Hearts of Darkness: A Valentine's Day Bully Romance Collection

by Joanna Mazurkiewicz

  He turned to his lads standing in a loose circle behind him. She hadn’t noticed them until now and humiliation burned her cheeks knowing they were all seeing Marlowe Montgomery, daughter of Gavin and Lydia Montgomery, on the Red Span ready to kill herself. “What do you think, boys? Am I a low-life piece of garbage?”

  Even now, even after almost slipping to her death, she cared what other people thought of her. Would she finally escape that if she let go or would it follow her into the beyond, that need for approval, for validation?

  The easy laughter angered her, sure, but it also made her ache with jealousy at the camaraderie he shared with his men. She didn’t have friends. They were set pieces. Props. People who wanted what her family had and were willing to play nice with the heiress to get what they wanted.

  Gods, she was pitiful.

  “I don’t disagree with your assessment, little girl. At least I own what I am. At least I’m on the right side of this rail. At least I’m not a coward looking to death for a way out of my life.” He laughed, but it wasn’t kind. “What do you have to escape from, hmm? Too much money got you down? Poor little rich girl, tired of being coddled? Tired of maids drawing your baths, doing your hair, fixing your food?”

  “You know nothing about me,” she said, voice trembling, hating how awful he made her sound, hating how his words ripped into her guts, hating how right he was. “Nothing.”

  “Right. Nothing at all about the girl who is set to marry Eric Lightbourne, man of the hour. He’s going to get rid of men like me.” A diamond flashed in his dimple as he mused over Eric’s promises to his base. Her fiancé would promise rain to desert-dwellers to get what he wanted, but what this man, this gangster might not understand is Eric would figure out how to make it rain. Eric promised to get rid of men like Beckett Glass—and Marlowe had no doubt he’d do it. “Tell you what, little girl, why don’t I help you over that ledge and take you to your man right this minute. He’d give me a pretty reward for you, wouldn’t he?”

  She honestly didn’t know, and he must have seen that on her face too, because he laughed again, his men joining in behind him. The wind tugged at her hair, at her dress as if begging her to just let go, to just let herself be pulled free and she almost listened. Almost.

  Then he leaned in, leaned in so close she could smell his cologne, see the eagle splayed across his throat. “It’s like that, is it? You’re just a pretty little bauble they pass around and put on a shelf when they aren’t using?”

  Everything she hated about herself, and he’d seen it in a few minutes of conversation. She was nothing but a thing to her father, her mother. Eric. “Do be a good girl, Marlowe, and keep your mouth shut at the party. You’re there to make Eric look good.”

  Whatever he saw on her face turned his expression to pitying and something inside her snapped. Already brittle, already crumbling, that look sent red hot rage coursing through her body.

  “Come on, little girl. I’ll take you home. For a fee.” He held out his hand, rings reflecting the bridge floodlights.

  She looked at his palm and then into his pale green eyes. “Fuck you.”

  And she let go.

  TWO

  She woke puking up water, if it could be called that. It stunk, and not just the stench of stomach acid. It smelled like garbage, which made her heave harder until she thought she might throw up her insides too.

  When she could finally draw a breath that wasn’t watery, she shoved herself upright, paper crinkling under her hands. Old newspaper. She pushed her sodden hair from her face. Where the hell was she? An alley? How had she ended up here?

  “Good to see you’re back, little girl.”

  No. Not him.

  He was squatting not far from her, elbows resting on his knees, seemingly unconcerned about the filth of the alleyway getting on his expensive shoes. When she raked back her hair, he laughed delightedly, though she didn’t know why.

  “How did I get here?”

  He shrugged. “That river. It’s a tricky bitch. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  His suit was wet, she now realized. He’d jumped in after her? Surely not. Why would he care if she lived or died? Unless he thought she was worth some money. Enough money to risk his life to save her? Maybe. “What do you want?”

  He stood instead of answering her, staring down at her as if she were a bug. “Remember a man named Rhys? Boy, actually. Worked for your father last year.”

