Page 16 of Corrupted Heart

Obviously, I’ve thought about acting out my fantasies before. I know now that it would have to be anonymously, or at the very least with a stranger I’ll never see again.

People you know can’t be trusted with something like this, as ironic as that sounds from a safety perspective. I made the mistake of finally blurting out my dark fantasies to Tim when we were dating.

What the fuck is wrong with you, Bianca? What sort of messed-up girl wants that?

You’re broken.

That was the beginning of the end of Tim and me. And then…well, what was truly the end. After that, I realized you really can’t tell some things to just anyone.

Club Venom would obviously be more than ideal for assuaging my curiosity. But there’s the small problem that my brother runs the place, not to mention its security and an iron-clad vetting process.

You can’t fake your way into Venom—trust me, I’ve tried. Yes, you wear masks. But the wristband each guest wears—the one signifying their kink and whether they’re a sub or a Dom—is linked directly to that member. They can even be scanned by security to ID someone. And his entire security team obviously knows who I am.

Even if I somehow got around all that, I’d never be able to actually relax enough to explore my fantasy. I’d be too freaked out that I’d be recognized.

But that conversation this morning in Vito’s kitchen has the gears whirling in my head.

The club itself is out. But not necessarily its new website portal.

Swallowing and intermittently glancing over my shoulder, I navigate through Dante’s private files until I find the dashboard for Club Venom’s new “off-site” connection portal, which links like-minded individuals who crave a specific sort of play that at times needs more space—and more realism—than Club Venom can offer.

Primal kink, specifically.

I’m not sure how I feel about the term “rape kink”, even though that’s basically what it is. The desire to be chased and caught. To be roughly manhandled, and “forced” into things. “Consensual non-consent” is the more polite way of putting it.

Things that Bianca Sartorre, good-girl ballet dancer and mafia princess, shouldn’t even know about, let alone want” is yet another way of phrasing it.

But here we are.

My nerves jangling, I find the admin dashboard and navigate to the members list. Guilt and the realization that I’d be mortified if someone else was doing this and I was on the list suddenly grips me. I quickly resize the window so that I can’t see the “names” column of the member list to make myself feel a little better. Then I scroll to the bottom where there’s a button labeled “add/import new member.”

Heat blooms in my core. My pulse throbs heavily in my veins as I click the button. I’m taken to another screen and instantly my adrenaline jumps.

There are fields to input basic data: name, contact number, email, that sort of thing. Very quickly, my eyes land on the last question at the bottom of the form:

“Individual is existing Club Venom member”. Next to it, there’s just a simple yes or no toggle.

This is a terrible idea. You shouldn’t be doing this.

I do it anyway.

Name: Rachel Dawson.

What? The book about her murder is riveting.

Using my phone, I download a burner phone app and use that to get a new number to put in the phone field. I create a new email account, also via my phone, and use that for the next required field.

Then, my finger drags the cursor to the yes/no toggle, and my breath holds.

“Individual is existing Club Venom member: yes.”

Before I lose my nerve, I quickly scroll to the bottom of the page and click the submit button. Part of me suddenly panics, wondering what comes next. Do I have to provide a membership number? Does Dante manually review the list for his new primal kink portal? What happens if he recognizes the name is bullshit? What the fuck was I thinking, using the name of a murdered girl who he knows I’ve been reading about to?—

My phone dings. Jolting, I glance down.

Oh shit.

It’s an email in my new fake account from Club Venom. Shaking, I tap on it, opening the email as my pulse quickens. An all-black page greets me, with just four words in gold that both terrify and electrify me:

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