7. Chapter 7 Natalie

Chapter 7 Natalie

I jolt awake, heart jackhammering against my ribs, Dante's phantom touch still searing my skin. His scent lingers—sandalwood, smoke, and sin—an inescapable reminder of his intrusion into my space, my life, my very soul.

The threadbare sheet tangles around my legs as I struggle to sit up, to shake off the vestiges of sleep and the dark, forbidden dreams that cling like cobwebs. Dreams of strong hands pinning me down, of cruel lips branding my flesh, of pleasure and pain entwining until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

"Fuck." The curse feels heavy on my tongue, echoing in the empty room. Empty, save for the glaring absence on my nightstand where my vibrator used to be. A parting "gift" from my demented admirer, a calling card to remind me that nowhere is safe. Not even the sanctuary of my own thoughts.

I fumble for my smokes with shaking hands, nearly dropping the lighter in my haste to bring flame to the cigarette. The first acrid inhale does little to calm my fractured nerves, but it gives me something to focus on besides the fear clawing at my insides like a rabid beast.

"Get it together, Natalie," I mutter around the filter, a broken pep-talk for an audience of one. "He's just another creep with too much money and entitlement. You've handled worse."

But even as the words leave my chapped lips, I know they're a lie. Dante Corleone is unlike anyone I've ever encountered, in this life or any other. He is darkness incarnate, a living shadow that consumes everything in his path. And if that display last night was any indication, he's made it his mission to consume me, body and profane fucking soul.

Flashes of our encounter strobe behind my eyes in lurid technicolor—his feral grin, the cruel grip of his fingers in my hair, the undeniable heat of his body pressing me into the mattress. I can still taste him on my tongue, bourbon and brimstone, damnation and desire.

Bile rises in my throat and I swallow it down with another drag, relishing the burn. Physical pain is an old friend, a reminder that I'm still here, still breathing. As long as I can feel, as long as I can bleed, I'm not completely lost.

Not yet.

The shriek of sirens in the distance, a nightly lullaby in this concrete jungle, drags me from the quicksand of my spiraling thoughts. I can't afford to fall apart, not when the wolves are already at the door, fangs bared and ready to tear into my tender flesh.

I need to move, to shake off this creeping malaise before it drowns me completely. With a groan, I lever myself out of bed, every joint popping like morbid bubble wrap. My reflection in the cracked vanity mirror is a gothic horror show—snarled hair, raccoon eyes, and a sickly pallor that speaks of too many liquid dinners and not enough actual sustenance.

"Looking good, Quinn," I sneer at the ghost girl staring back at me. "Real poster child for mental stability."

I'm halfway through a halfhearted attempt at making myself semi-human again when I hear it—a pounding at my door, heavy and insistent. Cop knock, my lizard brain helpfully supplies, the kind that says "open up, we can do this the easy way or the hard way."

Every muscle in my body goes rigid, a prey animal sensing a predator. I know I should answer, should paste on a brave face and confront whatever fresh hell is waiting for me on the other side. But my feet are rooted to the dingy tiles, a creeping dread turning my veins to ice water.

They pound again, harder this time, the ancient wood rattling in its frame. "NYPD, Miss Quinn. Open the door, please."

Please. As if I have a choice in the matter. As if this is anything other than a thinly veiled demand wrapped in bullshit politesse.

I'm moving before I can second guess myself, before the self-preservation instinct screaming in the back of my head can persuade my leaden limbs to make a break for the fire escape. I'm Natalie Quinn, artist and fuck-up extraordinaire. I've faced down worse demons than a couple of beat cops. I can handle this.

The chain on the door clinks like a warning as I slide it free, a metallic rasp that sets my teeth on edge. I plaster on my best "nothing to see here, officer" smile and crack the door, keeping my body firmly wedged in the gap.

"Morning, detectives. What can I do for New York's finest on this lovely shithole of a day?"

The taller of the two, a barrel-chested slab of beef with close-cropped hair and a perma-scowl, looks like he wants to laugh in my face. Or maybe just bitch slap the smirk off it. "Cut the crap, Miss Quinn. We're here about a string of homicides that have recently come to our attention. Homicides that all seem to circle back to you."

Homicides. The word lands like a sucker punch to the solar plexus, driving the air from my lungs. I feel my smile crack and shatter, the mask of bravado slipping to reveal the terror beneath.

"I... I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't killed anyone." The denial sounds weak even to my own ears, a mewling kitten in the face of a lion's roar.

The shorter cop, wiry and weasel-faced, pipes up from behind his partner's bulk. "Maybe not directly, sweetheart. But your pussy seems to be the common denominator. Justin Thatcher, David Nowak, Aleksandr Volkov... that’s just the greatest hits list, or are there more notches on your lipstick case?"

Bile scorches the back of my throat as the names hit me like a hail of bullets. Justin, David, Aleks... faces and shared fluids, blurred snapshots from my various benders. Not exactly loves of my life, but they didn't deserve to die. Not like that. Not because of me.

"I think I'm going to be sick," I manage to choke out before promptly ejecting the meager contents of my stomach all over Officer Beef's shiny black shoes. The world tilts and wavers, my knees giving out as I cling to the door frame for dear life.

Someone pushes past me, their radio crackling to life in a burst of static and code words I'm too fried to decipher. Weasel Face guides me to my piece of shit couch none too gently, shoving a wastebasket between my knees to catch the next round of heaving.

"Not the first reaction to a couple o' silt sacks getting snuffed, but points for originality," he sneers, handing me a wad of fast food napkins to wipe my mouth with. "Now that we've established you're a murder magnet, you wanna tell us what the fuck is going on here?"

