Double Edged Hearts Read online

  Double Edged Hearts

  Khardine Gray

  Copyright © 2020 by Khardine Gray

  DOUBLE EDGED HEARTS PART OF THE GANGSTERS AND DOLLS SERIES Copyright © 2020 by Khardine Gray

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design © 2019 by Cover Couture

  Editing-

  Julia Goda- Diamond in The Rough Editing

  Cassie Dess-Hearn

  This work is copyrighted. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The author asserts that all characters and situations depicted in this work of fiction are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations.

  It is intended for mature readers. All characters are 18+ years of age and all sexual acts are consensual.

  Contents

  Double-Edged Hearts

  We were always a heartbreak waiting to happen…

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  The Sting of Love Excerpt

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Khardine Gray

  Double-Edged Hearts

  Gangsters and Dolls

  Book 4

  USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  Khardine Gray

  We were always a heartbreak waiting to happen…

  She never belonged in my world of bloodshed and danger.

  The criminal underworld.

  She’s the good girl. The angel.

  I’m the devil. Dark and ruthless.

  A dangerous man who blew into her life like a raging storm.

  When she left my bed four years ago, it should have been the end of us.

  Women are a weakness I can’t afford.

  Now she’s back in Chicago.

  Reappearing like the ghosts that haunt me.

  But now there are more reasons to leave her alone.

  I’m a mobster and she’s a fed.

  She’s off-limits. Completely forbidden to me.

  I planned to stay away.

  Until the day she needed someone to save her.

  The only person I trust to protect her is me.

  When dark secrets spill and scatter at our feet, our lives become a game of survival.

  A game where truth is lies, and lies are truth.

  She’s mine, whether she wants to be or not.

  Mine to love.

  Mine to save.

  Even if it cost me everything…

  Prologue

  Alex and Cora

  Alex

  Me and mine own this city.

  I don’t just believe that because I’m an arrogant asshole who thinks he owns Chicago.

  I believe because I know.

  I know when people sleep, eat, work, play.

  And I know when the lost return.

  My father used to warn me about keeping secrets from those I trust. So, I feel like a prick now for keeping Cora a secret.

  My goddess…

  It’s been four years since I last saw her. She never belonged in my world in the first place, and I know I shouldn’t be watching her right now.

  I am danger, and my world is full of death. Maybe that’s why I accepted that last time we saw each other was the end.

  But then she popped up on my radar days ago.

  She went to our spot at the secret garden. And since she knows me, she must have known I’d find her eventually.

  We have this thing called obsession. It makes her feel me now as I watch her in the crowd of vipers. All of them are dressed in their finest for their fundraiser. Suited and booted for their event.

  She looks like the angel she is in her long evening gown that caresses her body the way I want to. It’s cream and striking against her sun-kissed skin. Striking against that long brown, velvet hair. A perfect match to her bright autumn eyes.

  I can see it all now as I watch from the tower in the hotel.

  She’s sitting at a table, and as she glances ever so slightly over her shoulder, I know she can feel me.

  She knows I want her.

  Does she know how badly I want to taste her too?

  Cora

  I sip on the water hoping it will cool me down.

  It’s not hot in here. It’s anything other. The temperature is cool and the hall has a perfect balance to calm the Chicago heat.

  What’s making me burn up is him. Alex.

  He’s here. I sensed him from the minute he got here. I don’t know if anyone would understand what I mean by that. Sensing.

  Maybe I’m crazy.

  Maybe I’m just imagining things.

  If I’m not though, it’ll be my fault he’s here watching me like a stalker. That’s how it feels, but Alex isn’t that. The man looks like a Greek god, and with his masterpiece body, he doesn’t have to stalk anybody.

  I stirred the nest, alerted him to my presence in his city after a four-year absence, and now that he’s here, I don’t know what to do.

  I can’t believe he came after the way I ended things. Shame fills me like it always does when I remember the way I left him. No matter the circumstance, you don’t treat people you love the way I treated him. You don’t destroy a relationship like the one we had, regardless of the reason. I just had to leave when I did, disappearing from everyone.

  That was the past and our lives are different now. Mine is very different.

  He must know we can’t be together.

  He must know what I am now.

  He’s a mobster, and I’m a federal agent.

