Chapter Eight
White Ravens
Scar
Thirty goddamn hours on a bus would make a priest want to commit murder. And since he wasn’t even close to that, he was two seconds away from killing anyone who even looked at him wrong.
Too long sitting upright in an uncomfortable seat, listening to a screaming baby, a snoring drunk, and being forced to inhale the sour breath of the guy on the opposite side of the aisle had him ready to snap.
The bus hissed to a stop and the driver mumbled in an exhausted tone, “Chicago terminal.”
Scar stood, and his back cracked like an old gate hinge. His legs ached, his mouth was dry as sandpaper, and his nerves were frayed.
All he wanted now was a long shower, a hot meal, and a room with a soft mattress to dive onto headfirst where he could lie comatose for a week.
But he’d tossed the boosted credit cards, leaving him eighty whole bucks. Not near enough for the prime rib dinner and hotel room he so desperately wanted.
The bitter Chicago wind carried diesel fumes, and the putrid stink of piss wafting from the alleyways. His home welcoming him back in its own nasty, comforting way.
He tugged his hoodie lower, keeping his head down.
After a few blocks, he walked into a Walmart with the last of his stolen reserves and purchased a basic red T-shirt and a pair of black Dickies.
He wasn’t about to show up on the South Side in the wrong colors. Red and black were the blood and bone of the South Side Kings. His blood and bone.
He freshened up in the bathroom, shaved, brushed his teeth, and did his best to scrub the travel off him.
He stood there staring at his reflection—white hair, pale skin, and icy blue eyes—barely recognizing who the fuck was staring back at him.
He looked like a character created by a comic-book artist.
He pressed his palms against the sink, muttering under his breath, “You’re home. You made it. Hard part’s over.”
He stopped at a gas station, bought a cold turkey sandwich, and a thirty-two ounce bottle of lemon-lime Gatorade. The bread was stale, but it was sustenance.
He hailed a cab—vowing to never get on another bus as long as he lived—ignoring the driver’s side-eye at his clothes.
The driver immediately began talking his ear off about the new road construction until he finally told him to shut the fuck up.
When the car slowed at a red light three blocks from his old hangout, Scar prepared to dash.
“Yo, this is good right here,” he said.
Before the driver could turn to quote the fare, he was out of the door and sprinting through the dark alley. He was as fast as he’d always been…actually, a lot faster.
The cold slipped under his hoodie as he cut through side streets and slipped between apartment buildings, his muscles thrumming with energy as if begging for more speed.
He didn’t slow until the bar came into view.
The South Side Kings headquarters.
The building used to be a decent dive twenty years ago—a neighborhood hangout where people played darts and bitched about the Sox, or reminisced about the good ole days when Jordan won six championships for the city—until the Kings took it over, and the place became a war zone.
He’d been gone five years, and the club was still there, a nuisance to the community, like a wart that wouldn’t heal.
The sign on the front was new though: The Crown Room.
What tha fuck?
He almost laughed.
Loud bass vibrated the sidewalk. The front door was guarded by two thick-necked idiots with 9mms tucked in their waistbands.
Scar stood in the shadow of a busted-out lamppost, studying it all.
This was his kingdom once. He’d bled for it, killed for it, protected it. He’d done time for these motherfuckers, years of his life stripped away, and he hadn’t given a single name for a lesser sentence.
They owed him respect. But something in his gut told him he wasn’t going to get it. When one was out of sight, out of mind, the streets forgot fast.
He made sure every strand of hair was shoved under his beanie and his hood was pulled low over his forehead before he slipped in through the side door.
Nerve-grating, hardcore rap music ricocheted off the walls. It was dark, and the haze of weed smoke was so thick and saturating the ceiling fans couldn’t compete.
Tables were littered with empty liquor bottles, shot glasses, dissolved lines of cocaine, and ashtrays full of blunt roaches.
Men lounged in red-and-black attire, wearing their weapons like jewelry.
Women in short skirts and red lipstick perched on their laps, grinding hard, laughing, and drinking enough to keep making bad decisions.
Scar eased onto a stool near the end of the bar, keeping his head low. The bartender was new: dark hair, bright eyes, and the kind of curves that kept tips rolling in.
She cocked an eyebrow. “What’ll it be, shuga?”
She wasn’t from Chicago, not talking like that.
“Bud Light,” he said, voice rough from disuse.
