Shattered Hearts: A Dark Romance (Bad Blood Book 1)

  SHATTERED HEARTS

  Bad Blood: Book One

  Marissa Farrar

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Shattered Hearts

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Broken Minds

  Chapter One

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  She’s the daughter of the man I hate most in the world...

  For almost ten years, I’ve been waiting to exact my revenge.

  Ten years to allow her to blossom from a child to a woman.

  Ten years in which I’ve grown a million-dollar business and built a powerful body to match.

  And now my wait is over.

  I’ve kidnapped her. Taken her. Made her mine, just as her father did to others before her.

  With her sexy body, fierce mind, and sharp mouth...

  The one thing I did not expect was to fall for her.

  Chapter One

  “Jolie Dorman, how does it feel to be the daughter of a serial killer?”

  The question came from one of the reporters in the audience.

  Standing on stage in front of a hall of strangers, I sucked in a breath and answered.

  “It was something I tried to deny for a long time. Honestly, I wanted to hide from it. I wanted to become someone else. I thought about changing my name a million times, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it.”

  I looked into the watchful eyes of fifty or more people, all here to listen to what I was going to say. I was breaking my silence after almost ten years of refusing to talk about this with anyone. But I’d come to the conclusion that if I really wanted to help young people deal with their traumas, I needed to face my own.

  I’d been in this university lecture theatre hundreds of times before, but normally I was where the audience is now, rather than standing on stage with everyone watching me. A microphone was attached to the collar of my shirt before I’d stepped out, and now my voice sounded too loud, booming around the vast space.

  I thought these people sitting before me probably had as many issues as I did. Some were reporters—I could see that in the way they were dressed and scribbled in notepads as I spoke. Recording devices and camera equipment had been banned from the hall. It was one of the stipulations I’d set in place before agreeing to do the talk. The last thing I wanted was to see my face plastered across the news, or even worse, on social media or YouTube. There were others there, too, not only reporters. I spotted several women with an obsessive glint in their eye, who were probably the type of weirdos who had decided they were in love with my father, despite him most likely never seeing the outside of a prison cell. And then there were the people who were obsessed with serial killers, who liked to collect information on them, and try to link murders and solve crimes they thought the cops weren’t smart enough to figure out.

  “Do you still see your father, Patrick Dorman?” a female voice called out of the crowd.

  It was one of the women I thought was probably in love with him. What kind of sick person fell in love with a killer?

  You loved him, a little voice spoke up in my head. You should know.

  I shook the voice away.

  “No,” I replied. “I haven’t seen him since I was a child. I went to visit him with my mother and brother after he was arrested, right before my mother—” My voice broke and I struggled to regain my composure. “Did what she did. But I haven’t been back to see him since. I guess I blamed him for my mom’s death, as well as all those other women.”

  At five feet two, I was tiny, and I tried not to feel intimidated by all the people watching. My height wasn’t something I’d inherited from my father, as he’d been over six feet, but it was the only thing I didn’t share his genes for. I had his light brown hair and dark, marine blue eyes. After it had all come out and was pasted across every news channel and newspaper, it was widely speculated that my father’s good looks was what had helped him kill so many women. The women were disarmed by his charm and easy manner, and no one thought this handsome man would be dangerous. That was the trouble. If he’d looked like a rough trucker or a homeless man, they might have been more cautious, but when he batted his baby-blues at them and offered to be of assistance in a situation he’d orchestrated—a broken down car, or lost keys, or purse—they were flattered and happy to accept his help.

  But now, every time I looked in the mirror, I saw my father staring back at me. For a long time, I wondered if I was capable of the same sort of violence. After all, I shared his genes physically, so why not emotionally, too? It was particularly bad during my teenage years when I was just so damned angry at everything. I’d lost both my parents because of my father, and had been forced to change my home and friends, too. Combine that with a rush of teenage hormones, and I was always going to have been a train wreck.

  I looked around the crowd for the next question.

  “Do you ever feel guilty?”

  The deep, gravelly voice hit me like a punch to the stomach and I scanned the faces of the audience to see who asked the question. My eyes locked with a piercing green stare, and my heart lurched, my breath catching in the base of my throat. The man seemed to swallow more of the space in the hall than anyone else. Even sitting down, I could see he was big—his broad shoulders forcing the people beside him to sit closer to those on their other side—but it was more than that. It was as though his energy took up the space, forcing his presence outward and causing everyone else to become faded, less distinct. Did I know this man? He didn’t quite fit any of the other people in the crowd. A reporter, perhaps? But even from this distance I could tell the suit he wore was too expensive for a reporter. He looked too well put together, his square jaw smoothly shaven, his dark hair swept back from a broad forehead.

  I found my voice.

