by Stasia Black
It’s time to show her once and for all who is in control of this fuck. I came here because I needed to fuck her one last time. That’s the truth of it, even if I wasn’t willing to admit it to myself before now. Bringing in the other guys was obviously a mistake. But at the time it felt too… naked to just bring her here without a pretense. I’m man enough to admit it’s what I should have done from the beginning.
I’ll rectify that now. It’s just her and me. That’s how we began this and it’s how we’ll end it.
I line up my cock and then—oh fuck, yes—I’m back inside her.
I don’t go fast this time. Maybe there is no fucking her out of my system. Maybe I’ll never be able to exorcise Scarlet from my memory or my goddamned soul.
But I was always gonna go to hell. That’s nothing new. Shit, I’ve already lived there a long damn time.
My Scarlet was never real. She was just a creature I made up in my head.
But just for this one last time, just for a few more minutes…
I thrust in long and deep, riding her as far as possible into the couch. She lets out a high-pitched cry of ecstasy each time I reach that spot so deep inside her. I clutch her close, wrapping my arms around and up behind her shoulders.
God, she’s so beautiful and fragile.
If she were what she had claimed, she would have been a miracle.
She would have been my miracle.
For a little while, she was.
For those brief weeks, I was happy. Actual happiness.
I thought happiness was a myth before my time with her.
I plunge so deep inside her and lay my cheek against her chest. Such perfect breasts. I listen to her heart, thumping so steadily. Alive. Real.
Then I pull back and look at her face. Real but not real.
All a mirage.
Oh God, but she feels so good. I pull out and then ram in again. Fuuuuuuuuuuck. I can’t hold out much longer.
But I don’t want it to end. Please don’t ever let it end. I can’t let it be over. It can’t be over.
I finally look the one place I’ve been avoiding as the pleasure rises higher.
I look her in the eye.
And there I see the ultimate lie.
Love.
She’s looking at me the same way she did when she first whispered it. And I feel the same shocked confusion I did the moment her gag came off at that building in the Tenderloin.
I thought I must have remembered her initial declaration of love wrong. Because the way she’s looking at me—what if it’s not a lie? It looks so real. Love—
The rush that hits at the thought, I can’t—
She reaches up and grasps my shoulders, eyes never leaving mine. I see everything in her eyes.
I see a future.
Her and I, out of this toxic city.
Her beautiful belly fat with my son or daughter.
That lovely blonde hair wired with gray at the end of our lives.
Those haunting blue eyes always shining at me with the same look they have now.
I love you, Kennedy.
Her hips roll up into me and she cries out in guttural abandon. She’s climaxing and it sets me off. I shove into her one last time. I’m blind to everything except the beauty clutching at me and perfection and—
…
…
I still.
She huddles against me.
Blood flows back into my brain.
I want to sleep.
I want to sob.
I want to die.
The beautiful dream is over.
It will never come again. The woman in my arms is just the physical manifestation of a mirage. My skin prickles. It hurts to still be touching her.
My Scarlet was a lie.
She never existed.
I roll off the woman in my arms and turn away. I pull up my pants. I have to get out of here before I break down bawling like a giant fucking baby.
I feel the eyes of the three men in the room. Oh right. Come on. Let’s put a dignified cap on the shit show.
Hey, look what a good sport I can be? It might be cruel to inflict her on one of these poor bastards, but closure, right? My head’s so fucked right now, this is all the logic I’ve got. I’m not thinking about the stupid fucking deal. Maybe I just need to prove to myself that she is what I know her to be. Ready and waiting to jump on the next meal ticket.
So I adopt the friendliest voice I can manage. “Now,” I address the room at large, not especially wanting to see any of the men’s dicks again. “Who wants this gorgeous cunt to deep-throat them next? I can promise she’s got great fucking suction. Like a goddamn vacuum.”
I look at her one last time, but I don’t see her. I don’t see anything.
All right. I might have some sick drive for closure that requires the satisfaction of knowing she’ll just callously move on after me, but I don’t have to actually witness the deed. I turn and head for the door.
Chapter 21
SCARLET
I stare at Kennedy and try to breathe. My lungs don’t work, though. I feel the same way that I did when I was a kid and I jumped on a slip and slide when there wasn’t any water running and all the air was punched from my chest.
