Desperate To Escape Her Ex, She Kissed The Mafia Boss — Then He Whispered, “Now Everyone Thinks You’re Mine”

CHAPTER 1

Panic tasted like cheap champagne and copper.

Harper Mitchell stood at the edge of the Obsidian’s main floor with a glass she hadn’t drunk from and a smile she’d practiced in the mirror of a Brooklyn bathroom, and she counted the exits the way she’d taught herself to count them — six months of practice, six months of never sitting with her back to a door.

The Obsidian was not her world.

The Obsidian was a cathedral of money, a place where eight-figure deals were brokered over vintage scotch and secrets were traded in the shadows of velvet booths. Harper was a freelance art restorer. She made enough to cover rent in Brooklyn on a good month, and on a bad month she made enough to cover most of it and negotiate about the rest.

Her membership fee here would have been five figures a year. She didn’t have a membership. She had a job.

There was a Renaissance canvas in the owner’s private collection — a small, badly yellowed oil that had been overpainted sometime in the nineteenth century, and the club’s reclusive owner wanted an assessment before he decided what to do with it.

The owner had not attended the meeting. Harper had spent forty minutes with his curator and left with a retainer check and the strange feeling of having been hired by a ghost.

She was also here hiding.

For six months, Harper had been running from Derek Conway.

Derek was an Assistant District Attorney. He was high-profile and carefully dressed and genuinely talented, and he had built a career on a pristine public image, and behind closed doors he had built something else entirely — a dark, suffocating obsession that had started as devotion and had curdled, somewhere along the way, into ownership.

When she finally found the courage to leave him, the real nightmare had begun.

Derek did not take rejection. Derek took hostages.

He froze her bank accounts. He called her friends, one by one, and said things that made them stop calling back. He made it terrifyingly clear, in the calm voice he used for closing arguments, that the police would never help her against one of their own.

He hadn’t escalated to violence yet. He hadn’t needed to. Everything else had been enough.

And now he was here.

Harper’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. She’d spotted him from the mezzanine — a tall silhouette near the entrance, sharp eyes scanning the sea of moving bodies with the methodical patience of a man who had done this before and intended to do it again.

He looked impeccable. He always looked impeccable.

But she could see the tension in his jaw from twenty yards.

He was hunting. And it was only a matter of seconds before he found his prey.

Desperation clawed up her throat. She couldn’t let him corner her. The last time they had been alone together, she had barely escaped with bruised wrists and a shattered sense of safety, and she had spent the months since building a life that didn’t include rooms with him in them.

She spun around, abandoned her glass on a passing waiter’s tray, and pushed toward the back of the club.

The bass vibrated through her bones — a chaotic soundtrack to rising panic. She darted past a pair of towering bouncers and slipped behind a heavy velvet curtain that separated the main floor from the ultra-VIP section.

The atmosphere changed instantly.

The air here was cooler. It smelled of expensive cigars, leather, and quiet, dangerous power.

“Hey — you can’t be back here,” a gruff voice called from the shadows.

Harper ignored it. Her eyes darted frantically around the room.

Behind her, through the curtain, she heard the distinct heavy thud of Derek’s footsteps over the muffled bass.

He had seen her.

He was coming.

She backed into the darkest corner of the lounge, breath coming in shallow gasps, and that was when she realized she wasn’t alone.

Sitting in a high-backed leather booth, shrouded in dim amber light, was a man.

He didn’t look like the typical Wall Street billionaires or trust-fund brats who frequented the Obsidian. He wore a tailored midnight-blue suit that clung to a broad, muscular frame.

But it was his stillness that commanded the room.

Everyone else in the club was moving, drinking, talking. This man sat like a king on a throne, swirling a glass of amber liquid with methodical precision. His face was strikingly handsome, carved with harsh aristocratic lines — high cheekbones, a strong jaw shadowed with a hint of stubble, and eyes so dark they looked like obsidian glass.

Two large men in dark suits stood a few feet behind him, hands resting casually inside their jackets.

Bodyguards.

“Harper.”

The voice sent a paralyzing jolt of ice down her spine.

Derek stepped through the velvet curtain. His lips curled into a triumphant smile. He adjusted his silk tie, eyes locked on her.

“Did you really think you could avoid me forever? You’ve been a very bad girl, running away like that.” He took a step closer. His hand reached out. “We have a lot to talk about.”

Harper’s mind went blank.

Instinct took over — primal and blinding. She couldn’t let him touch her. She couldn’t go back into the gilded cage.

She threw herself forward.

Not toward the exit.

She lunged into the leather booth.

Before the man in the midnight-blue suit could react — before his bodyguards could even move — Harper dropped into his lap.

She grabbed the lapels of his jacket with violently trembling hands and smashed her lips against his.

For a fraction of a second, the man went completely rigid.

She expected to be thrown to the floor. She expected shouting. She expected the cold barrel of a gun against her temple.

None of that happened.

A large, warm hand clamped down on the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair. Another arm wrapped around her waist like a vise, hauling her flush against a solid chest.

He didn’t push her away.

He took over.

The kiss, which had started as a desperate shield, turned devastatingly real. He tasted of expensive bourbon, mint, and raw, unapologetic power. He deepened it with a dominant, claiming intensity that made her head spin and obliterated the rest of the room.

The music seemed to fade. The silence in the VIP lounge became absolute.

When she finally tore her mouth away, gasping for air, her cheeks were burning and her heart was beating so fast it physically hurt.

She kept her eyes squeezed shut for a moment, terrified of what she had just done.

The man leaned in. His lips brushed the shell of her ear. His voice was a low, dark, velvet rumble that sent shivers racing down her spine.

“Now everyone thinks you’re mine.”

Harper opened her eyes.

He was staring down at her with a faint, predatory smirk. His dark eyes were devoid of fear — filled instead with a dangerous amusement.

She turned her head slowly and looked over her shoulder.

Derek was standing three feet away. But the triumphant, arrogant prosecutor was gone. In his place was a man who looked like he had just seen a ghost.

Derek’s face was deathly pale. His eyes were wide with sheer, unadulterated terror. He was staring at the man whose lap Harper was currently occupying.

And he was trembling.

“Mr. Russo,” Derek stammered, his voice cracking violently. “I — I didn’t realize. I apologize. I profoundly apologize.”

Harper froze.

Russo.

The name echoed through her mind, unlocking a vault of headlines and whispered city rumors.

Dominic Russo. Head of the most powerful, ruthless syndicate on the East Coast. A man who single-handedly controlled the ports, the unions, and half the politicians in the state.

A man who made people disappear with a flick of his wrist.

Dominic’s arm tightened around her waist, keeping her anchored against him. He didn’t look at Derek. He merely lifted his glass, took a slow sip of bourbon, and let the silence stretch until Derek looked like he might collapse.

“Conway,” Dominic finally said.

His voice was soft. It carried a lethal edge that cut clean through the room.

“You’re interrupting.”

CHAPTER 2

"I — I'm leaving, sir. Right now."

Derek was backing up so fast he stumbled over a low table. He didn't look at Harper once. He turned and fled through the velvet curtain as if the devil himself were chasing him.

And in a way, he was.

Harper watched the curtain swing shut behind him, and a wave of dizzying relief washed over her.

She had done it.

She had finally found something — someone — that scared Derek Conway.

But as the adrenaline receded, a new and far colder terror took its place.

She was sitting on the lap of Dominic Russo.