“Is that all?” She smirked, pulling a bottle from the fridge. “You look like a whiskey man.”
“Whiskey’s for celebrations,” he muttered. “I ain’t celebrating.”
She shrugged, popped the cap, and slid the bottle over. He took a long pull, savoring the bitter taste, realizing he hadn’t had a sip of alcohol in five years.
His gaze drifted across the room. Same shit with a few different faces.
Some of the young ones he didn’t recognize. New blood, eager and stupid. But others…? Yeah, he knew them.
Killers who’d once stood behind him, was now laughing at tables with promoted leaders.
Women who used to call him lover, who’d cried when he got locked up, were now gyrating on the laps of men and women sitting closest to the crown.
And there—at the far booth near the exit—was the new king.
Rico, a big, broad bastard with gold teeth and a gaudy-ass red fur coat. A pretender sitting on his throne. He’d been a loudmouth enforcer back in the day, all muscle and no brains.
Scar remembered him getting knocked out cold once in a sparring match and crying about it.
Now he was the top dog. Scar curled his lip.
Figures
The barstool beside him groaned as someone dropped onto the seat, the smell of cheap vodka hitting his nose before the voice.
“Double shot of Smirnoff,” he told—not asked—the bartender.
Scar glanced sideways.
Pun.
His government name was Merle Jenkins, but everyone called him Pun, short for Punisher. He was a big dude, with a neck like Mike Tyson and fists to match. He used to be his head enforcer, the one man he’d trusted to protect him and the closest to being called a friend.
Still alive and still drinking bottom-shelf poison.
Scar smirked and said just loud enough, “Will you ever stop drinking that cheap shit?”
Pun turned his head slowly and squinted. “Then buy me somethin’ better, muthafucka.”
Scar’s smile widened.
Same tone. Same quick energy. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed him until now.
Pun leaned closer, narrowing his eyes under the bar’s dim lighting, trying to see under Scar’s hood. He turned his head, letting him.
Pun froze for half a second before his jaw hit the floor.
“No…no way,” he rasped. Then louder. “No fuckin’ way!”
Before Scar could tell him shut up, Pun hauled him off the stool in a bear hug that nearly cracked his ribs.
“Put me down, dumbass,” Scar growled, shoving at Pun’s massive shoulders.
Too late. Heads turned. Conversations stopped.
A few chairs scraped the floor as men rose, staring.
One of the lieutenants swaggered toward them, drunk. “What’s going on, Pun? Got yourself a new girlfriend?”
Pun laughed. “Nah, bitch. Look who it is! Scar’s back from the fuckin’ dead!”
Scar clenched his jaw as the sound of his name spread like wildfire. Fast, hot, and dangerous.
He could already see the skepticism on their faces. Some were shocked, some were afraid, but most were suspicious.
The South Side Kings didn’t do resurrections.
A man near the bar choked on his drink. “So when did life in a maximum-security prison mean a few years?”
Scar didn’t answer, just stared him down until he looked away.
Pun scratched his beard. “Yeah, I was wonderin’ that myself. What the hell you ’doin out, man? You pull a fuckin Shawshank Redemption.”
“Opportunity presented itself…I took it,” he gritted.
Pun bumped his fist over Scar’s heart in a gangster’s salute. “That’s my fuckin’ boy.”
But the others weren’t smiling. The air shifted as eyes cut toward the new king’s table.
A woman in black skin-tight leather and a red halter top sauntered over, hips rolling, her perfume—sweet and expensive—approaching him before she did.
Drea.
Model-pretty, with a small, curvy frame that he used to mold with both hands. Honey-brown, smooth skin, long black braids hanging down her back, and a mouth he’d once sworn deserved a trophy for what it could do.
She was a rich, rebellious daddy’s girl, slumming it on the wrong side of town, fucking bad boys to get his attention.
She moaned as she slipped into his space. “Scar, baby. Damn, I missed you.”
Fuck. His lower half reacted on instinct.
Years without a warm, willing body making him feel good had his blood stirring and his cock thickening.
But now wasn’t the time to lose focus. Not with jealous eyes assessing, plotting, and deciding whether he lived or died at that moment.
Scar kept his face neutral and his fists clenched at his sides.
He wasn’t there for pussy, nostalgia, or sweet welcomes.
He was there for glory.
He pulled again at his beanie, careful not to let anyone see the unnatural white of his hair.
“Cool out, Dre,” he whispered, easing her off him.
