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  MENACE

  Scarlet Scars Book One

  J.M. Darhower

  Contents

  Menace

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by J.M. Darhower

  Copyright © 2017 by J.M. Darhower

  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.

  Scarlet Scars contains themes that are dark in nature. Some scenes may be difficult to read. Readers who are triggered by violent or sexual content should proceed with caution.

  WARNING

  To Princess Leia, the most badass woman in all of the galaxy… you’ll always be royalty to us.

  men·ace

  /ˈmenəs/

  noun

  noun: menace; plural noun: menaces

  1. a person or thing that is likely to cause harm; a threat or danger.

  synonyms: danger, risk, threat; jeopardy

  "a menace to society"

  Chapter One

  “Wake up, sunshine,” a voice called out in a frantic whisper as the little girl was shaken, roused from a deep, dreamless sleep. “Please, wake up for me.”

  The little girl peeked her bleary eyes open, blinking a few times as she gazed up at the face hovering above her. “Mommy?”

  Her mother smiled—a big, wide kind of smile—but it wasn’t the kind of smile that meant happiness. Rain fell outside, a steady, heavy downpour, battering the windows as the trees blew all around. Their shadows danced along the wooden floor, visible thanks to the glow of the soft nightlight in the room. Banging echoed through the house, so loud it reached the second-story back bedroom, coming from somewhere downstairs. It sounded like something ramming the front door, merging with the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance.

  The wind screeched. No, wait… that wasn’t the wind. The little girl’s heart pounded hard. Someone was screaming. Her mother’s smile was frozen in place as she gently, pushed the hair back from her face, caressing the little girl’s warm cheek.

  “It’s time to play a game,” her mother said, voice shaky as tears fell from her deep brown eyes. “We talked about this. Remember? Hide & Seek. You and me.”

  The little girl sat straight up in her bed. She didn’t like this. She didn’t want to play. She shook her head, her small hands grabbing her mother’s face, squishing her cheeks as silent tears coated them. “No, Mommy. No! I don’t wanna!”

  “We talked about this,” she said again, her voice firmer as the banging downstairs seemed harder. “Trust me, okay? You trust me, don’t you, sunshine?”

  The little girl nodded.

  “Then hide,” her mother said. “Just like we talked about. Hide really good, and do just like Woody and Buzz do, remember? Don’t make a sound, don’t move at all, no matter what, if someone comes near you, okay?”

  The little girl knew ‘okay’ was what her mother wanted to hear, but she couldn’t get that word to come out. Her voice didn’t like it. Her mouth wouldn’t say it. “Mommy, I’m scared.”

  “I know, baby,” she said, “and it’s okay to be scared, but remember what we talked about? Remember what Mommy said about what to do when something scares you?”

  “Name it,” she whispered.

  “Exactly.” Her mother’s smile softened. “If you give the monster a name, it takes away its power, because we’re really just afraid of what we don’t know. If you name it, if you know what it is, you can be stronger than it. So face your fears and wipe your tears, remember? Face your fears and wipe your tears.”

  The commotion downstairs grew louder, a bang rocking through the house, this one different. Her mother’s smile fell as her gaze darted to the doorway of the bedroom, the screaming closer.

  Her mother turned back around, unable to hide the fear in her eyes. “Hide. I’ll find you. I promise.”

  Soft lips pressed against the little girl’s forehead, lingering there for just a moment, not nearly long enough, before her mother pulled away. In a blink, she was gone, running from the bedroom, leaving the little girl alone.

  Hide, she thought, so only Mommy can find you.

  Snatching up her teddy bear, the little girl jumped out of the bed, her bare feet quiet against the wooden floor as she hurried out of the bedroom in her favorite pink nightgown. They’d played this game so many times, but never in the middle of the night, never when it was storming, and never when someone was downstairs screaming. It had just been practice then, like the fire drill they did in preschool, but this was for real.

  She ran from room to room, the noise downstairs making it hard for her to think. Things were breaking. Her mother was begging. “Please don’t do this... please!”

  Think, think, think.

  The little girl came to a stop in front of the linen closet, making the split second decision to hide in it. She climbed the shelves, not for the first time, going way up to the top and shoving things aside to crawl onto it. She pressed way against the back, wedging behind a stack of towels, too big to completely disappear. But it had taken her mother almost an hour to find her in that spot one time when they’d practiced, and it had been daytime then, so maybe the darkness would hide her.

  No sooner she settled into her hiding place, a crack of thunder rocked the neighborhood, light blasting through the windows. The rumble shook the whole house as her mother let out a piercing shriek, the noise silenced in a blink.

  It grew quiet.

  So quiet.

  The electricity even went out, all of the light disappearing.

  All the little girl could hear was her own panicked breathing.

  “Face your fears and wipe your tears,” she whispered to herself, repeating those words again and again and again, as she clung to her stuffed bear. Face your fears and wipe your tears. Face your fears and wipe your tears.

