Bleeding Hearts: A Dark Captive Romance (Heartbreaker Book 1) Read online

  Bleeding Hearts

  Heartbreaker Book 1

  Stella Hart

  Copyright © 2018 by Stella Hart

  All rights reserved.

  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.

  Contents

  Disclaimer

  Prologue

  1. Celeste

  2. Alex

  3. Celeste

  4. Alex

  5. Celeste

  6. Alex

  7. Celeste

  8. Celeste

  9. Celeste

  10. Celeste

  11. Celeste

  12. Alex

  13. Celeste

  14. Celeste

  15. Agent Jason West

  16. Celeste

  17. Celeste

  18. Celeste

  19. Agent Jason West

  20. Celeste

  21. Celeste

  22. Celeste

  23. Celeste

  24. Alex

  25. Celeste

  Disclaimer

  Stella Hart is the dark romance pen name of rom-com author Alessandra Hart.

  Prologue

  Alex

  Anyone could become a killer.

  Anyone.

  Even you.

  No one was ever really born bad—with the possible exception of a few people with a serious chip missing in their heads—but everyone had the ability to kill if the appropriate circumstances presented themselves. Most people were simply too afraid or set in their ways and laws to acknowledge this dark, twisted power deep inside them.

  Those who weren’t afraid controlled life itself. They were the judge, jury and executioners of the world. Just like me. Whether it was right or wrong held no bearing on the decisions made by these individuals. Something else drove that fury; that raging need to extinguish another human existence. That little something was different for everyone.

  So what were all those different things? Why did people kill? What inspired one human to pick up a knife and ram it into another’s guts, or choke the life out of them until their eyes hemorrhaged?

  There were probably as many answers to that question as people who’d been killed since humanity began.

  Some killed because they were ordered to do so. Some killed out of passion, caught in the heat of the moment. Their slayings were usually punctuated with regret and sorrow.

  Others were pure psychopaths who’d been fucked up by the world over the years. They loved the thrill of the hunt; loved inflicting terrible pain and watching the light go out in someone’s eyes for nothing more than a bit of fun. They weren’t capable of remorse.

  Still more were seriously mentally ill and received psychological or sexual relief in the act of murdering another person. Often these types acknowledged the dark defect they’d developed and considered themselves mistakes of nature which needed to be snuffed out, hoping that after all their carnage, someone would finally see what they were and end them to erase the fatal error. A select few others were insane in other ways and believed their life was an interminable quest to kill the greatest number of people.

  I wasn’t like any of those people.

  Ripping hearts out and watching people die in agonizing pain was amusing, exhilarating, fun, but I wasn’t a dead-behind-the-eyes psychopath. I was capable of sadness and regret. I wasn’t insane, either. Sometimes people found me to be painstakingly methodical to the point of irritation, and others found me far too distant and emotionally detached. I wasn’t mentally ill or unstable in any way, though. Fucked up, maybe, but I was always lucid, always aware of my thoughts and actions. Always in charge. Always in search of my next victim.

  But you still want to know why, don’t you?

  Well, here it is.

  Some so-called edgy assholes out there like to claim there’s no such thing as justice in the natural world. Only survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten. They base their worldviews on this theory and treat others accordingly.

  I never believed that shit. Not for a second. Justice might be a human invention, but that didn’t mean it was unnatural, and it wasn’t somehow less real than base nature. I always knew it was real, because I knew from a tender age that I would mete it out to those deserving of it. And fuck, there were a lot of them around.

  I killed as often as I could, and I wouldn’t stop until I was satisfied. The force that drove me, the force that inspired every feeling of malice and destruction within me… it was probably the most common motivation of all amongst those who found themselves drawn to the dark side.

  Revenge.

  Dark, twisted, bloody revenge.

  It was all because of her.

  1

  Celeste

  September 4th, 2017

  Pain.

  One word to sum up my life over the last year or so.

  They say there’s a fine line between pleasure and pain, but I was yet to see any of the pleasure. All I experienced minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, was pain. Blinding, aching, soul-crushing pain. It was always there, tormenting me, burning deep inside like embers in a furnace.

  “Celeste? Did you hear what I said?”

  I looked up through bleary eyes. Dr. Pompeo was staring at me, her forehead crinkled. God, I was so tired. Tired of everything.

  I shook my head. “Sorry, I zoned out for a minute.”

  “That’s okay. I just need you to stretch out your right arm and tell me how this feels.”

  I did as she said. She lightly ran a thin instrument over my arm and hand. “Does it tickle here?” she asked when she reached a particular spot.

  “Yes.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, a lot.” My arm jerked slightly.

  “And here?” She pulled the rod over the back of my hand, near my little finger.

  I shook my head. “I don’t feel anything there.”

  Dr. Pompeo moved the instrument again. “How about here?”