  She shook her head, which set it to pounding, a dull throb that made her want to take a few pain pills and sleep for two days. “No.” Though she did remember a boy, didn’t she? One with pale green eyes and a laugh full of joy?

  “Of course not. Why would you?” The words were bitter, and she had to bite her lip to keep herself from offering up what little she could remember. She didn’t owe him anything.

  Just your life.

  “Who was he to you?”

  “Here’s the thing, little girl,” he said instead of answering. “The Azazel River doesn’t leave those who plumb its depths unchanged. You went in, you swallowed the water, and instead of keeping you, it spat you back out. It doesn’t do that out of kindness. It’s a trickster, you ken.” He sniffed and then chuckled up at the slice of grimy grey sky visible between the tall buildings that loomed on either side. “I don’t know why you were on the Red Span and I don’t care. Just remember I saved your life. You owe me.”

  She wanted to tell him she didn’t own him squat. She hadn’t asked him to save her life. But apparently, even a death-plunge into a river of carnage couldn’t change the shrinking violet she was, the timid, scared creature that went along with whatever her family demanded of her.

  She’d felt so strong telling him to fuck himself. She’d felt so free when she let go of the rail. Fear hadn’t once taken hold of her on that long fall to the water and when she broke through the surface, when the river embraced her fully, she’d been happy.

  She’d been happy and he’d pulled her away from that so she could owe him.

  That same red-hot anger she’d felt rose in her again and she leaped to her feet, hands clenched, a snarl curling her lip. “Fuck you. Fuck you for ‘saving’ me.” She shoved him. She’d never shoved anyone in her life and here she was shoving Beckett Glass, a man infamous for ‘disappearing’ people who crossed him. “Fuck you for squatting there all smug while I puked my guts out. Fuck you. I don’t owe you shit.” She’d never spoken this way to anyone. ‘Profanities,’ her tutor once told her, ‘are the mark of an ignorant mind.’

  Profanities, she now realized, felt fucking good when they spilled free.

  “Fuck you and your stupid shoes and your stupid pretty eyes and all of it!” Panting with rage, she hadn’t realized she’d crowded him up against the wall, her body almost touching his, her upturned face close enough she could see the specks of brown in his irises. “Screw. You.”

  He moved closer if that were possible, close enough she thought wildly he was going to kiss her. Beckett Glass, the man her fiancé raged about, the man who scared men like her father the way the threat of losing their fortune scared them, looked as though he was going to kiss her.

  What would she do? Would she say no? Would she shove him again and tell him to keep his hands off her?

  His lips?

  “Your breath stinks, little girl.”

  “You’re a bastard.”

  He smirked, that damned diamond in his dimple winking. “So I’ve been told. Good luck, Marlowe Montgomery. I think you’re going to need it.” He chucked her under the chin, his touch sending sparks through her, and then he was gone, whistling as he went.

  Bastard!

  She had no idea where in the city she was and no way to get home. She felt for her car keys, but they were gone. Either the river had swallowed them up or he had taken them. She wouldn’t put it past him to steal her car.

  She was missing her shoes, too, so she picked her way carefully to the street to see if she could orient herself, wincing when
her foot came down in an icy puddle of dirty water. “Shit,” she muttered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  When she got to the street, the bitter winter wind reminded her she was without her coat, in a damp dress, in January. Without her purse, she had no money, ID, or phone.

  He’d just left her.

  Why had he left her?

  Why had he saved her?

  She limped to the corner, her feet numb, and read the signs. Twenty-eighth and Charyou. Her apartment was three blocks south on Twenty-fifth. She would walk it.

  People stared as they went by, curling their lips at her as if she were a walking garbage can. She hoped none of them would recognize her. Eric would be so angry if her appearance on the street looking like a bag lady affected his poll numbers and she didn’t even want to think about what her mother would say.

  After the second block, her feet felt better. In fact, she was warmer all over, though the wind hadn’t died down any. Those who passed her, besides giving her a wide berth, had their coats pulled tight around them as if the wind were particularly icy.

