This is Book 1 of the Vendetta series! It's a combination of romance, humor, the mafia, and mature scenes meant for a New Adult audience. It can be read as a standalone! Hope you enjoy! :)
Hey everyone! This story is dedicated to The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. If you, a friend, or a loved one has had thoughts about suicide, attempted, or you know someone who has passed away because of suicide, you know first hand how crucial the prevention against it is in schools and in general. Please take the time to consider donating to the non-profit organization. You could be saving a life! Thank you! (P.S- This story does not have suicide in it, I am merely bringing the subject to the attention of my readers!)
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Chapter 1: My Neighbor Is A Killer
"Püssy!"
The word tasted foreign on my tongue. This was new territory for me. I came from a family of wealth and classiness. And as much as I tried to separate myself from that lifestyle, I would never be so trashy as to speak like that, like a criminal....like him.
"I have a püssy, you have a püssy, the cat that lives in the dumpster outside is a püssy! It's a word! A word, Scarlett! A word! Don't let this affect-"
There was a knock on the door. "Scarlett, darling? Is everything alright...?"
Püssy, I mouthed one last time to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I'd shoot that word right back at his face, too.
"Everything's perfectly fine, Mom!" As if she really cared. I wiped frantically at the running mascara under my eyes and took a large gulp out of my wine glass.
"Cheers," I said to myself. I made myself as presentable as possible and threw open my new apartment bathroom door, letting it hit the wall with a crack. It certainly would have left a hole in the wall, had there not been an unopened box of my favorite goofy sweaters against the wall.
Mother was dressed in a cream colored Dior dress that she would certainly only wear once. I, on the other hand, was dressed in an oversized Mickey Mouse sweatshirt with a tear by my belly button, matched with my favorite pair of leggings.
"Were you crying, Scarlett?" Mother asked and for a moment, she actually looked concerned. Then I realized it was just the Botox and her face was kind of stuck like that. "I'd cry too, if I wore that sweatshirt in public."
"I was watching Greys Anatomy before you came," I explained, ignoring her normal commentary on my clothes. I finished off my wine. "It was an emotional episode."
My neighbor is a huge, throbbing, psychopathic- d!ckhead, is what I actually wanted to say. But I digress, I was too urbane to speak that way.
"And where did you get that wine? You didn't get your poor, sober, old mother a glass as well? Is it a good year?"
"It's just juice, Ma. You know I don't drink. I felt like being fancy, considering the," I motioned to the entire apartment, "special occasion."
"Scarlett, about what happened with Todd-" Mother began.
"Please stop," I said, tears started to burn in my eyes again. "If you really came here to talk about Todd, then you know where the door is. Todd and I are over. Forever. I'm glad he did what he did. We were two different people, anyway.
"It's just that people make mistakes, dear..."
I wanted to rip my hair out. "You're right. People make mistakes. People trip and thrust their unusually small d!ck numerous times into another woman's v#gina all the time!"
"Scarlett!" Mother turned red. "I will not have you speaking that way about Todd. The size of his...thing...is medical condition..."
Through the paper-thin walls of my apartment, I heard my neighbor's door slam shut.
He was back.
Panic soaked into my ever pore.
"That's it! You're not welcomed!" I gripped Mother by the elbow and dragged her to the front door. She would think I was just being my bitter self and kicking her out of that apartment building, but in actuality, I was saving her from a man she certainly did not want to meet. "I'm all moved out! It's over! I know it's hard for you. I know you've had this picturesque idea in your head that Todd and I would get married and have plenty of babies, but it's over. Now please, come over tomorrow like I told you on the phone, I'm exhausted."
"You're kicking your own mother out of your apartment-?"
I slammed the door in the face.
It was for her own good, believe me.
I'll give you the SparkNotes version of how my life turned to shit.
Twenty Four hours before...
It was the first night in my apartment in NYC. I made progress unpacking during the whole day and only had a few boxes left. I chose a decent building to live in, but truthfully could have afforded a lot better and my decision was mostly out of sheer desperation to live on my own. It wasn't the couple arguing upstairs or the paint peeling off the walls that I fall made me fall in love with the apartment. It was the clean slate, blandness, and distance from my family that this apartment offered me. Moving out of my parent's home was stressful, and since I was still my period, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and pray to the cramp gods that they would relieve the earthquake going on in my womb.
My neighbor from hell was loudly and madly fucking some blonde chick I spotted on my way up bringing boxes into my new room. She had long legs and breasts that just shouted HELLO, and she was eagerly waiting outside of his door like a puppy. At first, the two, my neighbor and his girly friend, were shaking the walls as they committed the dirty deed, making it virtually impossible to take a power nap, and I was utterly disgusted.
I put in my headphones and made my new bed, but I'll admit I got curious after an hour and a half of nonstop, gorilla sex.
I mean, talk about stamina, right?
I might have pressed my ear against the wall.
It was quite possibly the worst decision of my life.
"You told Fico what?" a male voice demanded. I would soon find out it was Neighbor From Hell. "You stupid wh0re! Puttana! Do you have any idea what he'll do to me if he finds out it was all my idea? He'll cut my d!ck off!"
"I'm sorry, I-" a woman's voice began. "No! Please, don't! He bribed me-!"
She screamed. It wasn't out of pleasure.
Silence.
A body thumped to the ground.
I threw my hands over my mouth. I couldn't scream. I couldn't.
I hurried to find my cell phone. Had I left in in a box somewhere? The apartment phone wasn't hooked up yet, I remembered my landlord telling me about that.
I thought about leaving the apartment. Then I quickly thought against it. So there I was, sitting down on the floor in the kitchen, protected only by a wrap around counter and my bubble wrapped vase, determining what to do next. I mean it was obvious what happened, right? Where were the police? Had nobody else in the building reported that?
