Page 1 of Forbidden Obsession

1

New York City

Dominic

Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap! Tap!

Priest Benjamin White ran across the cathedral breathlessly to escape me. His shoes echoed off the floors, and I could hear his frantic murmuring, undoubtedly saying his prayers.

Blending into the shadows of a darkened corridor, I watched him glance over his shoulder, his feet picking up speed. He thought he was running away from me.

Instead, he ran toward me.

I’d left a single black rose at the foot of the confessional door. When he exited and saw the rose, the dread that filled his face sucked away the blood in his veins, practically turning him into a ghost—pale and frozen in time.

He knew what the rose meant.

It was his time to die.

News of the Black Rose—a name given to me by people nationwide—had crossed every news circuit globally.

Some saw me as a threat to civilization. Others thought I was a vigilante since the people I went after were a detriment to their communities. The Lucas Cosa Nostra saw me as an enemy that needed to be taken down, dead or alive, because I used their signature black rose at the scenes of my crimes.

I was, in fact, all those things simultaneously. Most importantly, I was Dominic Lucas, heir to the boss Dameon Lucas, and underboss of the Lucas Cosa Nostra familia.

I’d singlehandedly run them all in circles and was the only one who knew the truth. And the truth was, I was angry as hell to be born into a life where my purpose was to do the very thing the people I sought and killed did—be a menace to society because of Dameon’s criminal underworld.

For my own amusement, I made it my mission to erase the scum who’d been instrumental in the Lucas Cosa Nostra expansion—one death at a time.

During the day, I was an academic advisor at Manhattan Excellence & Arts University.

By night, I became the grim reaper.

Priest Benjamin White scuffled around the corner and collided with my solid frame, crashing into me like a brick wall.

“Oh!” Frightened eyes crept up at me, his body shaken, as he took a step back.

“Hmmmmmmm,” I growled, dressed in all black, my gloved fingers fisted, and my body radiating heat.

“Please, please,” he begged.

I shut my eyes, inhaled a breath, and smirked, knowing when I reopened them the priest would have taken off into a sprint in the opposite direction.

Like clockwork, when I opened my eyes, he was gone. I sucked my teeth, stepped out of the shadows, and waited until he thought he could escape me before sending a blade flying across the cathedral where it sliced through his left shoulder and nailed him to the confessional doorframe.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!”

His echoing screams were like praise hymns to my ears. I took my time crossing the same path he’d taken, while he begged and pleaded for his life.

“Please, sir, sir, sir. I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent! You can’t do this! Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!”

I paused in front of him and removed a hatchet from a tool belt around my waist. His eyes widened as horror etched across his face, his body vibrating against the door as fear rose inside him.

“I am the Lord’s vengeance.”

He shit his pants within seconds of the hatchet’s blade slicing through his throat. It was a quick death for him—quicker than the ones before him. That was all the mercy I had for the priest.

Yanking the weapon free, I grabbed his head and chopped twice more to remove his head from his body. His corpse dropped to the cathedral floor, and I removed a spike from my belt and impaled his head. Then I buried the bottom of the stake in a potted plant that sat on the cathedral doorsteps.

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