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Chapter 1 - Mariana
“The devil roams the streets of New York, lurking in the dark and waiting for the perfect time to devour you.”
I tossed my pen on my desk, looked up from the contract agreement I was reading and sighed. “Can you not read so loudly, Christine? I’m trying to concentrate.”
My best friend slammed the dark-colored, hardback book she was reading shut and grinned at me. “You know you wouldn’t be so cranky all the time if you just gave into your deepest, darkest, desires, right?”
Christine, my best friend all my life was a twenty-six-year-old, red-haired, and tanned-skinned woman with a strange obsession with dark romance and testing my patience.
And when she smiled at me, her dark eyes sparkling and her cheeks chubby, I wanted to pull her in for a hug more than I wanted to scream at her.
Despite her tendency to be the most annoying human on the planet, she still managed to charm me and pique my interest at the same time.
Pushing the contract paper aside, I keeled forward and propped my arms on the desk. “What’s the book about this time?”
She flashed a victorious smile at me, leaning in closer. “It’s a book about a princess that lost her virginity to the devil, she—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I waved her off, straightening my spine and returning to the contract I was reading before.
After I graduated from college with a degree in Fine Arts four years ago, I’d used all of the money my father left me before he had died to settle my mother’s medical bills.
She’d suffered a stroke after his death, and she’d barely managed to survive another stroke just as she had begun to get better three years ago.
I’d taken a side job, working double shifts to save money while studying, and after that, I’d pursue my dreams of becoming an artist and owning my own gallery
My father said I’d inherited his mother’s talent; making beautiful images with just a brush and paint. He’d also said I always looked as beautiful as his mother used to whenever she painted.
I never got to see her paint, but I’d seen some of the work she’d left behind and I agreed with him. My grandmother’s work included the most beautiful art pieces I’d ever seen.
She hadn’t been able to become an artist since she died shortly after giving birth to my father at the age of twenty-two.
To continue the legacy she didn’t get to build, I’d taken it upon myself to become a successful artist and dedicate most of my works to her. I believed through me, she could live the dreams she couldn’t achieve when she was alive.
Four years after college, I owned a big gallery in the heart of Chicago and I’d even appeared in Vogue last year as the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.
What I was signing before Christine’s interruption was a contract for a twenty-million-dollars project with Vincent Russo, a popular businessman and billionaire. He owned several multi-million dollar enterprises in Chicago.
Signing off a contract with Sergey Vadim had been my goal when I started up my gallery. Sergey Vadim owned most of the businesses in Chicago.
Almost every bar, cassino, and restaurant in every corner of the city belonged to him and his family. Four brothers I heard they were, and their businesses stretched out to Europe as well as other continents. They even owned an airline.
Vincent Russo may not have been a Vadim, but he was their biggest competitor and he came close to my target. I was certain I would get to the Vadim brothers someday, but Vincent Russo was a close call, to be honest. He was the best I could do before I reached my target.
“Do you really enjoy being a virgin at twenty-six?” Christine asked in a near whisper.
I huffed, rolling my eyes. “I’m kicking you out if I hear your voice one more time.”
Christine was twenty-six too and we’d basically grown up together as sisters since we lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same kindergarten and high-school.
The only time we’d ever been apart was after I had gone to art school and she had left for Paris to become a fashion designer. She had returned to Chicago two years ago and started up her own fashion house.
Sadly, that fashion house had been only two blocks away from my gallery. That was the reason I had to deal with her torturing me to lose my virginity every second she could.
While I hated the whole talk about losing my virginity, I didn’t mind having her around always. I loved her more than anyone else.
“You can’t kick me out,” she said with a mischievous smile, “you love me too much to do that.”
I pointed the tip of my golden ballpoint pen at her. “Try me.”
