Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
I’m Corvus Van der Horn, and as my family’s poisoner and torturer, I’m a master of control, cruelty, and patience. My prisoners are faceless pawns who ought to fear me.
Until Dalton.
He should be forgettable—a washed-up fighter and gambler with more debt than sense. Then I saw his phone. Turns out half the city’s men would sell their souls to let him wreck them. Now I can’t stop asking why.
So we strike a deal: his freedom, in exchange for the kind of night I could never risk with anyone else. A chance to give up control. Just once.
Now he’s under my skin like a disease. And saving him requires a cover story so outrageous it might actually work—an engagement. Me. Engaged. To a man who can’t bluff to save his life and thinks planning ahead means ordering two beers instead of one.
Our deal was supposed to be a secret. A mistake I’d bury.
Instead, I’m drowning in wedding chaos and my own desire.
But when I realize someone is hunting my husband-to-be, they wake up the worst part of me. Because no one—no one—messes with what’s mine.
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“Poisoned Heart” is a standalone M/M Dark Mafia Romcom where a ruthless mafioso loses control to the one man he should have never touched. Desire, obsession, and a trainwreck of wedding preparations collide in a story about love that feels like the sweetest poison.
Violence, strong language, aphrodisiac, blackmail
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Dalton
“You will fuck me like your life depends on it. Because it does.”
The blue eyes of Corvus Van der Horn watch me through the bars of my prison, cold as the fancy little knife he’s known to gut people with. When he approached the cell, I steeled myself, ready to be dragged out and tortured for information about money I don’t have.
I didn’t expect whatever this is, but after two days in a cold and damp cell, I’ll pay attention even to a delusion.
His words make no sense. Is this a test? A way to see how I’d react to an offer so outrageous? Or is he mocking me? Maybe this is simply a fever dream my delirious mind has come up with to avoid the grim reality of my situation. I was taken from my truck by three armed men, drugged, and then I woke up on the bare floor of a tiny room without windows.
Considering the amount of money I owe the Van der Horns, the only possible outcome is death, so being kept alive is somehow more terrifying. But it’s not like I can bleed out a million dollars. If only I got another chance at the card table…
But instead of an opportunity to wipe the debt I’ve accumulated, I’m facing a beautiful monster who’s toying with me like a cat with a mouse already caught in a trap. I can’t see a single wrinkle on his handsome face. For him to become a professional torturer for a crime syndicate in his twenties… I don’t want to know what kind of shit must be going on in his brain.
“W-what?” I choke out from my cold damp corner. “I’m… I’m not even gay,” I lie, because this could be a test leading to customized types of torture I don’t want to ponder. I’ve heard the stories about Corvus Van der Horn, and I’d rather not find myself at the pointy end of his knives.
A strand of jet-black hair falls onto the man’s forehead, and he brushes it back into place in the tidy slicked-back do. I’ve seen him a couple of times when he visited the club I worked at as a bouncer, or at the casino where I found my ultimate downfall.
Among his many cousins and family members, he stands out the way a black hole does among stars. If death wore a suit, it would look exactly like the one before me. A bejeweled cross adorns his silk tie and I don’t know if it’s to signify that he’s religious, or to remind people that if they fuck with him they’ll meet their maker. He’s handsome. Very fuckable. I’m begrudgingly fascinated by the sharpness of his eyes. He’s a challenge I would have never dared take on if I wasn’t being invited.
But right now he’s not just a good-looking man I get to ogle. No, he is here as the infamous torturer skilled enough to make a mother give up her own child.
I’m damp with sweat.
The cell’s the size of a double bed. Claustrophobic. There’s no room to hide, and I’m sick of its stale air. I need sunlight, I need freedom, and I’ll do anything to get it.
The lamp in the corridor casts a tawny glow that barely reaches past the bars, but when he moves, his shadow swallows me whole, and I’m plunged into darkness. Its touch makes my skin prickle.
The silence following my response twists my gut. I’m no small guy. I can fight. I like fighting. I could take him on in a fair match. Probably. But I’m on the back foot here. Every muscle in my body tenses, alert and useless at the same time.
When Corvus steps closer, the odor of dust and sweat seems to part before him and I get to smell him. The scent he carries is faint but sharp, expensive soap with something darker under it, and it’s making my pulse jack up. I don’t know what kind of hellhole I’ve stumbled into, and yet part of me wants to lean closer and see what makes a man like him tick.
He’s very still, and his blue eyes remain focused on me as if Corvus expects to will me into revealing a secret stash that might just cover my debts.
“I don’t care about your identity. What I want is sex, not dates,” he snaps, kicking the bars so violently the cell thrums with their dull clang.
I’m no coward, but I still flinch. “The fuck? You’re barking up the wrong tree,” I insist, but hesitation slips in at the end, because… if this isn’t a test, I’d definitely want to. Fuck him, that is. Or even enjoy a little cuddle, make out, slide my tongue between those pretty lips… though maybe in different circumstances.
Corvus’s broad chest sinks with a deep exhale, and I smell the tobacco and cloves on his warm breath. His posture stiffens, and for a moment he seems half an inch taller, but instead of walking off, unhappy that I didn’t bend under pressure, he dives his hand into his pocket, and pulls out a smartphone.