Punished: Melbrooke Menace

by Dahlia Kent

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Synopsis

  Copyright

  Excerpt

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Punished

  Melbrooke Menace

  Dahlia Kent

  Contents

  Title Page

  Synopsis

  Copyright

  Excerpt

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Punished

  Melbrooke Menace

  I fled my stifling home town for Melbrooke City, pursuing a hazy dream of making something of myself. A year later, I’m same old Jenna, working a dead-end job at a diner. Despite it all, I have hope good things are on the horizon for me.

  Until I’m arrested for a crime I didn’t commit.

  Locked up in a gloomy room in a precinct, I’m desperate for an escape from this living nightmare.

  Then Cole Foster enters my life with a promise to save me. While Cole is handsome, and the way he looks at me sets my blood on fire, there’s something dangerous simmering in his dark gaze.

  He says I've done something wrong.

  He says I've been bad.

  He says he can make me a good girl again...

  But I have to be punished.

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  Copyright © 2017, Dahlia Kent

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.

  Edited by Grayfeather Editing.

  Cover Design by Kasmit Covers.

  Excerpt

  “What is this place?” I asked, my voice unsteady.

  “The program’s facility.” Cole said, though a more detailed answer would’ve been preferable.

  Not all the walls were made of stone. On the right was a large, tinted, rectangular window. Despite all the unusual devices present, it was the window that disturbed me the most. If I squinted a little, I was sure I could see moving shapes.

  “What’s past that window?”

  “The viewing room. There are important members of the city who want to witness your punishment.”

  Horrified, I retreated to the door. I’d heard and seen enough to know I wanted no part of this.

  “I made a mistake. I want to leave.”

  “You verbally consented to this yesterday,” Cole said, approaching me, his lips curved in a smile that didn’t quite reach his dark brown eyes. “It was a contract you agreed to of your own volition, and one you can’t escape until you’ve met the demands.”

  “Please, Cole. I want to leave,” I begged.

  “No.”

  A panicked sound escaped me as I spun and yanked on the heavy metal door. Of course, it was locked. It didn’t even rattle. Yet I continued to pull in desperation as if that alone could free me from the situation I’d found myself.

  All along my gut had been right not to trust Cole. Ironically, he’d told me I shouldn’t, albeit in a roundabout way. He’d warned me to be afraid if I wanted to protect myself from him. He’d even warned me in the drive here. Instead, I’d believed he wouldn’t hurt me.

  No. I’d wanted to believe he wouldn’t hurt me.

  He was right. I was the worst kind of gullible. A stupid girl who’d made a deal with the devil to save herself, but would end up losing her soul as the price.

  Cole came up behind me. Dark and powerful, he didn’t have to say anything to make me turn and face him.

  “Please,” I begged him quietly. “Please…”

  “You will do what’s required of you, Jenna,” he said, his mellifluous voice belying the monster he was hidden beneath such a handsome face. “Now take off your dress.”

  One

  —

  A weight settled on my shoulders when I stepped inside the diner’s locker room.

  Sections of the beige paint were peeled away from the walls. One of the fluorescent lights stayed dark, casting shadows about the room. At least it was no longer bright enough to see the cobwebs in the ceiling corners, or the dust on the floor.

  I knew how to change a fluorescent bulb. My dad had taught me while I worked in our hardware store. During my brief tour of the diner on my first day, I’d offered to fix the light. Fred, the diner’s owner, curled his lip and said women were shit at doing a man’s job.

  “Don’t worry about it, sweet cheeks. I’ll fix it,” he’d said.

  A year later and it was still as broken as his promise.

  I opened my locker and reached for my work shoes. A cockroach ran past, and I jumped back with a squeal. It raced under the lockers before I could crush it with my foot.

  I hate this place, I thought as I changed into my uniform.

  My hatred included Melbrooke too. After growing up in a claustrophobic town called Coburg, I’d wanted nothing else than to get away. Freedom was an ache in my chest which didn’t ease until I’d abandoned my parents’ hardware store for Melbrooke City.

  My only path in life in Coburg was marrying some guy, having kids, and being a good little housewife. Sure, that life had its positives, but as much as my parents had wanted that for me, I wanted more. When I’d left Coburg for Melbrooke, all I had was a suitcase of clothes, five hundred in cash, and a hazy dream about becoming a nurse.

  I thought I was destined to play a much larger part in life than a tiny, forgettable small town girl.

  I thought it would be easy to achieve everything I wanted in a place brimming with possibilities and choices.

  Well, I thought wrong.

  Everything worth having in this city was like a small pie. And everybody who wanted a piece of it had a knife they were willing to use on the competition. So someone like me who still said ‘please’, ‘sorry’, and ‘thank you’ was at an instant disadvantage. In a place like Melbrooke, there was no room on the ladder for slackers or people who played by the rules.

  But my only option was to give up and head back to Coburg. I didn’t want to do that. Not after the flounce I’d made when my parents didn’t support my move to the city.

