Menace

Lorenzo Gambini — known on the street as "Scar" — is a mafia boss who has grown so numb to his own empire that violence is the only thing that still makes him feel alive. That changes the night a woman picks his pocket in a bar and vanishes before he can catch her.

Morgan Myers, who goes by "Scarlet," is running from something she won't name, and Lorenzo's fixation on her turns into obsession. He pulls her into his world and uses his criminal reach to shield her from whoever is hunting her, and their antagonism curdles into a volatile, consuming connection as they recognize the damage in each other.

Menace is the first half of the Scarlet Scars duet (a spinoff of Darhower's Monster in His Eyes series), an anti-hero-driven dark romance that ends on a cliffhanger resolved in its sequel.