Folie à Deux

Chapter One

***THIS IS JUST A SAMPLE. THIS BOOK CAN BE FOUND ON KINDLE UNLIMITED AND IN PAPERBACK FORM ON AMAZON***

***THIS IS THE PREQUEL NOVELLA TO THE VILLAINOUS HEROES SERIES, THE REWRITE OF THR MAFIE ROMANCE SERIES***

Content Warning:
This book is a dark work of fiction. Heed trigger warnings before reading. 18+ only! In this book you will find: Breath play/choking, consensual non-consent, praise/degradation, DVP, extreme body mods, edge-play, mask play, spitting, worship, and mentions of past abuse/trauma.

"We're all mad here." —Lewis Carroll

Jameson Stefanov

I glare at the thick envelope on my desk as though it is some living entity. Cheek resting along my pointer finger, elbow grinding into the unforgivable black marble, I simply stare. I know what is in that fucking file. But bringing myself to open it? Something my cold fucking heart cannot do.

I'll wait until Tristan gets home, for I cannot make a decision of this magnitude without his approval.
Our empire is in a carefully balanced position, but not fallen yet. We've cousins in New York who'd be willing to help, though the Volkov's interests are beginning to split from ours, likely in thanks to Maksim. If I had any say—any pull against his father—I'd join with him. Gone are the ways of old. Drugs, weapons—they don't pay the same anymore.

Secrets are the knives to twist now. Secrets are the way to bring an empire to its knees. And with our father dead and buried, we are vulnerable to the families who'd use us as a rung on a ladder. Family is the only thing you can trust anymore, and we are fresh out of immediate family.

The door to my office slams open, a furious Tristan in the doorway like some avenging angel. He wears his emotions on his sleeves and paints the most beautiful scenes with his knives. I, on the other hand, crave control and the thrill of power above all else.

I often wonder when our mother was pregnant with us if she felt that duality; the calm, tempered power and the unbridled strength.

I stare into my twin's steely eyes, his face contorted into a sneer, black hair wet from the rainstorm. He doesn't bother to push it out of his line of sight as he stomps forward, boots squelching on the equally black marble floors. I'd be pissed about the mess he's tracking in, but I realize that is simply a tendril of leftover fear of what our father would have done to us if he'd seen such disrespect.

We both bear the scars of his form of child rearing, but most are covered by ink now.

Those who don't know us cannot tell us apart, save for our hair and the differing collage of images forever ingrained in our skin.

We have no resemblance of our mother to remember her by. We are our father's children —his only children. His heirs.

Tristan splays his inked fingers on my desk—mine, because he is too irrational and wild to sit at a desk and crunch numbers. Mine, because he enforces and I command. His cobalt eyes flick to the envelope and back to meet mine as a rumble of thunder claps over the Cascade mountain range. The heat from the roaring fireplace does nothing to diminish the ice in his gaze.

"You rang?" he growls through clenched teeth. I must've interrupted something...fun, for him to be so surly. Judging by the fleck of blood on his cheek, I can only guess at who endured the brunt of his anger today. If the vodka on his breath is any indication, I'd put my bets on a lowly civilian this time.
I nod to the thick, taunting envelope. "We have a...problem."

His eyes flare, pupils blowing wide in the span of time it takes me to say the damning words. A sick smirk curls on his lips. Twin telepathy is real—he knows already, and the savage hunter in him is salivating.
The line of work we were born into does not require ethics or morals. As such, neither of us seem to have them in our daily lives, either. The very same excitement I can see in his eyes, in the way his body hums with charged currents, is the very same excitement that I feel thrumming through my chest at the same time.