  Wearing a white dress shirt tucked into my short black skirt, I stood and shoved my bag into my locker. Probably wasn’t the best idea with a sandwich inside my bag and a rogue cockroach on the loose.

  “Ten years I’ve been working here. Ten fucking years,” Susan muttered as she stormed into the locker room.

  As always, Susan tied her blonde hair back in a messy ponytail. She was in her late thirties, but the deep creases on her face made her look closer to fifty. Susan once showed me a picture of her younger self. She used to be a knockout, but her period of extreme drug abuse before she got clean stole her beauty. When she saw me, her light blue eyes lit up and she gave me a quick smile. “Hey, Jenna. How you doin’?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t complain. You?”

  What a lie. I could scream all my frustrations bubbling inside me at the top of my lungs. But I cared what people thought of me too much to do something like that.

  “Good for you,” she said. She yanked her blue t-shirt off, revealing looping tattoos crawling down her arms, sagging breasts in a black bra, and a stomach lined with s
tretch marks. “Meanwhile, the rest of us gotta deal with shitheads like Fred on top of all the other shit that’s going on in our lives.” She scowled as she tugged on her white shirt with more force than necessary. “My dad had a stroke yesterday. I asked Fred for time-off to visit him in the hospital, and you know what Fred said to me?” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “He said, ‘Unless he’s stiff as my dick you ain’t taking time off on my dime.’”

  I screwed up my face in disgust. “What a horrible man. I’m so sorry he said that, Susan.” I patted her shoulder, not knowing what else to do or say. I wanted to suggest she report Fred to the authorities for his awful behaviour. Maybe even peg him with sexual harassment for mentioning his penis.

  But I kept my mouth shut. Fred’s disrespectful, belligerent nature wasn’t a secret. It also wasn’t a secret he had strong connections with the mafia. Men like Fred you learned to either accept or abandon quickly and quietly.

  “Yeah, well, I figure Fred’s stiff dick is probably the size of a raisin, so that ain’t all bad,” Susan said. “Gotta be optimistic ‘cause life’s a bitch, right?” She pushed her feet into black shoes with thick soles and brushed the stray cat hairs from her skirt. “Kicks you into a pit filled with shit right up to your knees. Then it hands you a spoon and says, ‘Shovel all that shit out the pit with this.’ So as you’re trying to get rid of the shit with that tiny li’l spoon, life says, ‘Here’s some more for you to shovel and I got even more to give ya soon,’ and pours twice as much shit all over your head. All in your eyes and in your mouth. That’s life.”

  “Wow, that’s really… um… vivid.”

  “You know, my ma always said my imagination’s wilder than the hair on my pussy.”

  Susan cackled as she left and I exhaled in relief. Susan might have been one of the few friendly people I’d met in Melbrooke, but she was more crass than I could handle sometimes.

  Since there was a bit of time before my shift began, I hung back to check my phone for any new messages from Jackson. He was a guy I’d met on a dating site two weeks ago. After we hit it off in our initial messages, we’d exchanged phone numbers.

  We’d never met in person, but I saw his pictures on the dating site. In each one of them was a smiling, handsome man with light brown hair, friendly blue-green eyes, and a fit body.

  When I showed his picture to Stacy, my roommate, she curled her lip and said he was probably catfishing me. I didn’t know what that meant until she explained it was someone who pretended to be somebody else on the Internet, especially on dating websites.

  Before Stacy made that comment, I would look at Jackson’s pictures and squeal a little with happiness. Men who looked like him weren’t common in Coburg, and the few that did were already locked down. Yet here was this sexy, twenty-eight-year-old who said he loved children and animals, baked in his spare time, and worked for an investment firm.

  And he was single.

  I was twenty-two years old and still a virgin. Still waiting for the perfect guy I trusted with all of me. Stacy said I was delusional to believe perfect men existed. Yet just talking with Jackson, hearing his sexy voice on the phone, and learning as much about him as he learned about me made me believe he was The One.

  “He isn’t the one,” Stacy had said, rolling her eyes. “There’s no such thing, Jenna. Grow up. This guy’s too good to be true. You better be careful before you get yourself into trouble.”

  I didn’t want to believe Stacy, but I had some doubts about Jackson. But the doubt disappeared when I read Jackson’s latest text:

  Jenna, I would love to see you in person. Meet me for dinner tomorrow?

  Hell yeah, I would! My response was a lot more measured, of course. I read in a magazine that an overeager woman looked ‘desperate and needy’ in a man’s eyes and he’d lose respect for her.

  Floating out of the locker room as if the ground were made of clouds, I clocked in to get to work.

  “Heads up,” Susan said, approaching me with a pot of coffee and a sly smile. “Sexy guy in a suit at table five.”

  I headed toward the table she indicated. The man looked up from his cell phone and watched me as I approached. His eyes were a rich dark brown and they pinned me with an intensity that stole my breath and weakened my knees a little.

