Unholy Vows

In this sizzling enemies-to-lovers romance, a feisty young woman unwittingly becomes entangled with the mafia—and its brooding boss who refuses to let her go. Fall in love with the first book in Mila Kane's bestselling Original Sin series for the first time in print!

Forgive me father, for I’m about to sin. . . .

We never should have met. She wandered like an innocent lamb into my world, and the door slammed shut behind her.

Leaving her alive and free was a risk no capo would take.

I’ll let her live, for a price: her freedom.

She isn’t what she seems, but it’s already too late.

I'm obsessed, and nothing, and no one, will keep her from me.

Mila Kane's steamy Original Sin series can be read in any order:
UNHOLY VOWS • BRUTAL LEGACY • SACRED RUINMila Kane is a previously independent bestselling author. She is obsessed with cats, coffee, and antiheroes just the right side of insane. She writes dark and dirty romance with the alpha-holes of your most filthy nightmares. She writes only SAFE stories, and no matter how dark and twisted the story might be, there will always be a happily-ever-after guarantee. She lives with her husband in Scotland.1

Charlie

When you were single, twenty-six, and living in a party town like Atlantic City, there was a buffet of options for an evening’s entertainment. You could go out on a date, eat something nice, maybe even get lucky. Or you could get lucky another way, high-rolling in one of the opulent casinos that lined the boardwalk. Maybe you’d prefer a quiet night, spending time with friends at home.

There was something for everyone, and yet, I was pretty sure nobody’s idea of a good time was sneaking into a dilapidated warehouse on the Jersey Shore in the dead of night. Well, no one I knew, anyway.

Yet, here I was, and embarrassingly enough, it wasn’t even the first time I’d spied on my little sister with my trusty tracker app and followed her somewhere I shouldn’t. Next time, though, I’d prefer a frat party I was too old for to a warehouse that smelled like rotten fish and old sweat.

Man, this was bad. But not bad enough to turn back.

My baby sister, at nineteen years old, was in this hazardous shack somewhere, and I wasn’t leaving without her, even if I had to drag her out by the ear.

I ignored the gnawing worry in my gut that the trouble Lucy was getting into was only escalating. It had started with fights at school. Then there was the shoplifting. Then the underage drinking. And most recently, dating losers on a one-way ticket to nowhere.

Now, I had no idea what she was getting into. She didn’t talk to me, even though we were the only family we had left. Growing up in Mercy House, a group home run by nuns, had turned me into a shame-ridden rule follower, but it’d had the opposite effect on Lucy.

A firm talking-to was clearly in order. Hanging out at an abandoned property that looked like the set of a horror movie wasn’t a great idea. What was next? I shuddered to think.

My sneaker pressed on a shard of broken glass and made a loud crunching sound. I froze. I was still in the large room I’d first snuck into. Old crates and other shipping equipment were stacked haphazardly along one wall, leaving plenty of shadowy nooks and crannies for eyes to watch me unseen.

Broken windows lined one side of the long room, and an upper catwalk ringed the entire floor. Metal creaked, and the wind whistled through the gaping window frames.

Get Lucy and get out of here, a voice inside me urged. Nothing good happens in places like this. Well, that was pretty damn obvious, but I couldn’t see a single sign of my wayward sister, despite that blinking dot on the tracker app assuring me she was here somewhere.

It was tough to brush aside my highly attuned survival instincts and creep farther into the warehouse. I had spent my life trying to stay out of trouble, but growing up in Mercy House hadn’t made that easy. I was thirteen when we’d ended up there, and all the social worker said as she’d patted me on the hand was how lucky I was not to be separated from my sister. Sure, our Da had just passed, mowed down in a random drive-by shooting while waiting in line to buy takeout. Sure, we had to sleep in a dorm with ten other girls, one of whom liked to set her pillow on fire, and another who hid and tortured small animals. A dorm where the nuns grilled us about our shameful thoughts and performed random middle-of-the-night bed checks for “impurity.”

Okay, Sue Granger from Social Work. We were the luckiest girls in all of New Jersey.

“Lucy?” I hissed, breaking the oppressive silence in the dark room. She had to be here somewhere.

I pushed on, heading toward the next room over. I had to hand it to my baby sister. If they gave awards to people with the most talent for getting themselves in a pickle, Lucy would win, hands down. Technically, she wasn’t a baby anymore. I knew that. But at nineteen, she was at that weird age where she was old enough to get herself in serious trouble, and yet young enough to ignore the possible consequences. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to cut the cord between us.