  Footsteps started through the house, but they didn’t belong to her mother—too heavy, too measured. It sounded kind of like a robot.

  Made sense, since she called him the Tin Man.

  The little girl didn’t know if he was missing his heart, too, like the real Tin Man from the story, but her mother called him heartless once, so she thought it might be possible. She wondered if he rusted in the rain, since it was storming. Maybe that’ll keep him from finding me.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he called out, searching the house. “I know you are up here, kitten. You cannot hide forever.”

  That’s what you think, Tin Man.

  She was good at this.

  Her mother had made sure of it.

  He walked down the hallway, right past the closet, dripping water onto the floor. He was soaked from the storm, his dark hair lying flat, and his white button down clinging to his chest, only halfway tucked and mostly ripped open.

  An hour passed as he searched the house. It felt like forever to the little girl. How m
uch longer would he look for her? When would he go away? Ever?

  “Fine, I give up,” he said eventually. “You win, kitten. Game over.”

  His steady footsteps went back downstairs. Everything remained silent until the electricity flashed on, the house coming back to life as the storm outside faded. Game over.

  The little girl waited another few minutes, cramped in the closet, before her muscles ached and she grew even more tired. Quietly, she climbed out and crept downstairs, wondering why her mother hadn’t tried to find her.

  Still carrying her bear, she held onto the creaky wooden banister, finding the front door wide open. The locks were torn apart, the red-painted wood splintered, the hinges broken. She wandered past it, her stomach all queasy, and stalled in the doorway of the kitchen. “Mommy?”

  Her mother lay on the floor, eyes closed, not moving. The little girl sat down beside her, pushing the hair from her mother’s tear-streaked face. Her cheeks were all puffy and her head was bleeding, a mark on her neck, like someone had finger-painted on her pale skin.

  “Mommy,” she whispered, shaking her. “You can wake up now. We don’t have to play no more.”

  “Let her sleep, kitten.”

  The little girl tensed, her heart racing as she looked to the doorway, seeing the Tin Man lurking there. She froze and held her breath.

  Be like in Toy Story.

  She didn’t move, not at all, but it wasn’t working.

  The Tin Man strolled closer and knelt down, caressing her mother’s swollen face before pressing his fingertips to a spot on her discolored neck. Sighing, he pulled his hand away and leaned over her, pressing the softest of kisses to her silent, parted lips. It looked sweet, like love, the little girl thought as she watched, not at all like the anger that had broken down the door.

  Maybe he did have a heart.

  She couldn’t tell.

  “Come on,” he said, standing up, not giving the little girl a chance to argue as he yanked her up in his arms and hauled her over his shoulder. “We have to go.”

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  Scared, the little girl struggled, trying to get away from him, losing her grip on her teddy bear. It clattered to the floor, right there in the kitchen where her mother slept. The little girl shrieked, panicking, as he carried her through the broken front door without it.

  Stepping outside, into the light drizzle, the Tin Man said, “It is time to go home, kitten.”

  Chapter Two

  Manhattan. Dead of winter.

  It’s so cold I think my balls have closed up shop and gone home. Home, back in Florida, where it’s a beautiful seventy degrees this time of year. They’re basking in the glow of the warm southern sunshine, while I’m stuck here, freezing my cock off out by the East River.

  Two o’clock in the morning. Twenty-one degrees. It feels closer to zero with the way the frigid air seeps through my thick black coat, the fake-ass fur-lined hood not enough to keep me warm. My ears are frozen. My nose is running, it’s so goddamn cold. It’s like tiny needles jabbing my skin, over and over, obnoxious little pinpricks, stinging and numbing me.

  I’d rather be stabbed with a knife than deal with frostbite.

  Snow from a recent storm is still spread out along the worn, wooden dock, layered over patches of slick ice… ice I almost busted my ass on not once, not twice, but three times as I walked along it. I wasn’t made for trekking through slush, that’s for damn sure. My boots are wet, my toes about to join my nutsack far away.

  You’ve got to be a fucking fool to be out here at this time of day.

  Fucking fool.

  That’s what I am.

  That’s me.

  Lorenzo ‘Fucking Fool’ Gambini.

  Say it with me.

  Because here I stand on the dock, hands shoved in my pockets, fingertips tingling, struggling to pay attention to the schmuck five feet in front of me as he yammers away about a card game that was robbed last night, like I give a shit about some small-time gamblers in a city rich with, well, riches.

  “So, like I said, my boss says the deal is—”

  He’s still talking. My teeth are chattering.

  How has my life come to this?

  “Are you homeless?”

  My question comes out in a cloud of breath that lingers between us, like the words are caught mid-air, frozen in the cold night. It cuts off his tireless rambling as he looks at me for the first time since arriving, his eyes widening with surprise… or horror, maybe.

  Given it’s me he’s here with, I’d say the latter is likely.