  “I was a child when it all happened,” I said. “That’s one of the things I’ve had to come to terms with. Believe me, I asked myself a million times if there was more I could have done, if I could have stopped him sooner and even saved the lives of some of those poor women, but to be able to live my life, I’ve had to accept that I was simply a child who loved her father. I wouldn’t look at a twelve-year-old girl and expect her to be able to stop a serial killer, so why would I expect the same thing of myself?”

  The man had been staring at me the whole time I was speaking. An invisible line seemed to cross the room between us, connecting us somehow. His gaze was intense, and a shiver vibrated down my spine, cold seeping through my veins. Who is he? Do I know him?

  “So, you don’t believe there was anything more you could have done?” he asked me.

  I held his gaze, though deep down I wanted to crumple to the floor and put my hands over my head and hide. “Like I said, I was a child when it all happened.”

  “Has it affected your relationship with other men?”

  The new voice t
ore my attention away from the man with the cool green eyes, and I saw a reporter—a female reporter—had asked the question.

  “I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t.” My cheeks heated with embarrassment. For some reason, it was the man with the green eyes I still felt as though I was replying to, even though he hadn’t been the one to ask this question. Seeing him in the audience had left me exposed. People said to pretend the audience was naked to help with stage fright, but right now I felt like the one who was standing up here completely naked. “Understandably, I find it hard to trust.”

  Another male voice called out of the crowd. “Surely you don’t think all men are the same?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all. I have a younger brother, and I would never think him capable of doing something so horrific. But it has made me question everything, and if the most important relationship in your life turns out to be the most terrible of lies, it’s very hard not to allow that to bleed into the rest of your life.”

  I hoped I was making them understand what it had been like to grow up with a serial killer as a father, but it wasn’t easy. How can you explain to someone how it feels to look back on your life and see it was all a lie? I was a typical little girl who doted on her dad. He’d read me stories at night and sweep me up into his arms when he came home from work. I’d looked up to him and admired him, and now I had to remember that those same fingers that had wiped away my tears when I’d cried had also wrapped around a woman’s throat and squeezed until the life left her body. And it hadn’t just been one. He’d killed five women in total—at least that he’d admitted to—all the while coming home to me, my brother, and mom, and playing at being a happy family. It made me sick to think of what he’d done, how he’d taken these women from their lives, from their husbands and children. It twisted my mind to try to reconcile that monster as being the same one who’d comforted me when I was sick, who taught me to ride a bike, and picked me up every time I fell.

  “What about your brother?” another voice asked. “Why isn’t he here tonight?”

  “He prefers to remain anonymous,” I replied. “And I’ll respect his decisions by not answering any more questions about him.”

  Unlike me, my brother changed his name. He’d done everything within his power not to be associated with the man who was our father. We ended up being brought up by my aunt, my mother’s sister, and he was able to take her name, and then the moment he turned eighteen, he moved far away. He was only a couple of years younger than I was when it all came out, but he still remembered it all. He was taunted mercilessly at school when what our father had done hit the news. Our perfect lives were shattered overnight, and we had worse to come.

  I finished up the questions and thanked everyone for their time. The psychology professor, who’d been my tutor for the past four years, came on from the sideline.

  “That was great, Jolie,” he told me with a smile and a nod. “You came across really well. Eloquent and thoughtful. I’m sure you’ve given everyone a lot to think about.”

  I returned his smile. “Thanks.”

  This would go toward the credit for my bachelor’s degree and I hoped would give me an edge when I went on to do my master’s for clinical and mental health counseling.

  People began to stand from their seats, gathering their belongings. I didn’t know why, but I found my gaze drawn toward the spot where the man with the sharp green gaze, the same one who’d asked me if I ever felt guilty, had been sitting. The seat was already empty, and a strange churning of emotion stirred inside me. Had I wanted him to stay behind? Perhaps try to come and speak to me afterward, even though we’d said I wouldn’t be answering further questions after my presentation had ended?

  I glanced toward the exit, wondering if I might see him there, but the doorway was already filled with the backs of people leaving.

  Whoever the man was, he’d already gone.

  Chapter Two

  I left the university hall, tugging my coat tighter around my body, trying to process how I felt now I’d purged myself of all the thoughts and feelings I’d been keeping inside me all this time. It was no longer a secret. Sure, I’d said all of this stuff to numerous therapists over the years, but I’d still gone through my day-to-day life with people not really knowing who I was. It certainly wasn’t something I brought up or talked about to people, not like I had tonight.

