Page 5 of The Darkness is Calling

He glances toward the girl, who is now watching us with interest.

“I had to tell her I can’t have breakfast with her tomorrow, because there’s no way I’m waking up that early.”

For one second, I tense beneath my Italian suit, imagining her beside my friend.

“Is she one of your lovers?” I swallow my pride and ask, barely controlling the cold edge of my voice.

“Oh, no!” he exclaims, laughing. “Now that I think about it, I don’t believe the two of you have ever crossed paths before,” he adds thoughtfully. “My father always tried to keep her away from the Bratva, so he could create the perfect princess. Educated in Paris, and now in London.”

London? On my territory, and I didn’t know?

“I don’t understand. Who is she?”

“She’s my little sister.”

His enthusiasm – mixed with pride – slams into the wall of ice rising around me in an instant.

Even the voices around us seem to vanish.

Dozens of red flags wave before my eyes, distorting every image of her still left in my mind.

Fuck.

Only I could think that I would strangle – while mercilessly fucking her hard – a friend's younger sister.

And that can only be a sign that it is time for me to get the fuck out of here.

Especially now, when I have one more reason. One I know will turn into a great dream tonight.

A dream in which my hand clenches a strand of pearls with brutal force, while her ragged gasps and the streams of tears running down her flushed cheeks send me falling into the dark abyss of ecstasy, until she has no breath left at all.

Hanna Lee

Chapter 2

Artem

- present

Raised in a family that respected religion, I was forced countless times to accompany my parents to church. It was my mother’s way of trying to save our already ruined souls, the ones only she still believed in.

I only liked the place when it was empty, because during service, it bored me terribly and made me think of all the ways I could put an end to the moments I would have always preferred to spend doing something else.

Like taking my father’s gun – the one he always carried in the holster strapped across his chest – aiming it at the priest’s head.

And pulling the trigger.

I was only nine years old, but my morbid fantasy continued in the bloodiest ways, helping me create the perfect crime.

Release.

The silence that would come afterward inside my head.

I could feel myself suffocating, as if a withered claw were pressing down on my chest. My skin would grow hotter, and a tingling sensation would push me into restlessness, making me want more and more to turn my dream into reality.

I wanted blood.

I wanted to see that wonderful color, the one I dreamed of every night. I wanted to see the empty gleam in his shocked eyes. I wanted the panic that would follow.