Hadn't this been in a movie once?
Most importantly, why did the fuck did I have to pee during a time like this?
There was a polite knock on my door.
"Damn it," I cursed. Creeping to the door with a bubble-wrapped vase in my hand, I quickly looked through the peephole and the most orgasmic looking man I had ever seen in my life stood right outside, holding a grey Italian Guerra hat gracefully in his hands. My mouth went dry. He wore a dark shirt and pants which both matched his eyes, and his rich, coffee colored hair was only slightly disheveled, despite his recent wild activities.
He was a dark angel.
This couldn't be him. It couldn't be...
I tore my gaze away from the door, pressing against the wall.
Of course he was hot. Of course.
Did Hottie still have a gun on him? A knife? What if he had shot me through the door? What if he slit my throat?
"It's just your neighbor, candy." Candy?! Neighbor from Hell sounded friendly at the time, like he wanted to stop by and introduce himself."Is that bubble wrap?"
I was squeezing the bubble wrap around the vase. Shit. Now he certainly knew I was home.
I decided to open the door like nothing was wrong. Seemed like the right thing to do at the time. "Oh...hey! Sorry, I was putting away stuff!" I motioned to my headphones. "Didn't, uh, hear you at the door!"
"Makes sense." He lazily leaned against the door frame, looming over me like a tall, menacing shadow. "Just wanted to welcome you to the building." There was an obvious Italian lilt to his voice, and it was distracting. I found myself concentrating on his lips too much. "I'm also very sorry about the noise, it just came to me that someone was moving in today. I didn't mean to be so loud..." His dark gaze dropped to my sweatshirt. "I'm sure that kind of stuff makes a girl like you... uncomfortable..."
He looked even more attractive once the door was open. God-like even, with a strong jaw and shoulders, and obvious muscles rippling beneath his clothes. His hair was slightly disheveled (sex hair) but his facial hair was well kept and made him look important.
I realized his mouth was moving again.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" My face heated up. "I was thinking about something."
Filthy things...
"I asked how much you could hear through these walls. I hope I didn't get off on the wrong foot with you."
"Oh. Well, no problem here. Like I said, I had my headphones in..."
He stared at me for a long moment. "Makes sense."
"It's just not every day your apartment walls shake like that," I said, slightly annoyed. "I thought it was an earthquake a few times, so I put my headphones in."
"Well, that was my last...hoorah, I promise. I'll keep it down next time." His smile was almost greedy, filling his face with pride. "This apartment has been empty for a while now, so I've had a lot of... flexibility. Haven't had a neighbor to knock at my door at four in the morning and tell me to keep it down."
He must have killed the person who lived here, was the first thing I thought.
"So you didn't hear anything strange, then? Something...you maybe shouldn't have heard?" Those sultry, dark eyes dropped to my baggy Mickey Mouse sweatshirt again and I immediately regretted ever putting the ratty thing on. "These walls are pretty thin..."
"I know," I said. I hid the tremble in my voice. "I heard you having a lot of fun in there, so I plugged up, like I said. Listened to some country music." I could have at least told him the truth about the music.
"I pinned you as a more of a rock and roll girl." He was right. "Country sucks," he added, and I completely agreed.
I smiled tightly. "To each their own."
"Let's cut the bullshit, Minnie Mouse," he suddenly said, his amiability fleeting. "I know you're lying to me."
My stomach dropped. "I think you need to leave."
"Nobody talks to me like that, candy." He startled me with his sudden anger. His knuckles gripped the door frame so tightly they were turning white. "I leave when I want to leave. Understand?" Neighbor from Hell licked his upper lip, a muscle in his face twitching with fury. He let out a low, throaty laugh that sent a pool of heat straight down under. "I know you heard me kill her, you know you heard me kill her. We both know I killed her and both of us need to be quiet about it." The scary part was that he didn't even bother to whisper. "If you call the police, I'll know, and you better sleep with one eye open if you do that, candy. If you don't call the police, like a good girl..." He leaned in closer. "I'll fuck that tight, w3t püssy of yours ten times better than I fücked hers... with your permission, of course."
I was never talked to like that before. I was in a committed relationship for years with Todd, and the dirtiest conversation we ever had was brief, when we discussed back and forth a few times whether or not Kim Kardashians' ass was real. That was it. But püssy? A man had never said that to me.
My neighbor glowered at me with those dark, bedroom eyes, patiently awaiting an answer. I was silent, trapped inside of a volcano, sinking slowly to the bottom of the magma, burning from head to toe. Sweat dripped slowly down my spine and my mouth went dry.
I was so turned on it wasn't even funny.
How fücking sick was that?
Coming to my senses, I went to slam the door shut, but he stuck his foot out, blocking it from closing. His eyes were dark and set on me like two sharp arrows. He didn't make a move to touch me. He didn't have to.
"You're a good girl, candy, I can tell. I like good girls. They tend to scream louder..." That double meaning sent chills down my back.
"This is not happening..." I whispered, mostly to myself.
"I'll leave you to your unpacking, but don't think for a second I won't stop by again tomorrow." Neighbor from Hell's grin made my legs feel like noodles, but that grin dropped fast, swapped with a cruel scowl. "And one other thing. Know that you won't last as long as the other neighbor, if you don't keep that pretty mouth of yours shut. Understand?"
"Yes," I squeaked out. God, I was pathetic.
"I knew you would." He winked at me. "Sweet dreams, candy."
He removed his foot, letting the door slam closed.
When I looked through the peephole, he was already gone. He certainly did not know my name, and I certainly did not know his. And I didn't plan on knowing it any time soon.
That was my first night at my new apartment.
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