  He stares at my face for a second too long and he knows it, because before I have a chance to say anything about it, he averts his gaze, his eyes going straight to a pile of snow by his feet that he nervously kicks at, like a bad little boy that knows he’s about to get a whipping.

  “Uh, no, I mean… why would you think…?”

  “Because you asked me to meet you here.” Pulling my hand from my pocket, I wave around us, at the graffiti-riddled, bum-infested area. “We could’ve met anywhere… a bar, a restaurant, a fucking all-night Laundromat… but no. You ask me here. Nobody comes here unless they’ve got nowhere else they can go. So tell me, are you homeless?”

  “No,” he says. “It’s just, you know… safer here.”

  “Safer.” Seriously? “You think it’s safer to meet me right by the river, when it’s so dark that I could just toss your body in and nobody would give a shit?”

  “But my boss—”

  “Is a fucking fool,” I say, cutting him off again. “More of a fool than I was for agreeing to come to this bullshit charade of a meeting with some underling when I could be at home… in bed… with the gorgeous little blonde still riding me that I had to kick out an hour ago in order to make it here on time, which is saying something, you know, because that’s starting to rank as the second biggest mistake of my life, and I don’t even like that woman. She talks too damn much.”

  The guy looks at me again. It’s just a flickering glance, but it tells me that somewhere deep inside of him, he’s got guts. He’s got balls that haven’t yet tucked tail and run. The kind of balls that can withstand all of this goddamn cold. Balls of steel.

  He came alone on the instructions of his boss, a man by the name of George Amello. Ol’ Mello Yello was one of many so-called ‘bosses’ to spring up after the great ‘Mafia Massacre’, as the media oh-so-poetically dubbed it, when the heads of the notorious New York crime families were executed in a room over in Long Island, paving the way for me to take over the city.

  The competition nowadays? Pretty goddamn dismal.

  They’re so inexperienced, so melodramatic, that it’s boring. They think they’re playing a game of The Godfather, pretending to be Michael Corleone when they’ll never be more than a weak ass Fredo. They’re pussies, and quite frankly, I’m growing tired of dealing with any kind of pussy that doesn’t come attached to a shapely female form. That pussy, I’ll spend my life worshiping, but these guys? These buffoons?

  They’re not worth losing my balls over.

  I happen to like my balls. They accentuate my cock quite nicely, you know. I’d show you, but well... you’ve got to earn that first. So pay attention, okay? There’s work to do here.

  “Look,” I say, having had my fill of this winter bullshit. A few flakes trickle from the cloud-coated sky, which is my cue to take my ass inside somewhere. “There’s a bar right down the street, called Whistle something or whatever.”

  A throat clears behind me. “Whistle Binkie.”

  I almost forgot I brought Seven along tonight. He’s always there to flank me when I need cover but never one to get in the way. I appreciate that. People in my way tend to get run over, and I’d hate to have to run over one of my best men. He’s a bit older than me, mid-forties, and has been calling these streets home since he was just a kid. Dressed in all black from head to toe, he blends into the darkness just like he intends to do.

  The man i
s my shadow.

  “That’s the one,” I say. “I’m going to go get a drink at Whistle Binkie before they close. You want to finish this conversation? That’s where I’ll be. But this?” I motion around us again. “This ain’t happening, man.”

  The guy just stands there, saying nothing, as I walk away, heading back to my car parked near the dock. Seven keeps up with my stride, not even wavering as I slide on the ice, damn near falling yet again. I hate winter.

  Annoyed, I climb in the passenger seat of my black BMW, not bothering with the seatbelt. It’s only a block away. I could walk, sure, but I have a feeling it would be more like ice-skating, and I don’t ice skate.

  Not willingly, anyway.

  Seven drives. He was smart enough to wear gloves tonight, black leather clinging to his long fingers as he clutches the steering wheel. A ski mask is shoved up, perched on top of his head, mostly concealed by his hoodie, the oversized hood of it up, dropping down over his forehead. Seven’s an average-sized guy, about my height and kind of lanky, his skin a deep olive tone that looks like leather.

  He stops the car in front of Whistle Binkie, double-parking and turning the hazards on. “You need me to come in with you, boss?”

  “Nah, it’s fine,” I say. “Find a spot, I’ll call when I’m ready. Don’t go too far.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Getting out, I step around the parked cars, up onto the sidewalk, and pause there as Seven drives away. He doesn’t drink. It’s against his religion, he says. Raised Mormon, he still adheres to some of the principles, like not drinking alcohol or screwing around, although it seems the ‘no killing folks’ aspect is more negotiable with the guy. After he rounds the corner down the block, I push the door open and step inside the bar.

  It’s somewhat busy, but that’s not really a surprise, is it? It’s Saturday night in the city that never sleeps and the beer at this place is dirt cheap. I find a stool along the side of the bar and sit down, motioning to the bartender, a young guy, barely old enough to drink.