  Maybe she was dead, one of those reanimated bodies her maid had told her about in whispers when no one else was around to hear. Maybe she was a corpse, her heart a dead thing inside her chest, her blood congealed in her veins.

  Maybe that was why they looked at her face and away, clutching their coats tighter, fear making them shrink into themselves.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she whispered.

  Her fingers crept to her wrist to feel for a pulse. The delicate throb steadied her.

  She wasn’t dead.

  At her apartment, the doorman blocked her passage. “Sorry, ma’am. Residents only.”

  She gaped up at him in consternation. “I live here. Penthouse B.”

  His expression changed from polite disinterest to horror once he really looked at her. “Ms. Montgomery?” The words were disbelieving, shocked even.

  “Yes,” she snapped, not liking the way he stared one bit. “Let me in if you value your job.” It was something her mother would have said, and she hated herself for saying it, but she also didn’t want to be outside, didn’t want to be gawked at anymore.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He swung the door open and she went in, feeling relieved instead of trapped for the first time since moving in.

  She crossed the lobby and took the private elevator to her floor, using her palm to activate the lift. Once the doors whooshed shut, she sagged against the back wall, wishing last night had never happened. What had she been thinking?

  If her father found out ...

  She shivered.

  Once in her apartment, she stripped off the filthy dress and underwear and shoved them into the garbage chute. No way she wanted anyone to see them. No way she ever wanted to wear any of it again, either. No, she’d forget last night ever happened and hope she’d seen the last of Beckett Glass.

  She showered with scalding hot water, soaping up her hair twice, three times, a fourth until the water at her feet finally ran clear. She scrubbed her skin until it was red, then closed her eyes and let the water massage every aching bit of her.

  Although, she wasn’t really sore, was she? Not the way one might expect to be after plunging into a river and puking one’s guts out after.

  Maybe the pain would come later.

  She groped for a towel and wrapped her hair up in it, then wrapped another around her body. Then she smeared a hand across the foggy glass to see if she looked any different.

  Over her eyebrow, in script identical to the kind used on Beckett’s tattoo, was written, “Damaged.”

  “No. No, no, no, no.” Her eyes dropped. On her neck, a cobweb, a wicked-looking spider poised to strike right in the center. Flowers decorated the outside. It was beautiful but horrifying too. “No, no, no, no.” She shoved a washcloth under the tap and turned the water on full, then scrubbed at the word above her eye. It couldn’t be a tattoo. It was ridiculous. Why would anyone pull her free, tattoo her. It didn’t make any sense. It had to be temporary.

  She scrubbed and scrubbed at it but only succeeded in making her face redder than it already was from the shower. “Fuck!”

  Someone entirely unlike herself stared back at her from the foggy glass. Same mud brown eyes, ‘Really darling, why couldn’t you have gotten your father’s blue eyes?’, same cheekbones, same lips. She pulled the towel off her head. Same mousy brown hair.

  “What did you do to me?”

  She spun before the mirror, turning this way and that to see if he’d put any other marks on her. Nothing. He only did it where she couldn’t hide it, where everyone could see she was, “‘Damaged.’”

  She sank to the floor, buried her face in her hands, and cried.

  THREE

  What the fuck was that river up to? Beckett thought as his driver took them across New Orion to his crew’s territory, to his house in the middle of it all. That the tattoo scrawled over her eyebrow bore a strong resemblance to the one he’d been graced with hadn’t escaped him.

  ‘Damaged’. He snorted. Nothing about that girl was damaged, though he supposed her family would consider her such when they saw her face. He almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  Then he remembered his baby brother’s smile, his headlong passion for life and stomped any pity he might hold for Marlowe Montgomery out flat. He hoped they disowned her. Threw her out. Did whatever it was rich people did when they wanted to distance themselves from embarrassment. Maybe then the girl would remember his brother.

  Beckett had warned Rhys not to take the job when he came home blissed out that none other than Gavin Montgomery had hired him on as an assistant driver. “We don’t work for assholes like Gavin Montgomery,” he’d growled at Rhys, who had grinned back.

