by A. Zavarelli
“Look, Scarlett…” This time, she glances up at me. “That’s what you tell people your name is, right?”
“That is my name.”
“Sure, it is.” She rolls her eyes. “Just like mine is Storm. Let’s be real with each other for a minute. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me. In fact, I think we are a lot alike in that we both hate every-fucking-one. But we have to share our toys. That’s the way it goes. So, you just worry about you, and I’ll worry about me. And in the meantime, you can watch me fuck him up real good if you want.”
I guess my curiosity wins out in the end. Because I take a seat on the bed, and I do exactly what she suggested.
I watch.
She’s right that we are both similar. Maybe that’s why my curiosity is getting the best of me. This isn’t like me. I don’t team up. I don’t have interest in other people’s stories. Their thoughts, their fears, whatever.
But it’s not often I stumble across someone as fucked up as I am. So, this girl, she fascinates me.
Her face is turned down as she begins. She’s in a trance, inflicting the very permanent damage she leaves on all her toys. And it’s only now that I’m in close proximity that I can see it.
The reason she hides in shadow.
Her arm is a mess of tangled flesh and scars, and so is the right side of her face. They are disguised well, beneath the makeup and the black wig. But under the soft glow of the lamp light, they are obvious in a way I never noticed in a dark bar.
Burns.
She was burned.
Badly, from the looks of it.
She glances up and catches me staring.
“Are you about done? I don’t have to let you watch, you know.”
My answer is a nod and a new laser focus on her chosen canvas. But inside my head, the wheels are still turning.
I can only imagine what it would be like to wear your scars so visibly. People staring all the time. Silently hypothesizing. Coming to their own conclusions. Silently judging you and pitying you at the same time.
My respect for her only grows in this moment of vulnerability she shared with me. Allowing me to see her this closely. It wasn’t an accident, or a spontaneous decision.
This girl’s mind is a chess board, and every move she makes is carefully planned out.
She works quickly and efficiently. The tattoo is messy and deep. Too deep. This guy won’t ever be able to get her brand lasered off his skin. For the rest of his life, when he looks in the mirror, he will see the word staring back at him.
Duplicity.
I know from the news articles starting to make the rounds that she uses different words. Infidelity. Greed. Lust. Envy. Deceit.
They are all sins in their own right, but they have new meaning to me now. It’s funny how a canvas changes once you meet the artist. It all starts to make sense. Or doesn’t. In this case, her words have come full circle. The puzzle is not in the different sins, but only one.
Infidelity.
Every other sin is just a shallow imitation. Another path to the same destination.
These men are all cheaters. And when they come home from this, there is no hiding what they’ve done. They will confess on their knees and beg their wives forgiveness while Storm carries on as though it never happened.
But she doesn’t just stop at tattoos.
When she’s finished with his chest, she fucks up his face. And I mean really fucks it up. With cigarette burns and knife marks.
My best guess for this one? She wants him to be as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside.
Or maybe as ugly as she feels herself.
If I could feel empathy for someone, I might have stopped her. But I don’t. I’m fucked up in my own special way and the tears of rich men are my opiates of choice.
When it’s all said and done, I feel nothing when I look at him.
There is nothing but emptiness when Storm cleans up and packs her bag. She walks to the door, and I think she’s going to leave. But first, she drops a bomb.
“Your name is Tenly. Tenly Albright.”
I flinch, and it’s involuntary.
Storm smiles.
“How…”
“Don’t worry,” she says. “Your secret’s safe with me. But word on the street is there’s a cop with a hard on for you, sweetheart. So maybe you should do all the rest of us a favor and stay the fuck out of the way.”
With that parting gift, she leaves me. And I’m still staring at the door, wondering if it was all a hallucination. Wondering if she drugged me too.
That’s when the client chooses to mumble a coherent thought.
“That guy.”
“What guy?”
“The picture,” he groans. “You showed me a picture of the guy once.”
I’m firing on all cylinders now. Up and off the bed and moving towards him. He recoils, but there’s nowhere for him to go.
“Please,” he begs. “I’m trying to give you what you want.”
“What the fuck is his name?” I demand.
“I don’t know,” he spews. “I’ve never known. But I think he is a cop. I’ve been seeing him around.”
“Where specifically?”
“That bar downstairs,” he says. “He’s been scoping the place out. But not until late. He’s always there after ten when I see him. I heard him asking about you. He had a drawing of you, telling people this is what you might look like now.”
I mull over his words as my eyes burn into his face. This feels too easy. And it doesn’t make sense. There’s no fucking way Alexander’s a cop.
“If you’re lying to me…”
“I swear,” he says. “I’m not lying. I just want you and that other psycho to leave me alone. Please.”
I toss him a smile before I pivot on my heel and head to the door. Looks like the creep finally learned his lesson.
And for once, I’m happy to oblige.
Three
Scarlett
I don't want to be a fool. Even a beautiful one.