I’ve had my world torn out from underneath me before. But never like this. Never when I was ready to put everything on the line—to give someone everything and then have them absolutely demolish me when I was at my most vulnerable.
Because that’s what Kennedy’s just done. He desecrated something beautiful. Something holy. That’s what we could have had.
He had the audacity to look at me with those hard, cruel, soulless eyes. He never loved me. Not this monster. He’s incapable of love.
He tore my whole life apart. I came back to get revenge and instead, I stupidly let my guard down and allowed the monster free reign to do even more damage. I close my eyes. Enough.
Enough. I’m done with hurting.
“I’m done,” I whisper.
I don’t look at Kennedy as he walks away or any of the other men as I stand up unsteadily from the couch and grab my torn dress from the floor. Damn it. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of here with no clothes and no money. Maybe someone in the dining room will have pity on me or I can ask one of the waitresses to—
“Where do you think you’re going, bitch?” the man with white hair asks, standing up and blocking my path. “Get on your knees.”
He grabs my shoulders and shoves me down.
“Let go of me.” I pull to get away but he just shoves harder, grabbing my breast and grinning at me.
“Hey,” Kennedy calls from the doorway, “If she doesn’t—”
“Ooo, I like ‘em with some fight in ‘em,” he says, laughing and looking over to the two other men on the couch.
“Get off me, I’m out of here.” I’m not kidding, I’m done with this crap. When he still doesn’t let me go, I slap him in the face.
His already ruddy cheek goes pink and then before I know what’s happening, the side of my face explodes and I’m on the floor.
And then the room erupts with men’s shouts as Kennedy launches himself at the man who hit me. He takes him to the ground and jumps on top of him. Over and over, Kennedy’s arm draws back and he punches him.
Kennedy’s shouting but it’s incoherent. Just noises of rage.
I scream and pull back, cowering with my arms over my head. Tears fill my eyes so quick I can hardly see. What’s going on? I don’t know what’s happening. One second it was me and Kennedy and then— And then—
“You’re all fucking crazy,” Bruce shouts, raising his hands and then he’s out the door. Malcolm follows right on his heels.
And Kennedy, God, he just keeps losing it on the guy underneath him. The guy who’s not moving anymore.
“Stop it. Stop it!” I cry, getting up and running over to Kennedy. God, there’s blood everywhere, all over the guy’s face and Kennedy’s hands. And just like I thought,
the man’s not moving anymore. But Kennedy still rears back for another hit.
“Stop it,” I say again, jumping on Kennedy’s back and wrapping my arms around his shoulders and chest. “You’re going to kill him! Stop!”
Some haze seems to clear and Kennedy pauses, breathing so hard his whole body moves up and down. He moves to the side, sliding off of the man’s body. I tumble with him and suddenly everything’s quiet except for the sound of Kennedy’s heaving breaths. I glance over at the man and then turn away quickly. Oh God. All that blood.
I stand up. We’ve got to get out of here. I grab Kennedy’s hands. “Come on, we’ve got to go.” When he doesn’t respond, I yank harder. “Come on.”
He blinks and then looks up at me. He doesn’t look hard and cruel anymore. No.
God, he just looks broken.
Tears leak out the sides of his eyes, mixing with sweat that pours from his temple. From our intense fucking and from the effort he put into beating that man. Oh God, this whole day, it’s been so messed up.
I cough on a sob of my own, but when I pull on Kennedy’s arm, he stumbles to his feet. I shove his shirt at him and pull his suit coat on around myself.
He pauses one time to look back at the man on the floor before I pull him out of the room.
“Love is poison,” he mutters.
Chapter 22
KENNEDY
I pull on my shirt that Scarlet handed me. As I walk beside her through the restaurant, a calm descends over me, cold where moments before everything was hot. I couldn’t see, everything was just hot. There was rage and the overwhelming need to kill that fucker. He hit her, right there in front of me.
And Scarlet—she was leaving. She wasn’t trying to seduce them after all. She didn’t want any of them. She wasn’t working an angle. And then that bastard hit her.
Shit, remembering the split second of seeing his arm lift, feeling my stomach drop to the floor, jumping toward them but getting there too late. She was already on the floor. I was too late. Too fucking late. Not fucking enough. Never fucking enough.
The heat in my blood goes cold again. Screw it. This is my fault. Love. Fucking love. I wasn’t being dramatic. It’s poison. Or maybe it’s just me. Anything I touch turns to a disgusting cesspool of shit. My mom knew it when she looked at me. She’d rather eat herself to death.