The enforcer who’d questioned him sneered. “What kinda opportunity you talkin’ ’bout, huh? Like the informant kind? The bitch-snitching kind?”
Scar snapped his glare toward him. “The presumed-dead kind.”
The new king rose slowly, every part of him screaming ego as he came toward him.
His gold chains clinked against each other when he walked, his entourage clinging to him like lint. His personal enforcers preceded him, with their guns visible.
Scar stood to his full six foot one height.
The king stopped in front of him, women hanging off his arm.
“Look at this. The devil of the South Side, back from hell.”
“What’s up, King?” He knew the guy’s name, but he’d used the title deliberately, acknowledging it, letting him know he wasn’t there to dethrone him…yet.
King narrowed his eyes. “It’d take fuckin’ Houdini to walk outta Florence Pen and not be seen. Unless…”
Scar gritted his teeth. “Unless what?”
The room went quiet enough to hear the bus approaching the stop outside.
“Unless you the feds’ new bitch.”
The word bitch hit like a hammer to the back of his head.
An enforcer edged forward, hand on the butt of his Glock. “Talk, Scar.”
Scar didn’t speak, moving before anyone blinked.
He snatched the half-full vodka bottle from the bar and smashed it over the enforcer’s head. The man dropped like dead weight, shards of glass and alcohol raining over his shoulders.
Scar yanked Pun’s lighter from his jacket pocket—knowing it would be there—flicked the flame to life and held it inches from the puddle.
“Anyone else want me to talk?” Scar growled, scanning the room. “Call me a bitch again, and I’ll have plenty more to say.”
The flame rose higher, as if the fire itself wanted to satisfy his anger as much as he did.
Pun stepped between them. “Yo, everybody fuckin’ chill. This is Scar. He ain’t no narc. Y’all remember the shit he handled? The bodies he dropped for this crew? He don’t flip. Never did, never will.”
The king’s jaw flexed. For a long, taut moment, no one moved. Then he finally spat on the floor.
“I don’t give a fuck what he’s done before. Right now, he better get the fuck outta my bar before I put a bullet in his head for every life sentence he was supposed to serve.”
Pun scowled, positioning himself in front of him. “Then you gonna’ have to shoot through me, King.”
Pun wasn’t just any soldier. He was an OG. A legacy. His father and grandfather had been personal enforcers for the Kings, long before any of these new clowns learned how to hold a gun. If the king dropped Pun, there’d be real backlash. The kind that started block wars.
“I’m the fuckin’ king, remember that shit. Now get him outta here, Pun, before I change my mind. Scar, you can tell the feds that the only thing you’ll get from my crew for them is a bullet in your goddamn skull.”
Scar stared him down, pulse steady, but his mind murderous. He’d forgotten how much restraint it took not to kill a man for disrespecting him.
Pun’s hand was on his shoulder, grounding him.
“C’mon, Scar. It ain’t worth it. Let’s roll out, bro.”
Scar exhaled through his nose and handed Pun back his lighter.
He looked around at the people who’d once sworn allegiance to him, the ones who’d followed him into shootouts and lived because of his decisions.
Now they wouldn’t even meet his eyes.
Gage had been right. His gang life was over.
He pushed away from the bar. Pun, his little brother Smoke, and Drea fell in behind him. They walked out together, silence pressing heavily between them.
The cold outside didn’t slap him as hard as his crew had.
His breath came out in white clouds and his hands shook as adrenaline crawled beneath his skin like biting insects.
Pun lit a cigarette.
“You need to lay low, man. You got ’em spooked by popping up like this. Word spreads fast, and King won’t stop gunning for you till’ he has a truth he can accept. Best disappear a while.”
Drea’s stiletto boot heels clacked loudly beside him.
“My dad’s new girlfriend has a house in Palos Hills. She’s in the Keys with him for the rest of the winter, so you can crash there if you want.”
Scar gritted his teeth. He hated hiding. But Pun was right. If the Kings thought he was a snitch, the hit on him was already out.
“Fine,” he muttered.
They piled into Drea’s Jetta—that smelled like honey and smoke—and he told her to circle the block a few times before heading to the freeway to ensure they weren’t being followed.
The city passed in streaks of light and shadows as he leaned his head back…and thought of Gage.
A man he should forget, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about him. The preacher’s kid who’d played around in a lifestyle he knew nothing about and had paid the price.
“Fuckin’ dumbass,” he muttered.