  There was a chill in the New York City air. We’d left summer behind now, and fall was well on its way. I didn’t mind. The summertime was when everything had blown up, and now the season was tainted for me. Trouble was, I didn’t much like any of the other holidays either—Thanksgiving and Christmas had all been ruined in my childhood. The ones after, with just me, my brother, and aunt had been somber affairs, despite my aunt’s best efforts. And the happier ones before that were now ruined with the knowledge that it had all been a lie.

  I was currently living on campus. I was lucky in that my roommate Hannah had also become my best friend. I’d been terrified when I’d first confessed to her about who my father was, thinking she wouldn’t want me as a roomie, worried she’d think the apple never fell far from the tree and that she’d wake up in the night with me trying to strangle her. But, to my surprise, the first thing she did when I told her was put her arms around me and give me the biggest hug I thought I’d had since before my mother died.

  That had been the start of our friendship. She’d wanted to be at the lecture theatre tonight, but she’d been offered a gig of her own—for her band, not for confessing all about her serial killer father—and I’d told her she had to go.

  The streets were busy. Streetlights, headlights of cars, electronic billboards, and shop windows all served to illuminate the city. That was good. I might be twenty-two years old, but I hated the dark.

  Hannah was playing bass guitar in her band The Furies in a small, underground bar within walking distance. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be surrounded by loud crowds of people right now, but I didn’t want to be on my own either. It was still early—barely nine in the evening—and the idea of sitting back in my room, with only my thoughts and memories churning through my head, didn’t appeal. Besides, I wanted to support Hannah.

  I wasn’t from the city. I’d moved a number of times now, and I was happy to escape to a big, faceless city, hoping for anonymity. Of course, I’d just given up my chance of people not knowing who I was, but at least I’d done it on my terms, and not because some nosy reporter had blown everything up on me.

  As I walked down the street, my thoughts went to all the people who’d questioned me. For some reason, it was the dark-haired man in the expensive suit who stuck in my mind. He’d asked me if I felt guilty. Maybe I should have answered him truthfully.

  Yes, every day.

  The guilt was overwhelming, and even though I could explain to myself all the reasons I shouldn’t feel guilty, that didn’t change the fact that I did. And I knew I wasn’t the only one. My mother, too, experienced the same kind of guilt, but even worse.

  After all, her guilt had killed her.

  My mother had lied to the police during their enquiries and given my father an alibi when he shouldn’t have had one. I understood her reasoning. Just like the rest of us, she’d truly believed our loving, funny, generous, kind father and husband couldn’t possibly be capable of something so heinous. So when he’d told her he simply hadn’t been able to sleep one night because he was worried about something at work, and had gone for a walk to try to clear his head, she’d thought it would make things easier on all of us if she just told the cops he’d been asleep with her in bed the same night one of the women had been killed.

  But even having the police sniffing around hadn’t been enough to stop him. He’d killed again after that, and my mother was left to try to live with the knowledge that had she been truthful with the police about my father not being home the night the previous woman was murdered, then the final woman would still be alive today. She’d have been home with her family,
and her son who’d been a teenager at the time it had happened, but instead, partly down to my mother’s lie, they hadn’t pulled my father in, and he’d been free to kill again.

  Even now, the memory made me lightheaded and nauseated, a rush of hot followed by cold pouring over me. I’d tried not to think about things, but that hadn’t worked either, and I’d spent several years during my late teens debilitated by anxiety, shutting myself away from everyone and dabbling in self-harm. Therapists had eventually gotten me to talk, and it had definitely helped. That was part of my reasoning for what I’d done tonight. I wanted a career in psychology, and I didn’t think I could honestly tell other young people to talk about things when I didn’t do the same thing myself. I wanted to set a good example. Plus, graduate psych programs preferred it if the candidates had some kind of real-life experience, and I hoped my own experience would work for me, not against me.

  So, yes, I did feel guilty. I felt guilty every single moment of every day, but, unlike my mother who’d driven her car into the lake after drinking a bottle of whiskey and taking a packet of sleeping pills, I’d decided I had to live with that.

  Music blasted from the bar as I approached, and I smiled as I recognized one of the songs Hannah had been practicing all week. My girl was already on stage, so I’d try to find myself a spot at the bar and down a couple of drinks until she was done. God knew I could use them.

  I sensed the gazes of the men in the bar following me as I made my way through the crowds of people. I’d made an effort to look nice for my talk, though I hadn’t wanted to appear either too dressy or too casual. It was a fine balancing act—after all, there was no standard wardrobe for giving a talk like that—so I’d ended up in a smart pair of skinny jeans, heeled boots, and fitted shirt in a dusky pink. I’d worn my hair up for the presentation, but now I pulled it out of its band, allowing it to fall around my shoulders in soft waves. I wasn’t interested in attracting a guy. Relationships were definitely another thing I struggled with. But that didn’t mean I didn’t like to look nice.