  I winced a bit. “I feel that. Very, very ticklish.”

  She nodded and put the little instrument away.

  I’d been sitting here in Dr. Pompeo’s sports medicine office for half an hour now, being poked and prodded and asked to move my body in every which way to determine which positions hurt and which didn’t. One of the doctors on my college campus had referred me here after repeated appointments concerning pain in my upper back and shoulders which had since spread to my arms.

  I’d suffered from the pain for well over a year now. It started not long after a bad massage at an exclusive beauty salon in Shadyside that my friends and I visited to celebrate another friend’s birthday. I assumed it was a little muscle ache and ignored it for several weeks, hoping it would go away.

  It didn’t.

  Then the pain began to get worse, turning into a constant burning ache in every inch of the affected areas, spreading down my arms to my hands. At its absolute worst, my hands would go completely numb to external touch, but they still felt like they’d been set ablaze from within.

  Whatever was wrong with me, it’d turned into a wildfire bent on my utter destruction. As such, the last eight months of my life had existed in a gauzy blur of repetition. Every day I woke up, praying that this day would be different, only to be hit by the horrible burning sensation just moments later. It was the same thing, day in, day out.

  I barely went out with my friends anymore, because it hurt to put on clothing or c
arry something as simple as a purse, so if I could avoid it, I did. They did their best to try and understand, especially my closest friend Samara. But I could still feel a chasm slowly forming between us. My mysterious condition was completely invisible and difficult to describe to others, so the only way they would truly be able to understand was to experience it themselves.

  I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, though. It was a living hell.

  Nowadays, I only went out when I absolutely had to, which was unfortunately quite frequently, seeing as I had part-time work, college classes for my undergrad criminology degree, and now also an internship at the FBI.

  A year ago, I’d wanted that internship more than anything, because I was desperate to learn more about Pittsburgh’s resident serial murderer, the Heartbreaker. I knew I’d submitted an absolutely killer—no pun intended—application essay on that exact subject, which was likely the reason I got in over so many of the others who applied. Now that my wish had been granted, I regretted the decision to apply. It was a real battle to go to the field office four days a week and try to grit my teeth through the mind-numbing pain, but I managed by continually telling myself that this position was my dream.

  Dr. Pompeo speedily typed some notes on her computer, then turned back to me. “Gosh, you’ve had a really rough ride, haven’t you?” She smiled, displaying bright white teeth.

  I didn’t smile back and gritted my teeth instead. I was past the point of making light of my injury, trying to act like it wasn’t that bad. It was that bad. “Yes.”

  She turned to face her screen again. “Before I tell you what I think, let me just double check that I’ve got all the history down pat. The initial pain was triggered by a massage, and your doctor at the time suspected a nerve compression. She prescribed a small daily dose of Lyrica, but it didn’t help very much over the following months, so you eventually went to see another doctor who suspected it was actually a muscular injury from the daily runs you used to take. Then he referred you to me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, after examining you and your range of movement, among other things, I have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. I’d say the first doctor was right.”

  “So I have a compressed nerve?”

  She smiled gently. “You did. Things have evolved since then, unfortunately.”

  I knitted my brows. “How?”

  “There’s a general term for what your symptoms can be described as—thoracic outlet syndrome.” She paused and rummaged in a drawer for an anatomical diagram, then showed it to me, pointing at certain areas. “In your body, you have little passageways in which your nerves, arteries and veins run through. Outlets. Sometimes these can get compressed, and that can cause neuropathic pain in all the areas you’ve described, even running all the way down your arms and hands. The Lyrica probably didn’t help much because the dose was too low.”

  “Okay. But that massage therapist did compress a nerve in my upper back?” I idly wondered if I could sue the salon for my medical costs.

  “It’s likely, yes, but your back has healed since then. Nerves are incredible at healing themselves. So there’s nothing actually physically wrong with you anymore.” She held up a hand. “But don’t take that the wrong way. You’re still in a lot of pain, real pain, and I understand that.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Well, I don’t. I’m confused. If my back has healed, why do I still feel all this pain?”

  My mind went to a dark place for a split second. What if some grim, twisted part of me actually wanted the pain? What if that was why I still felt it after all this time?

  As much as I hated the thought, some small part of me wasn’t surprised by it in the slightest. A stark memory from my adolescent years jarred my mind a split second later—Dale Turner from my tenth grade lit class, standing behind me in the computer lab. I thought I was all alone, looking up things on incognito mode after everyone else went home, but he’d stayed behind like me, and he was looking over my shoulder at the images on my screen. The dirty, bad images that made my hands sweat and my nipples hard. So hard it was impossible to hide them from him when I whirled around, finally registering his presence. They were so stiff my sweater did nothing to cover them.