The clock on the stove glares at me with neon green numbers when I drag myself out of bed. It’s after ten. And I’ve officially become a vampire, though I’m not sure when it happened. I hunt all night and nap during the day, only coming alive when the sun sets all over again.
The silence is pervasive as I sit at the counter and drink my coffee. Quiet. Always quiet. No television. No music. Just silence.
The thing I simultaneously need and hate most.
I am hypersensitive by nature and my nights are loud and chaotic. Overwhelming. The lights and the noise are acid to my psyche, but I endure. My punishment for playing the game.
When my mug is empty, I throw on an old tee shirt and a pair of leggings and lace up my running shoes- bunny ear style. Then it’s another cup of the usual. Neurosis.
The appliances come first. I unplug them and check them again, and then fifty times more, just to be sure. Because there could be a fire and then the animals in the building could be trapped because not everyone’s home during the day. And so I count the knobs on the stove too, because I never use it, but you just don’t know. Maybe one got bumped. Or maybe I turned it on when I meant to check that it was off. This whole parade of insanity usually takes me about fifteen minutes or so.
When I leave, I lock all six locks on my door. And then count them. And then re-lock them again because maybe I missed one.
The third and final step of my compulsion is to linger in the hallway like the lunatic that I am, resisting the urge to go back inside and re-check everything. I tell myself that it’s fine. I tell myself I did everything just right.
And then I take a step. And another. And eventually it gets easier to walk away, with a few deep breaths too.
Mrs. Roger’s cat Whiskey is sitting at the end of the hallway when I get to the stairwell. I only know my neighbor’s name because sometimes she comes to knock on my door to accuse me of stealing Whiskey.
I do let Whiskey inside sometim
es. He’s nice. And he’s a cat, not people, so technically I’m allowed to like him. But he can only ever visit for a little while. Because in this life I don’t get attached to anything.
This ginger cat is the closest thing to an exception that I’ll ever make. I reach down and grace his regal ass with a pat and he bonks my leg with his head a few times before he starts purring.
I thought cats were supposed to have good instincts about people. But Whiskey apparently doesn’t. He doesn’t know that I’m dead inside. That I’m no good. Typical narcissist, he demands attention anyway.
So maybe cats are like me. They don’t really care about your issues. They just want what they want and that’s it.
I give him one last pat and then I dart down the darkened stairwell of the building I’ve called home since I came to this city. It’s nothing special to look at, and my mother would clutch her pearls if she saw it. But it’s home to me. Familiar ground.
A far cry from everything I once knew.
I hit the pavement and breathe in the exhaust with a happy sigh. This is Boston. Nama-fucking-ste. Stretches commence in my usual spot, against the building.
Then I run.
It’s hard. It’s fast. And it’s brutal. The punishment does not stop until I can physically go on no longer. It’ll be hell walking in heels tonight. But I’ll manage. I always do.
I’m limping when I get back to my apartment, and Whiskey is waiting for me at my door. I can’t be bothered to shoo him off today. So, I let him wander in while I make my usual safety checks.
In this life, you never know who might be following you home. I almost always expect it to be one of my clients. But I never saw the butcher coming.
History repeated itself that day.
And even though I had my knife- the one I never, ever take off- he managed to surprise me. And overpower me.
And drag me back to hell.
It was a wake-up call if I ever had one. All my years on the streets had really taught me very little. Because somehow, I would always end up falling prey to men like that.
Whatever notion I’d ever entertained about leaving this life behind withered in the aftermath of that day. The deadness returned. And so did the rage.
The universe had a funny way of reminding me why I do what I do.
For two long months, I was fucking up some random man every night. Making him pay for the sins of everyone else before him.
It didn’t matter to me.
The only thing that mattered was the game. The retribution.
And everything has come full circle again as I sit here in my darkened apartment, with only Whiskey to keep me company while I nuke a TV dinner. My fingers move over the faces in my scrapbook, and sometimes, that notion reappears. That I could let it go.
It sickens me, how weak those thoughts are.
Did the butcher not teach me anything? Did Alexander and his friends not teach me anything?
This can’t go on forever. This perpetual state of purgatory. There’s only so long I can toy with them before they figure it out.
More than anything, I just want them gone. But something is holding me back. I know once I cross that line, there’s no return.
And I also know that I can’t do it alone.
That’s where my plan gets a little sketchy. There’s a key player I need on my team, and it means I will need to drag him to hell with me.
Rory Brodrick. AKA the Saint.
He’s a fighter. A hustler. And a mobster.
He kidnapped me. And then tried to comfort me in a moment of weakness. He saw my panic when he held me against the wall. And somehow, he got it into his head that he was going to save me.
I hated him for his sweet lies.
But I hated him even more for fucking up Teddy’s confession.
He doesn’t know that I’ve been keeping score of his transgressions. That he lights the fuse to my rage every time I see his face.
Acting like he wants to date me. Acting like he gives a fuck about me. He’s worse than all the rest of them lumped together, because he’s almost convincing.
He has no idea who he’s messing with.
He thinks he still has a say in how we play this game.