  “Come on, big brother. Think of it as an inside job. I can get intel on the bastards and earn twenty-two dollars an hour at the same time. It’s a win-win.”

  A win-win. Their mom had nearly bashed his head in when she heard where he’d let Rhys go, and his pops had stopped talking to him. “Until you get him out of there, you’re dead to me.”

  Two months later, his mom and pops were killed by a rival crew, his brother disappeared, and Beckett was left holding the reins of the Glass criminal empire. A hollow victory with no one to share it.

  He hoped they recognized the tattoo, hoped they thought of him when they saw it, hoped they remembered his face and the way they’d treated him every time he went looking for Rhys for months after he went missing. “Why don’t you check the jail, Glass,” Montgomery had said. “Or the morgue. Surely you don’t think a kid like him would end up anywhere else?”

  What would they do when they saw her and thought of him? What would they think he’d done? “We need to get ready for war, Ricky.”

  “Oh?” Ricky, a big man with a flat nose and eyes that twinkled even when he was giving a savage beat down, had been in the family since before Beckett and Rhys were born. He’d been his pops’ right-hand guy and now he stood loyally by Beck, though not without picking him apart every damn day. “What hornet’s nest did you poke?”

  “Wasn’t my fault.”

  “It never is.”

  Once home, Beckett called his crew, at least the ones he trusted, the ones who’d stood by him when his parents were gunned down. “This about last night, boss?” Snowy G asked, her white hair and black skin only a small part of why they called her snowy. She was stone cold, and Beckett never did anything dangerous without her. “About you jumping into Azazel after that rich bitch?”

  “You jumped into that shit?” Zef asked and Beckett felt a headache coming on as the conversation unraveled around him. “And you let him?” This was aimed at Ricky, who spread his hands in a ‘whaddya gonna do’ gesture.

  “Off the Red Span. Sure did. Like some kind of superhero.” Snowy narrowed her eyes at him, then she put her hands under her chin and batted her lashes. “Did she kiss you, when you saved her?”

  He tapped the tattoo above his eye. “
This was the first thing the water gave me.”

  Snowy shrugged. “So?”

  “It gave her one too. Same font, different words.”

  “So?” Zef leaned his elbows on the table. “Does that tell you where Rhys went? What they did to him? No? Then the fuck, Beck?”

  Had his parents gotten all this push back from their crew? “That river chooses who it wants to save. You know it. I know it. It doesn’t do this kind of shit at random. There’s a reason it connected us. A reason she was on the Red Span that night. A reason why she let herself fall.”

  “Jumped, you mean.”

  He shrugged. The result was the same, wasn’t it?

  “So, what do you want us to do?”

  “I didn’t call you here to do anything. I called you here to warn you. Her father will recognize that tattoo and he’ll turn his eyes on me. On us. You need to be careful. Spread the word.”

  “You think that soft rich man can hurt us?”

  “Yes. Even if he never puts a hand on you personally, he has enough money to pay the Bane crew, Aces, Skrivens, hell, all the crews to come after us. He’s dangerous, don’t forget it, Snowy. Any of you.” Ten solemn faces stared back at him. And then there was Zef, slouched in his chair like a sulky teen. “I swear to god if you say you ‘ain’t afraid’ I’m going to punch you.”

  Zef snorted. “I ain’t.” Then he cursed when Beckett slugged him in the arm.

  “I don’t know how it relates to Rhys, but it does.”

  “One of your gut feelings, boss?” Ricky asked.

  Ever since he’d dragged his ass out of the Azazel, his intuition had strengthened to the point where he knew to duck before the guy shooting the gun pulled the trigger. It didn’t help his crew; it hadn’t helped his parents, but it kept him alive for some fucking reason he couldn’t discern. “Yeah, one of my gut feelings.”

  Ricky nodded as if that settled it. “We’ll be on alert. Tell the rest of the crew, Zef.”

  “Man.” He complained—all the time—but he did what was needed and the rest of them knew it. The bitching got old, but the guy could wield a knife like a maestro with a brush. His paintings were in red, sure, but they were beautiful in a gory way.