  He would know that. I’ve seen how his people work, and there’s not a damn thing they don’t know.

  I knew I shouldn’t have gone to our spot, but I went anyway. It’s the secret garden by the river where he first kissed me. That’s where I always meet him when I’m here in Chicago.

  Part of me hoped he wouldn’t find me, and if he didn’t, it would mean he moved on and forgot me. So I could forget him too.

  Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe I needed closure. Something to truly come to an end in my mind. Something more than when I left his bed years ago and never returned.

  I still my breath and try to calm the arousal that’s clawing at my insides.

  We can’t be together anymore. That’s what I need to
tell myself.

  He must know that, but does he care?

  I don’t give a fuck what she is.

  I’m walking on shaky ground just being here amongst a group of feds who would love to see my ass behind bars for something they could pin on me. I don’t care though.

  I didn’t get to where I am by caring about shit like that.

  What I care about is her.

  I still care after all these years, and it would have been better for us both if she’d stayed away. A woman like her has too much power over me. I don’t want to be a slave to emotion, but that’s what she does to me.

  It’s almost laughable. I’m Alex Bellantoni, third capo to Claudius Morientz, the biggest boss of them all in this city. I shouldn’t be anybody’s love-sick fool, yet this woman has me wrapped around her finger, making me put everything at risk to come here for a taste of her.

  I have a choice. I can leave now that I’ve seen her, and she’ll sense I’ve gone. She’ll know that means this is goodbye.

  Or… I can do what we always do.

  I can lure her down the path of temptation like the devil I am and claim her.

  As she runs her fingers over her cheek and down… slowly… down her elegant neck, the lure of temptation seeps into my mind.

  Temptation calls to me to take my doll and make her mine again.

  Like an obedient servant, I answer the call and take my next step, giving in to desire. I smile when she stands up.

  It will be interesting to see what happens next.

  I tried to fight the yearning burning me up from the inside out, but I failed.

  I get on the elevator and head up to my room on the fifteenth floor. The second I step out, I feel his presence even stronger. It’s so powerful I turn and look behind me, but he’s not there. No one is. It’s just me standing in the corridor.

  I head to my room, and that’s where his presence grips me again so tight I can barely breathe. I’ve never met a man who could have such an effect on me.

  The room is dark, and the sliding doors are open, allowing the breeze to waft in and lift the chiffon curtains hanging by the windows.

  Musk tickles my nose, and the hint of tobacco.

  I release a ragged breath and decide to confront him.

  “Alex… I can’t,” I say to the darkness, and I’m answered by a low, deep chuckle that makes my nerves scatter.

  “You can’t?” I ask and step out of the darkness.

  I walk from the moonlit balcony into the room so she can see me better.

  She trembles. She doesn’t like this obsession any more than I do.

  The difference between us is she really could walk away, and no one would ever be able to find her. Then I’d just be passion’s bitch.

  I’d just be the fucker who can’t forget her.

  “I can’t,” she repeats and makes her voice sound like she really is determined to resist me.

  The corners of my mouth lift into a smile I know will weaken her. “I can’t either.”

  I can almost see that pretty little mind of hers working overtime to find excuses. I know I’ve won when I move closer and she doesn’t back away. I walk right up to her, reach out to touch her face, and she looks up to me with her beautiful eyes. The look inside them pleads with me. It pleads with me to touch her, to take her, to claim her, to possess her.

  To make her mine again.

  “I’m…sorry I left you the way I did. I—”

  I plant my finger on her delicate lips, stopping her apology. I can’t hear it now, not tonight. She wouldn’t like to know what I went through when I couldn’t find her. No one would ever know what I went through when I thought she was dead.

  “Shhh…no, no we’re not talking about that tonight, goddess. Not tonight.” I try to hold back my emotions, masking it with a crude smile, but all that I feel laces in the echo of my words. “Tonight I want something else.”

  Her lips tremble and desire fills her eyes. “What…”

  “You…” I breathe

  “I shouldn’t,” I whisper gazing into his piercing brown eyes.

  He looms over me, towering me with his six feet like a vengeful god, but the sharp angles and planes of his handsome face always steal my breath away.

  “Doll, if there was any doubt in your mind of should and shouldn’t, you would have stayed away from me. But you went to the secret garden, our spot, knowing I’d find you.” The deep baritone of his voice is smooth and tempting.

