Page 1 of Lethal Hearts

ChapterOne

Harper Valenti nervously swished the red wine in her wineglass while she watched the laughing couples on the dance floor. Her gaze focused on the bright-eyed bride and her heavily tattooed groom.

Harper knew Leah, the bride, not so much her husband. Leah came from a mafia family, just like her. In their world, most matches were made of convenience but Leah actually looked happy.

She was genuinely delighted for her friend, although she felt awkward in her dress and high heels. Unlike Leah, Harper had always been an introvert. The kind of girl who lingered in the background with a book in her nose at parties. The wallflower no one noticed, except this time, Harper needed to stand out. Her father’s life depended on it.

She scanned the gorgeously decorated ballroom. Leah and Leon held their wedding reception at the oldest and most prestigious hotel in the city.

Once upon a time, she fantasized a wedding just like this. Harper pictured a kind and handsome stranger standing next to her. Someone who held a normal job, maybe in accounting or marketing. They’d have a family, live the white-picket-fence dream. It took a long time for Harper to realize she’d never walk that path.

Harper finally found her target speaking to a group of men. Mikhail Konstantin was no one’s prey. The forty-something Pakhan of the Konstantin Bratva didn’t look a day older than thirty. He wore a midnight-blue suit perfectly tailored to his rugged body, highlighting the muscles in his upper chest and arms.

Even so, the no-doubt expensive suit couldn’t hide the black ink decorating his neck and hands. Each star tattoo equated a kill to the Konstantin Bratva, and Harper suspected Mikhail had more stars on his body. Someone, perhaps one of her father’s men, told her that before.

Harper finished half her wine, despite the fact she couldn’t handle alcohol that well. Memories of her father in his study surfaced in her head.

He had a liquor cabinet installed there which he frequently emptied especially after Harper’s mother had died, ridden with bullet holes on her way to the grocery store.

If she failed tonight, Harper would end up the same way. She’d die a gruesome and violent death. Mikhail suddenly looked toward her and Harper blushed furiously. His black gaze met hers, but then suddenly, someone spoke to him and he returned his attention to the conversation. Harper breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe she had imagined that look after all. Why would someone like Mikhail Konstantin spare a nobody like her a second look?

Her father’s name once sparked fear in the hearts of their enemies, but not anymore, not after her father made a couple of bad business deals that resulted in the ruin of their house. The Valenti Familia was no more, and Harper had to pay the price for her father’s mistakes.

Nerves got the better of her. Harper left her half-finished glass on the table and hurried to the restroom. Harper checked all the stalls. Empty. Relieved, Harper hurried to the door and locked it.

She splashed some cold water on her face and to her horror, realized it messed the makeup she had painstakingly applied hours before. Harper stared at her reflection in the mirror.

Her face, bared for the world to see, looked ordinary and boring. Despair and doubt crept into her. Maybe Don Juan choose her for this job because he expected her to fail. That must be it.

With trembling fingers, she pulled out her cellphone from her purse. With a shaky breath, she played the horrid video Don Juan sent her last night.

The video focused on a grimy, windowless room, on a man tied to a chair, his slumped frame covered in bloodstains. Someone pulled the cloth sack obscuring the prisoner’s features, revealing a haggard, broken face that unmistakably belonged to her father. The video was muted but she could read the single word his chapped lips formed.“Please.”Her father got them both in this mess. By right, Harper should just walk away.

She’d use her paltry savings and leave the country. Start fresh somewhere, perhaps in a remote village where no one knew or cared about her last name.

Too bad her father had raised her to be an obedient and dutiful daughter. There was no love lost between them. Her mother’s assassination left her father a shell of a man. He grew cold and distant after that. A stranger she’d hardly recognized, but Harper sill loved him for all his faults. They only had each other, after all. Most of her father’s men had abandoned him after his lieutenants were killed one by one.

Harper tucked her phone away. She took deep breaths, then pulled out the second object in her bag. The 9-mm Glock 19 felt like an alien artifact in her hands. Sure, one of her father’s lieutenants had taken her to the shooting range often while she was growing up, but she never actually had to use the gun on someone.

The weapon was new when Don Juan slipped it to her pale fingers. Unregistered, so it couldn’t be traced. Harper had a sneaking suspicion this was all just one sick game to Don Juan.

Harper and her father were disposable toys to him. They held no value to him and could be easily replaced. She tucked the gun back in her purse, then redid her makeup.

Newfound resolve entered her. Don Juan didn’t expect her to succeed but she’d prove him wrong. If she managed to fulfill her task, Don Juan promised to let her father go. They’d be allowed to leave this awful city. Maybe the two of them could gain new identities and somehow fix their relationship.

“Yeah, right,” Harper said with a scoff.

It was nice to dream but reality was a different matter. Valenti blood ran in her veins. She would die trying. Running wasn’t an option. She left the bathroom and resolved to get drunk as hell.

Fueled with liquid courage, Harper would throw herself at Mikhail Konstantin’s feet until he noticed her. She’d do anything to get his attention, because it wasn’t just her life on the line. Screw pride and everything else.

****

Mikhail made his way to the bar, eager to get another of shot of vodka to make tonight less bearable. He despised going to large-scale weddings likes these but the groom was the son of one of his allies.

Mikhail told himself he’d stay for an hour or two, then he’d take his leave. Then he spotted the pretty brunette who caught his eye earlier. Most women he slept with were plastic, shiny, and hard on the outside, but disappointingly hollow on the inside.

This particular brunette had an air of innocence about her, a rare quality, especially in a room full of criminals and liars. Two men in matching suits starting chatting with her. She looked like she wanted to be elsewhere. A damsel in need of rescue. Mikhail didn’t know what possessed him to intervene. Maybe he was just bored.

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