Vicious Heart

Vicious Heart Born to Die, Book Three Candace Wondrak © 2023 Candace Wondrak All Rights Reserved. Book cover by Melony Paradise at Paradise Cover Design – Premade Book Covers Group 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. No books by Candace Wondrak were created with the use of AI. Books by Candace Wondrak are only available at Amazon. If you are reading elsewhere, please note it is an illegal, pirated copy, uploaded without my permission. I, the author, nor the distributor received payment for the copy, and if prosecuted violation comes with a fine of up to $250,000. Please do not pirate books. Chapter Zero - ??? Chapter One – Lola Chapter Two – Sylvester Chapter Three – Lola Chapter Four – Viper Chapter Five – Lola Chapter Six – Lola Chapter Seven – Maddox Chapter Eight – Lola Chapter Nine – Mike Chapter Ten – Lola Chapter Eleven – Lola Chapter Twelve – Sylvester Chapter Thirteen – Lola Chapter Fourteen – Lola Chapter Fifteen – Lola Chapter Sixteen – Maddox Chapter Seventeen – Lola Chapter Eighteen - ??? Chapter Zero – ??? I used to hate the night. My parents always told me it was the most dangerous time to go out with friends, because it was when criminals ruled the world. It was when wallets were stolen, cars were hijacked, and bodies were dumped in the ditch. I didn’t hate the night because of its danger, though. No, I hated it because everyone who thought they were different believed it was their time to crawl out of the woodwork, do a stretch or two, and be their true selves—whether their true selves were murderers, thieves, or robbers. I hated the night because of the pretenders. Because that’s what it was: pretending. The truth of the matter was, those people were on their own level from everyone else. They were different from the everyday, average, law-abiding and tax-paying folk, and they were certainly different from me. They weren’t like me, and I wasn’t like them. It took years until I discovered why that was. Why I was different, why a part of me had always felt off, why my parents’ concerns about placing myself in stupid situations with my friends after dark slid off me. Ironically, it was nighttime when everything changed, when I finally accepted who I was. And who was I? Patience. I’ll get to that. It’s a funny thing; when you start accepting who you are. Your true nature. When you do that, everything falls into place, locking like puzzle pieces. You end up with a picture you didn’t have before, only now you can decide what to do with it, where the picture goes, how things turn out. I didn’t think, in a million years, things would turn out like this. That’s the funny thing about fate: you couldn’t change it, couldn’t bend it to your will, couldn’t force it to be something else. It was what it was and that was that. That’s how it was for me, and, I suspect, that’s how it was for her. Ever since my awakening, as you could call it, I’d blossomed in the night. I’d stopped trying to be who my parents wanted me to be and let my true instincts take over, and what I found… what I found were other people like me. All my life, I’d felt alone. So alone, because I used to believe I was different than everybody else, that there was no possible way anyone could know, let alone understand, how I felt. But here, in this city of vice and crime, I’d found just that. The only reason I’d found it was because of her. I wasn’t alone anymore, and knowing that filled me with a sense of peace I just couldn’t get anywhere else. A sense of purpose. A belief that maybe I could do what my parents wanted, that I could change the world. And I would. I knew how I would, too. I knew how it would happen and how we’d get there, but for now… for now there were other things she’d have to deal with. Who was this elusive woman? You might be wondering why I kept bringing her up like she was here with me, so let me tell you: she was. She was with me, even when she wasn’t. Her beauty was burned in my head. Her crisp, clear blue eyes that could see right through you, the sultry smile on her lips when she was seducing her chosen prey that night. She was Lola, the Bloody Queen, the Night Slayer, the one who changed everything, not only for this city, but for me as well. She’d touched countless lives, and I’d bet anything she didn’t even know it. She would soon, though. Oh, she would know very soon just how dark and depraved this city could be. But, once again, patience was a virtue. All good plans took time. Time to plan, time to enact, and sometimes… sometimes there was nothing better than the slow game. The slow burn of a plan carefully enacted, where you watched from afar as everything caught aflame exactly when you knew it would. By the time I was done, I’d watch this city burn. I wasn’t big in the criminal underworld before my, let’s just call it, awakening, but I learned fast. Lola had killed the city’s Bloody Princess, taken her crown as her own—along with the DeLuca house and fortune. She was basically a new DeLuca now, the only one left, besides Maddox Luciano, whose mother was a dear sister of the deceased Bloody Princess. The dead Luciano matriarch had given up her prior last name to wed Richard Luciano, who’d abandoned this city when a turf war took place not