  “It’s been four years,” I rasp, a final attempt to resist him. One I know I won’t win.

  I turn my head, but he catches my neck and his fingers dig into my skin. It’s almost painful, but I’m gazing deep into his eyes just the way he wants me to.

  This man is no different from the criminal I’m trying to find. He’s a gangster, yet when I look at him, I just see Alex. I see him for who he is, not what he is. As he touches me, sparks sizzle over my skin, gripping my heart, stealing my last resolve.

  “Then tell me goodbye, and I’ll leave you alone forever. Release me from this bond I have to you, Coraline Monroe. Set me free so I can be the devil you know me to be.”

  My eyes widen.

  Release him?

  Say goodbye… forever.

  I wait for her to say it.

  Part of me wants to hear it.

  It will set me free and I can live the rest of my life trying to forget her.

  She hesitates, and my pulse quickens when her lips part for her to give me the answer.

  I need her to say it. If she doesn’t, what comes next will just be desire. The combustion of what we are when we come together.

  My lips tremble.

  I should just say goodbye even if I don’t mean it.

  I’m a fool and a fraud. How can I claim to want to work for the greater good when I’m here allowing myself to fall to the mercy of this man?

  I gaze up at him. My handsome, handsome devil.

  The years have flown by, but I still feel the same.

  My silence gives him the answer.

  I can’t say goodbye forever.

  Not tonight.

  Tonight, I just want him to touch me.

  Tonight, I just want him to claim me and make me his.

  Tonight… I just want to belong to him. So when he loosens his grip on my throat and lowers his mouth to my lips, I move closer to him too.

  My lips touch hers, and I know my fate is sealed.

  Goodbye won’t come tonight.

  I won’t fool myself into thinking it will never come.

  We’re good and evil, darkness and light.

  Tonight she’s mine, and I am hers.

  The kiss from my angel works its way through my body and into my soul.

  He cups my face and deepens our kiss as he picks me up and moves with me over to the wall where we rip at each other’s clothes until we’re both naked.

  My pussy clenches with need as he presses the fat head of his cock to my entrance and plunges into me.

  I cry out from the wild fire of passion that rips into my soul, holding on to his wide powerful shoulders as he starts pumping into me. He feels so good. I already know this is just the beginning of our night.

  This is just the beginning.

  But it will also be the defining moment for her.

  She doesn’t realize that she’s mine.

  I’m showing her who she belongs to as I fuck her.

  She can’t forget me, and I can’t forget her.

  This is us.

  This is what we are when we’re together.

  It’s something we both need to consider when the sun comes up with the reminder of who we are.

  The mobster and the fed.

  Chapter One

  Cora

  Bright sunlight spills in through the window as I roll onto my side.

  I shield my eyes from the glare and turn back so I can sit up and open my eyes without the impending sun beaming down on me.

  It’s when I do that t
hat I remember last night and realize I’m by myself.

  I look at the empty space next to me where Alex lay. The scent of him is still there. It’s powerful and masculine just like him.

  I already know not to look around. I can tell he’s gone.

  His presence isn’t here anymore.

  Last night was amazing, but with the dawn of a new day came the highlight of reality.

  I’m not the Coraline Monroe he knew years ago. He full named me last night. Everybody calls me Cora. The only person to full name me the way he did is dead.

  My mother. She used to do that when she was mad at me. After the fate she suffered, I’m not sure what she would have called my behavior last night.

  I’m in Chicago for work. That is why I’m here. Christ, if anyone knew I was with a guy who could be called into questioning at any time I’d lose my job straight away.

  I’m not the person I used to be and I need to remember that too when it comes to my heart. When Alex last saw me, I was just the computer hacker who did jobs for whomever could fill my pockets. I chose who I worked for, whether that was the cops or criminals. I foolishly thought that not everybody who was classed as a criminal was such, but I was wrong.

  Learning the truth about my father, certainly taught me a lesson I’ll never forget. My story is so twisted. The rude awakening I got years ago made me realize there are no good criminals.

  Alex and I have been screwing around in this game since I was twenty. I’m twenty-eight now, and I actually don’t know if I’m any better or worse for the sparse contact we’ve had.