But Rory’s going to find out, I’m the one who invented the rules.
Four
Rory
“What a cunt of a day.”
I wipe the blood from my piece and stuff it back into the holster.
“Aye,” Ronan agrees from beside me. “It is.”
There’s a whole load of dead bodies in front of us. Another low-level gang tried to hit one of our warehouses.
They never learn.
And it never gets any easier, wiping the blood from my hands.
I don’t think it does for any of us.
Except for Ronan, probably. The lad is fucked in the head, but he’s as decent a bloke as they come.
Conor walks up and chucks a stray shoe onto the heap before turning to wait for his instructions.
The lad’s come a long way.
He doesn’t even throw a sickie anymore at the smell of blood. He even did a few of these blokes in tonight, all on his own.
I’m proud of him, but I’ll never tell him so.
He went from having nothing to live for to becoming one of my closest brothers.
“How’s blondie?” I ask.
He looks away and shrugs.
“Don’t know.”
“Bullshite, ye don’t know.” I poke at him. “My sofa has been awful lonely this past week. Crow’s too, he says. So ye must be laying your head somewhere at night.”
“Yeah, okay,” Conor levels with me. “We had a thing. But then Crow went and hired her on as a dancer.”
Conor’s jaw is set, and the lad is pissed. But I can only laugh.
“Classic fucking Crow.”
Reaper nods in agreement.
“Sounds like he’s trying to give ye a wee push in the right direction.”
“Just pull a Fitzy,” I tell him. “Haul her off the stage and drag her down to the basement to show her who’s boss.”
“Don’t talk about my wife that way,” Ronan warns me.
I hold up my hands in surrender, but even Conor’s laughing now. We were all taking bets on how long it’d be before Fitzy finally broke. Now Crow’s scheming again with Conor, it seems.
He likes to say that his men do their best work when they’ve got a warm bed at home, but I think he’s just a romantic at heart.
My phone beeps, and it’s a text from Crow himself. His ears must’ve been itching.
“Gotta jet, lads,” I tell them. “Crow needs me back at Slainte. Ye got this sorted, or ye need me to send some help?”
“We’ve got it sorted,” Reaper answers me.
“Alright, lads. Catchya.”
“It won’t happen again,” the bloke tells me. “Please.”
“Ye’re right about that,” I agree. “But I still have to break your arm.”
“I have a wife and kids at home,” he pleads.
“Then you’ll be just as useless to them as ye are now.”
Fecking prick.
“I’ve got some money,” he says. “Whatever you want. Here, take my Rolex.”
“I don’t want your bloody Rolex,” I tell him. “I want you to respect the rules of this establishment, which ye clearly didn’t. And now ye need to quit your bitching and moaning and take it like a man.”
I reach for his arm and he tries to scramble away.
“Would ye rather lose some fingers, then?” I ask.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Ye stuck your hand in her knickers. She’s got no reason to lie about that.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realize it wasn’t that kind of club. She’s a stripper… so I just thought…”
“Ye just thought she’d take a free ride on your dick because you told her to, aye?”
“It’s not like that.”
“This is h
ow it’s like,” I tell him. “Ye came into our establishment. And ye touched one of our women without her permission. And that stripper? She’s also a mother. A damn good one at that. She works her arse off to put food on the table, believe it or not. It’s not for the love of cock.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
The bloke just doesn’t get it, but they never do.
If there’s one thing I won’t abide by, it’s this kind of shite. My mammy raised me to be respectful of women. Even though my father was anything but. I didn’t stand for it then, and I’m not going to stand for it now.
“Look, ye have two choices,” I lay it out for him. “Fingers or arm. The arm will heal, eventually. But ye can’t grow fingers back.”
He doesn’t answer me, and I’ve grown tired of him already. So I grab hold of his arm and yank this time. It snaps in two, with a fair amount of squealing on his part.
“All sorted. Thanks for stopping by.”
* * *
When I walk into the office, Crow’s there with his wife and baby daughter. I steal Keeva off Mack’s hip to give her some cuddles.
“Get your own kid,” Mack tells me.
“Nah, I like this one. Think I’ll just keep her for a wee bit.”
“How’d it go?” Crow asks.
“All sorted,” I tell him.
Even though Mack’s trustworthy, and she’s married to the boss, we still don’t discuss details in front of her. The less the wives know, the better. For their own protection.
I take a seat on the sofa and bounce Keeva in my arms while she tries to grab at my nose. Both Mack and Crow are watching us, the way that most parents do, with silly smiles on their faces.
“Are ye up for the task of babysitting next week?” Crow asks. “Mack’s been after me to take her out on a date.”
“Anytime,” I tell them.
I’m the brother’s go to babysitter, believe it or not. I don’t mind it. They know their kids are safer with me than they’d ever be anywhere else.
A shadow falls over the doorway, and it’s not unusual, since Crow’s office always has someone poking their head in. But when I look up, what I don’t expect to see is Scarlett. I rub at the back of my neck and study her carefully. Something must be wrong.