For the last thirteen years, I’d been the only parent she had.

Look after her, Charlie. You’re the only one who can.

My Da’s ghostly voice drifted through my mind. That night, he’d given me the most important responsibility of my life, one that still sat heavily on my shoulders.

Some nights it was harder than others to honor his dying wish.

A shuffle sounded to my left. “Charlie?” a voice I knew better than my own whispered.

“Lucy,” I muttered and dropped to a crouch. My hands landed on broken shards of glass in the dark, but I didn’t flinch. When it came to protecting Lucy, nothing would ever be too painful or inconvenient to stop me.

My sister was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, a wild look in her huge eyes. She was scared. Considering she hadn’t been scared of anything at all lately—treating her “bad girl” status like a badge of honor—her sudden fear was worrying. She had to be in a tight spot if she was dropping her tough-girl act.

I maneuvered myself into the tiny space beside her. “What are you doing here?”

“Did you follow me?” she asked without anger.

I elbowed her gently. “Of course I did. That’s what big sisters do, right?”

“How?”

“Phone tracker app.” There was no point in lying to her; she’d figure it out eventually.

She nodded. Something was wrong. She was too subdued. I made out the sound of distant conversation. We weren’t alone here.

“What’s going on? Tell me,” I urged and wrapped my hand around hers. Her skin was cold.

“Miguel. You know Miguel, right?” she started nervously.

She knew I didn’t approve of her new boyfriend. He had trouble written all over him. I’d been hoping that it was just a passing thing, and the intrigue of dating someone so volatile and dangerous would fade. It seemed that hadn’t happened yet.

I nodded. “I know him.”

“Well, he had the idea that we could make some money on the side, you know, doing odd jobs and stuff.”

“And an odd job brought you here? This doesn’t look like the kind of place people order takeout to.”

Lucy’s eyes slid from mine. She was lying. I could always tell. But now wasn’t the time to pester her for the truth.

“We just had to come in here and get something, something he could show his new boss, and then we’d get a full-time gig.”

“I’m not following,” I confessed. There was too much she was trying to hide, and her story was quickly falling apart. “Where is ‘here,’ for starters?”

We were whispering so quietly, the murmur of the men talking in the next room was easy to make out. I kept one ear on that noise, a guarantee that we hadn’t been discovered.

Lucy swallowed, her face pale. “A De Sanctis drop point.”

I took a moment to process this information. “De Sanctis. As in the criminal enterprise, Italian royalty of Atlantic City . . . that De Sanctis?” I managed in a controlled tone, even though I was sweating bullets.

Lucy nodded.

“And by drop point you mean . . .” I trailed off, unwilling to finish the obvious sentence. It would make it too real.

“This is one of the places where they drop their products and have dealers pick them up for distribution.”

Well, at least she knew exactly what she was getting herself into. There was a cold comfort in the fact that she hadn’t been misled in the slightest.

“Products, dealers, De Sanctis,” I muttered, shocked. Maybe it made me naïve, but I’d clearly underestimated the level of criminal activity my sister had become comfortable with. “Who are you right now?” I huffed angrily.

I was angry at her for dragging her life to new lows every day.

I was angry at myself for not watching closely enough and allowing her to fall.

I was mad at my Da for going and leaving us when we’d needed him.

I was even mad at Social Worker Sue and her brittle positivity. Yeah, Sue, we’re really lucky. Totally unscathed by our terrible childhoods.

I didn’t need to point out the danger we were in. Lucy knew; her tearstained cheeks gave that away. She was in over her head, and I was the only one who could get her out of this mess.

Lucy had gone big when she’d broken into this warehouse and tried to steal from a vicious mob syndicate. She’d skipped right over the low-hanging fruit of gangs and the smaller cartels that sprang up and disappeared frequently. She’d gone right to the top of the food chain. The apex predator of the state.

New Jersey was riddled with crime. During my clinical rotations in big Atlantic City hospitals, I’d seen firsthand the damage that the criminal syndicates wreaked as they sank their claws into the city. If it wasn’t gunshot wounds from rival families fighting for turf, it was drug overdoses caused by their products. It didn’t matter which family it was—Irish, Italian, Russian—the aftermath was bloody and lethal.