I shake my head weakly, the room still spinning like a tilt-a-whirl on cracked out speed. "I don't... I don't know. They were just hookups, I swear. One and done, no strings attached. I never thought..."

My voice cracks, my lips numb and heavy. Never thought my dirty deeds would come back to haunt me like this. Never thought I'd be staring down the barrel of multiple homicides, executed with surgical precision to send a message.

A message that couldn't be clearer if it was scrawled on the walls in blood: Natalie Quinn is mine. And anyone who touches her, anyone who even looks at her with hunger in their eyes, is signing their own death warrant.

Oh, fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck.

Dante. It all circles back to him, the spider at the center of this poisoned web. The dark lordling who staked his claim with lips and teeth and cruel, clever fingers, who left his mark on me in ways that can never be scrubbed clean.

This is his handiwork, his love note written in viscera and violence. A declaration of ownership, brutal and brazen and drenched in innocent blood.

"We can protect you." Beef's gruff voice cuts through the static in my head, his expression softening a fraction as he takes in my shell-shocked pallor. "But you gotta give us something to work with here, Quinn. Help us get this sick fuck before he gets you."

I let out a brittle laugh, the sound sharp as shattered glass. "You can't protect me from him. No one can." The words taste like ashes on my tongue, a bitter admission of defeat. "He's not just some random psycho, Detective. He's Dante fucking Corleone."

Weasel Face sucks in a sharp breath, his eyes going wide. "Corleone? As in, the Corleone crime family?"

I nod, numb acceptance settling over me like a shroud. "The one and only. Heir apparent to an empire of blood and sin, and my own personal nightmare made flesh."

Beef and Weasel exchange a loaded glance, an entire conversation passing between them in the span of a heartbeat. I can practically see the gears turning behind their eyes, the calculations of risk versus reward, justice versus self-preservation.

"Shit," Beef mutters, scrubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw. "This just got a whole lot more complicated."

"You think?" I snap, fear sharpening my tongue to a razor's edge. "He's obsessed with me. Thinks I'm his fucking soulmate or some twisted shit. He's not gonna stop until he owns every last piece of me."

"So what are we supposed to do, just hand you over to him?" Weasel snarks, but there's an undercurrent of genuine fear beneath the bravado. He knows as well as I do that Dante Corleone is not a man to be fucked with, not if you value your kneecaps. Or your life.

I push to my feet on watery legs, my chin lifted in a defiance I don't truly feel. "I'm not asking you to fight my battles for me, detectives. I know better than to pit the NYPD against the Corleone machine."

Useless, anyway. Dante owns half the city's finest, has their balls in a velvet-lined vise. Even if these two wanted to help me, their hands are tied. Can't pin a damn thing on one of society's "shining stars".

"Just do me a favor? When you find my body, make sure they don't put 'dumb slut who got in over her head' in my obituary? 'Starving artist' has a nicer ring to it."

The words are leaden on my tongue, resignation and despair mingling with the lingering bile. I've seen what happens to pretty little things that catch Dante's eye then try to scurry away. They all end up the same—chopped up and spit out, yesterday's garbage to be crushed and burnt.

I'm dead. I know it. They know it. It's just a matter of when and how bloody at this point.

Weasel looks away, jaw ticking. Beef sighs, a sound as weary as time itself. "We'll do our best to keep you safe," he says quietly, but it rings hollow. A platitude, nothing more. Protect and serve, just another fairytale we tell ourselves to keep the monsters at bay.

And this monster? He's the Big Bad Wolf, the Boogeyman, and the Devil himself all rolled into one Armani-wrapped package. And he's already at my door, huffing and puffing and ready to reenact mankind's original sin between my thighs.

The cops clear out with a few more empty reassurances, leaving me alone in my shitty walkup. Alone with the knowledge that I've got a target on my back the size of Times Square and it's open season for one psychopathic rich boy.

I sink into the couch for a long moment, head in my hands, trying to remember how to breathe past the anvil on my chest. Think, Natalie. You sorry excuse for a free-thinking woman. There's gotta be a way out of this mess that doesn't end with you as the tragic headline on the evening news.

Europe's out—too easy for him to track me down in any major city thanks to his family's frankly obscene network of money and ill-gotten influence. Same with South America. Maybe somewhere remote, off the grid completely?

Escape plans whirl behind my eyes, each more desperate and far-fetched than the last. In the end, I keep circling back to one inescapable truth:

He'll find me. No matter how far I run, now well I hide, Dante Corleone will hunt me to the ends of the fucking earth. Because in his blighted, blackened heart, I belong to him. His magnum opus, his monstrous muse.

I'm bound to him now, with ropes of sin and ruin, desire and despair. And like the Devil himself, he'll never let me go. Not until I've fulfilled my role in his grand design—the beauty to his beast, the twisted Eve to his Serpent.

So I've got two options—run like hell and pray for a miracle, or stare into the abyss and wait for it to blink first.

Spoiler alert? I've never been the kind to place my bets on divine intervention. If there is a God, she fucked off a long time ago. No one's coming to save me, least of all the Big Woman upstairs.

Which leaves me with Option B. Face this fucker head on, meet him on the battlefield of his choosing. If I'm gonna be the sacrificial lamb, might as well march to the altar with my head held high.

The pieces are in play. The board is set. And I am about to play the most dangerous game of my misbegotten life.

Winner takes all, loser takes a dirtnap.

And the devil himself is fixing to be my Opponent.

I just pray I'm ready to pay the price of victory.

Because it's a checkmate or soul mate for me now. And I know too damn well which way the tide of destiny is pulling.