  Dale’s words still echoed in my ears. Painful, awful words. What the hell is wrong with you? No one’s ever gonna want you or this shit. You’re fucked up. Freak.

  Dr. Pompeo leaned forward slightly. “On top of the syndrome, you’ve developed something called hyperalgesia and allodynia. They’re hypersensitivity conditions. Allodynia is when you experience a pain response from stimuli that usually wouldn’t provoke pain in another person. Hyperalgesia is when you experience an extreme pain response from a stimuli that would usually provoke a much smaller amount of pain in another person. It’s very common in cases like yours.”

  “Okay.” I nodded slowly, relief washing over as I realized I hadn’t somehow wished this upon myself; hadn’t let that dark, unwanted side of me take over. “Why does it happen?”

  “Well, every inch of you is covered in nerve endings. I’m sure you know that already, but bear with me for a minute.” She gave me a self-deprecating smile, then went on. “Anyway, certain types of nerve endings communicate with your brain every time they experience some sort of stimuli. Something touching you, for instance. They ‘ask’ the brain and spinal cord how to respond, and if the brain perceives the stimuli as a credible threat, it sends pain signals to direct attention to the body part in question, so that the threat can be mitigated. For example, say you accidentally touch something very hot. Your brain says, ‘no, that’s bad, I’m going to tell you this is painful so that you stop touching it’.”

  “Uh-huh. How does that relate to what’s wrong with me?”

  Dr. Pompeo cocked her head to the side. “I’d like to tell you a story about a friend of mine. I think it’ll help you understand what’s happened to you, and how it relates to everything we’ve just gone over.”

  I shrugged, trying my best to ignore the rush of sharp pain the simple movement caused. “Sure.”

  “So this friend of mine, he’s a real adventurer. Loves hiking. One day he was trekking somewhere in Southeast Asia. He felt what seemed to be a piece of dried grass or a leaf scraping against his leg. He ignored it, because it didn’t hurt at all. Just a leaf, right? That’s nothing. But half an hour later, he was nearly dead.”

  I raised my brows. “How?”

  “He’d been bitten by a very venomous snake.” She paused for dramatic effect. “You see, when the snake bit him, his nerve endings sent a message to the brain ‘asking’ what this thing was and whether it was a threat. All the bits of his brain that deal with that stuff communicated with each other, and they decided—based on past experiences of certain stimuli in outdoor environments—that the sensation felt just like all the other times he’d touched dried grass or leaves. So it didn’t think there was any threat, and didn’t send out any pain signals.”

  “Wow. That sucks.”

  She held up a finger. “That’s just part one of the story. He recovered from the snakebite, and a year later, he was back here in the States. Went for a walk with some friends one day. Suddenly his legs felt like they were on fire. He said it was the worst pain he’d ever experienced in his life. Can you guess what happened?”

  My brows furrowed even more. “Uh… he got bitten by another snake?”

  Dr. Pompeo smiled. “Nope. Guess again.”

  “I don’t get it. What happened?”

  “His shins had scraped against some dried grass. That’s all.”

  My eyes widened. “Oh! I think I get it now. His brain learned from the last experience?”

  She nodded patiently. “Yes, sort of. His nerve endings picked up on the stimuli and sent the usual messages to the brain, asking how to respond. His brain decided: ‘Hey, last time he felt something like this on his leg, he almost died. Clearly, this is a serious threat. Better send out a ton of pain signals to war
n him to get away from this thing’.”

  It all finally clicked in my brain. “So the massage therapist hurt my back by compressing those nerves. It healed, but my brain has been trying to ‘protect’ me ever since by telling me that anything that touches my back is a threat.”

  She smiled. “Yes, that’s exactly it. It’s become hypersensitive. Tight clothing, bras, backpacks… anything that puts pressure on your back and shoulders is causing you pain, because your brain assumes it’s all a threat now. Seeing as last time something put pressure on your back, you were injured. Think of it like a smoke alarm going off in a house when there’s no fire. It’s reacting to a perceived threat when really, there’s nothing there.”

  I snorted at the irony. “So to try and protect me from the threat of pain and injury, my brain puts me in horrible pain by sending all those signals to warn me away from certain things. Way to go, brain.”

  “Yes. I know it can be very hard to deal with.” Dr. Pompeo’s eyes were tight and worried.

  I sighed. “So… what, I have to spend the rest of my life naked to avoid any pain? Never let anything touch my back again?”

  She patted my hand. “Of course not. We’re going to come up with a plan to help get you back on track, Celeste. I promise, this pain won’t last forever.”

  “Thank god.”

  “The first thing I’ll recommend is for you to increase your dose of Lyrica. Secondly, I’m going to refer you to a physical therapist. We have some great PTs right here at Morrison Wright, and they’ll be able to help with some gentle strengthening exercises and other techniques that should help to re-train the brain’s perception of things.”