  His dark hair was professionally cut and he wore a charcoal grey suit that hugged his body. Even seated, he gave off the vibe of a man accustomed to being in charge.

  “Welcome to Fred’s Diner,” I said, my voice higher than usual. “What can I get you today?”

  He didn’t speak right away and I fidgeted beneath his intent gaze. I had this strange sense he could see past my too-stretched smile and through every secret I had hidden in my soul.

  “Sir,” he finally said, his voice deep and smooth.

  “Excuse me?”

  “’What can I get you today, sir?’ Repeat it.” The inside of my stomach tightened when he spoke. For some reason, I wanted to follow this stranger’s orders instead of being put-off by his commanding tone.

  “What can I get you today, sir?” I pressed the pen to my notepad but my hand was shaking too much to write. So I dropped my hands at my sides and decided I’d take his order by memory.

  “Good girl,” he said. “Coffee, black, one sugar, and a tomato and feta omelette.”

  “Got it.” I nodded, blushing and pleased with his praise.

  “Are you going to write that down…” his gaze darted to my name tag over my left breast, “Jenna?”

  “No, it’s… I… fine.” I shook my head and huffed out an embarrassed laugh. My face and the tips of my ears burned. “I mean, it’s fine. I have it. Is there anything else you want… sir?”

  His gaze lingered on my mouth before sweeping over my body with interest.

  “Yes,” he said, his lips curving into a smile both charming and predatory.

  On some intuitive level I knew this man was dangerous. It didn’t stop the tingles prickling my spine or my heart thudding harder with excitement.

  I was naïve at times, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew what this stranger wanted, but I didn’t dare ask for his confirmation. Instead, I mumbled I’d put his order in and hurried away from the wolf disguising himself in a suit.

  When I first started waitressing at Fred’s Diner, I made a ton of rookie mistakes. While a year’s worth of practise didn’t make me perfect, I could waitress with my eyes close and still achieve acceptable results.

  Except today.

  “I’m sorry,” I said hurriedly, wiping up the coffee spill. “I can get you another one, sir.”

  When I’d returned to his table with his order, I tried to act as if his undivided attention didn’t affect me. My brain was on board, but my body had other plans. My hands shook, my heart pounded faster, and my spine tingled. Even my legs felt unstable.

  “What I have is fine,” he said.

  And then he smiled.

  And between my thighs squeezed tight, pulsing with desperation for something I’d never had before.

  Something I wanted from this man.

  I don’t want him, I lied to myself. Jackson is the one for me.

  Relief went through me when the man in the suit asked for the bill. I barely had the courage to look at him directly, let alone find out his name. What was a guy like him doing in a place like this, anyway?

  After he paid, he stood. Too close. He blocked my awareness of everything else. His woodsy mint scent enticed me to press against him and breathe him in.

  I took a step back, unaccustomed to and disturbed by the turmoil inside me.

  “It’s good you’re afraid of me, Jenna,” he said, leaning in as if he was about to kiss me. “Remember that fear. It’s the only thing that might protect you from me.”

  Two

  —

  The man in the suit didn’t show up the next day.

  Even though I was a little disappointed, I was relieved, and I decided it was for the best. As much as I was attracted to him, h
e disturbed me. Everything about him seemed way too intense for someone as inexperienced with men like me. So he definitely wasn’t the kind of man on whom my thoughts should linger.

  Besides, I was dating Jackson. We weren’t even close to being official yet, but it felt a little unfaithful to be thinking of someone else. So I pushed all thoughts of that man out of my head, and focused on the excitement of my first meeting with Jackson.

  Jackson wanted to meet for dinner at five but my shift at Fred’s usually ended around after four. Thankfully, Dionne agreed to come in earlier, and I was able to hurry home and get ready for my date.

  “But why so early?” asked Stacy as I tried to decide what to do with my hair.

  Dressed in a black t-shirt and grey sweat pants, her dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, Stacy sat cross-legged on my bed as she rapidly tapped on her cell phone. She’d recently met this guy named Vadim and they were always sexting each other. She showed me a few lines of their conversation once. It was so filthy and detailed it read like it came straight out of a porno movie.

  “Maybe he’s just excited to finally meet,” I said, reaching for my hair brush. “I know I am.”

  “The greater possibility is that he’s a weirdo.” She looked up from the phone and frowned at me through my vanity’s mirror. “I mean, dinner usually means at night. Not when the sun is still up and shining.”

  I scowled. Stacy was getting on my nerves with her constant stream of critical comments. She was my best friend in Coburg High until her mom got a job in Melbrooke when Stacy and I were in tenth grade.

  Before she’d moved away, Stacy used to be an upbeat and fun person. In the years since she’d been living in Melbrooke, she’d become sarcastic, distrustful and sometimes pretty mean.

  “He’s not a weirdo,” I said, brushing my hair. “Maybe he’s taking me to one of those restaurants that serve several courses, so you have to start early to enjoy the experience.”