Brutal Legacy: A Dark Mafia Romance (Original Sin Series)
Brutal Legacy: Prologue

The shots rang out in the restaurant, sending panicked cries and screams up from the patrons. People hit the floor, and I was no different. Broken glass littered the tile, cutting into my knees.

I crawled under the table. Someone was crying, and someone else shushed them. Whimpers of fear filled my ears. A room full of people desperate to live.

A hard crunch sounded.

Footsteps over shattered glass.

Crunch.

Which way were they going?

Crunch.

Were they getting louder?

Crunch.

Dark dress shoes appeared in front of my hiding place. Shiny, leather brogues. They looked expensive. Handmade for sure. My terrified brain fastened onto the mundane to keep me from screaming. I clamped my hand over my mouth to muffle any sound from escaping.

The shooter shifted, taking a step to the left, and I nearly fainted with relief as they walked around my table to the side.

He’d gone. Moved away to terrorize another table.

The relief had barely hit when the table above me scraped hard over the floor. One second, I was cocooned in reassuring darkness, the next, I was crouching in a pitiful, cowering ball while the table shielding me flipped over and crashed on the floor.

Light stung my eyes. I was totally exposed. I could feel the gunman standing over me. His presence sent goosebumps over my skin… like Death himself had come to collect me.

This is it, Georgia, the end of the line.

Maybe I should have gone to church once in a while in the last fourteen years, or believed in something… maybe then, kneeling before my end wouldn’t feel so desolate.

What did I have to show for my thirty-three years on the planet? A shitty apartment with half a dozen unfinished designs? A broken heart that had never healed right, and a grudge the size of the moon? So big, that fourteen years of carrying it had destroyed the possibility of anything else good in my life.

Silence had fallen and stretched out endlessly. Was this when your life flashed in front of your eyes? Was this like in the movies when everything moved in slow motion? Or was the man with the gun really just standing over me, staring down?

Did he want me to glance up at him before he killed me? Just in case that was true, I kept my chin tilted mulishly down. I was nothing if not stubborn as fuck.

“Get up,” a deep voice commanded.

I tensed even more. Everything screamed at me to refuse.

“Get up, now, or I’ll shoot a person in this room every ten seconds until you do,” the deep voice continued, unbothered. Like he wasn’t just threatening to kill people.

“Ten, nine, eight…” he started.

I pushed myself to my feet, fighting a gasp as my hands ground into the jagged glass on the floor.

“I’m up. Don’t hurt anyone else.” My voice was surprisingly stronger than I’d thought it would be.

“I won’t as long as you do what I say, but every second we waste here, their lives are in danger.”

His odd wording sent my eyes up to his face, finally.

He was tall, well over six feet, and dressed like he’d been in a stock portfolio meeting and decided to step out and shoot up a restaurant. A custom-made black suit, crisp white shirt. He had that aura of power that only emanated from the truly wealthy.

But he wasn’t your average rich guy… there was something very different about him. Maybe it was the tattoos liberally decorating the backs of his hands and neck; clearly the guy had some serious bodywork going on beneath the three-piece suit. Or maybe it was how his face was spattered with someone else’s blood.

But on closer inspection, no, it wasn’t just the tats or the flecks of red against his cheek, though they certainly added to the aura of his presence.

It was just him. The way he stood, cocksure, but ready. Lethal and confident. A man who had done terrible things and would again. A man who could take any danger.

A man who was the danger.

He wrapped a hand around my arm and tugged me to him. My feet had forgotten how to work, and I fell clumsily into his chest. He didn’t even sway at the impact.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, searching the little I could see of his face.

He had sunglasses on, fitting for the California sun falling through the long windows of the restaurant. His jaw was square and tanned, shadowed with just a hint of dark stubble. He had strong cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Dark winged eyebrows and shorn black hair. There was something vaguely military-esque about the strictness of that cut.

He was criminally good-looking. Shouldn’t there be a rule that the most dangerous guys couldn’t also be the hottest ones?

“Wherever I want,” he said simply.

“What?! You can’t!” I squeaked out in a panic.

“And who is going to stop me?” He asked simply.

“You can’t just steal a person,” I murmured, knowing I was wrong. This madman could. He was.

“I can do whatever the fuck I want.” He turned from the carnage of the restaurant and pulled me beside him, pushing me out an exit.

A hard object poked into my side. The gun? I couldn’t see it, but clearly he had it pressed into my rib cage. I had to fight. I had to do something. I tried to step on his foot, but he barely flinched.

“Let’s be clear. If I say jump, you say how high. I say kneel… you hit the fucking deck, got it?” he growled at me, perfectly certain that I would comply. His hand was around my neck, his strong fingers biting into my skin.

“Or?” I shot out, anger at his unshakable confidence pushing my fear from my mind for a second, before it came back, tenfold.

He spoke with that same perfect confidence. “Or — you’ll die.”