was in danger of. Her.

“Stop fighting me. Let out a breath on me, Katalina. I want to taste your air.”

“I never sell myself, and even if I did, you wouldn’t be able to afford me, jackass.”

She’d baited me like she did so well, even when she didn’t know she was doing it. I was taking the bait this time, even though I knew she was too frustrating, too volatile, and too chaotic to combine with my own wreckage. Us together, we were mayhem and ruination and mass destruction. We both knew it,

We keep hooking up, we’re bound to go off, and you can’t control a nuclear bomb.”

Rome was the push to my pull and the enforcer to my plan. I baited and trapped the men, and he killed them all for the family. Still, our team dynamic was sandpaper to a wound as we brushed against one another. He couldn’t forget who I was and that I was too close to the family for our relationship not to be messy. I couldn’t forget how fast and effective he’d been at making me want him as he took the life of the man who threatened mine day in and day out.

Above all else, Rome would never know he had my heart because I knew I could never own the monster that controlled his.

“Even if you had been, it still could have happened because you’re close to us, to me. We didn’t consider the repercussions. You’re a threat to many, and now you’re extremely exposed.”

I’d only had him between my legs. And he didn’t belong between my ribs and in my heart,

“Little one, you only learn by getting up yourself and making sure you face your opponent again. The one who falls down over and over is the strongest of all in the end.”

“Why waste time on trivial entertainment if you’ll be frustrated when the ending isn’t what you wanted?”

He stepped close to me and moved one of my messy curls from the side of my face. “You’re damn pretty when you smile, woman.”

“I’m starting to think I don’t treat any woman like you, because there is no woman like you. You don’t bitch about anything, you don’t care to prepare for me to be back. You’ve worn ratty socks since you’ve been here, and you still look good enough to fuck on this counter right here. And to add to it all, you make for damn good company.”

“If you’re hurting, if you’re about to break, break me instead. I can handle it.”

“You want to choose this? Choose the man who can kill you in a heartbeat? I’m the family’s monster, Katalina. I don’t have a heart to give you except a fucked up one.” “It’s the only one I want.”

“I don’t step away from what’s mine, and you’re quickly becoming that. Even if I don’t want you to be.” I looked up at him and ran a hand over his jaw. “Then I guess what I want is for you to claim me, because the harder you both pull the more I’ll relish the pain of splitting in either direction.” “Ever the masochist, huh?” “Takes one to know one.”

“You’re beautiful, Katie. So beautiful you could stop the world.”

“I’m not asking you to be anything to me.” “And yet I’m yours and you’re mine.”

“Choose me, Katalina,” he whispered. “Let me consume you. Pick our destruction, not his safe haven.”

“Shadows are better than the light sometimes,”

“I don’t want just little corners of darkness. I want it all. I want your darkness and your light if there’s anything left. And if not, I want the monster in you because it’s the only thing that saved me so long ago. If I can’t have that, I’ll take a dream with Bastian.”

“I love you, Katie. Don’t get so lost you can’t find your way out. And if you do, find us.”

“Protecting her? Katie’s never needed protection from anyone. She needs someone to show her life is more than a series of events, that she doesn’t have to keep moving forward every time something bad happens to her. She needs someone to take her in while she learns to feel again.”

“Like she’s your heaven and your hell. A dream and a nightmare all wrapped up in one tiny little warrior.”

They just had to dig through the shit before making it to the sunshine.

“I think a ruler does what has to be done so their empire can thrive. If blood must be shed, let it be the blood that tainted the empire in the first place.”

“You don’t need a dream; you don’t need to be proud. You should be already . . . don’t you see you’ve changed us all already?”

I loved that only with him, that he didn’t need to treat me nicely or feel the need to give me control, like he knew my broken pieces and could navigate their jagged edges better than anyone. Yet tonight he was asking me. Like I was his ruler, like I wore the crown, no matter how broken it may have been.

“You ready to show the family that you’re better for me? That we can be together, that you get me to my high better than Bastian ever would? Show me. Show him. Show us all.”

My men, my night and my day, my dark and my light, my comfort and my torment, were colliding.

“I’ve tried to be without you, forget you, leave you behind. You’ve rooted yourself in my every thought though.”

“You’re the most toxic chemical known to man, Katalina. You’re a beautiful woman who is smart and happens to know it. You know you’re powerful, but I wonder if you really know how powerful. It makes you dangerous, unstable, and extremely volatile, especially since the whole damn city seems to be looking for you.”

I wondered if one day the man who kept me standing would destroy me.