No, that’s not quite right. She waited until I left to kill herself.
I escaped like the coward that I was and then she proved she loved me. In the worst possible way. Or she proved she hated me and wanted me to feel it deeply. I never could decide what her final message was by that act. Suicide. Or fuck, maybe it wasn’t meant as a message to me at all. Maybe she didn’t want to live anymore without me there to enable her obsession with food. I knew when I left that she’d be taken to a home of one kind or another.
Or maybe in the back of my mind, I knew she’d rather die than face that fate. The truth of the matter is that by leaving, I killed her as surely as if I held the knife she used to slit her veins.
Poison. I’m fucking poison.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and press Stella’s contact.
“What is this, do my ears deceive me?” Stella answers. “Could this actually be my boss returning one of my million phone calls? Don’t tell me you decided to finally go to work again. Because let me tell you, there are plenty of—”
I cut her off. “You’ll need to order an ambulance for Benson’s. Original location, back room. Do your usual damage control. I don’t care how much it costs to shut the fucker up about the whole thing.”
Silence.
“What did you do?” She sounds tired but not surprised. I smile bitterly.
“What I do best. Fuck shit up. Now do your job and protect the brand.” I hang up.
Mariana, the head of my waitstaff, tries to stop me as I head for the back of the restaurant to where the valet would have parked my car.
“Sir,” her eyes widen in alarm. “Your hands!”
I don’t bother explaining. I just keep stalking toward the exit. Scarlet stays at my side. I guess she needs a ride back to her brother. And her clothes. How can she—? After I—
As I pull the back door open and we hit the cool night air, she pulls my coat around her tighter. I head toward the Bentley without a word.
She’s on my heels and gets inside the passenger seat. I switch on the engine and she turns to me. “I’m going to talk now and you’re going to listen, goddammit.”
I shift, press the gas, and peel out of the parking lot, not giving her a nod or anything else. What’s the point now?
“Nine years ago, men from the 12th Street Gang came into my father’s restaurant and told him to sell to you. They said if he didn’t, things would go badly for him.”
I swing my head sharply to look over at her. “What are you talking about?”
This time it’s her turn to look confused. “You hired them, didn’t you? To intimidate my father?”
My heart starts beating faster in my chest. “I hired them, as you say.” I swallow. “But not to do anything to your father. I needed money to open the restaurant—I only had seventy percent of the financing. They had influence in the neighborhood. So I cut a deal with them.”
“You borrowed money from gangsters?” Her voice is full of venom.
My mouth opens but for a second nothing comes out. Does she hear herself? “The same gangsters you just worked with to extort me for thirty million dollars? I was a dumb twenty-year old kid. My mom had just killed herself because I’d abandoned her. She ordered a bunch of pills off the internet but then she slit her wrists just to make sure the job got done. No one even found her for two weeks and only then because of the smell—”
I jerk the car over to the side of the road and park in a fire lane, breathing hard and running my hand through my hair. Shit, my knuckles are still bloody, but I don’t care.
She said the 12th Streeters did something to her dad. What if she’s not just some con artist? If she really did come after me because she had a legitimate reason for a grudge? I was so quick to jump to my own conclusions earlier. To be judge and jury over her. Self-righteous and sure that I was the wronged party.
But don’t I know more than anyone what bad news the 12th Streeters were? I only ever had the most illusory control over them during our short-term association.
I slam my hands on the steering wheel and squeeze my eyes shut. “What did they do to your dad?”
Out of my periphery, I can see Scarlet staring at me with wide eyes. She’s quiet just a second longer, but then she starts talking. “When Dad wouldn’t sell, they broke his leg and demanded payments for so-called protection. He paid the money but he still wouldn’t sell.” She takes a gulp of air. “That’s when they dragged me and Enzo back into the kitchen.”
I open my eyes and stare over at her, feeling like one of those Bobcat construction excavators has scraped out the insides of my chest. “They threatened you?” My voice is a rough whisper. “How old were you?”
I don’t have any more money. There’s nothing more to get out of me. She wouldn’t still be sitting here if this wasn’t the truth.
Tears track down her cheeks. Christ, how much have I made this girl cry? Not just today, but throughout her whole life?
“I was twelve. Enzo was seven.”
And there goes a bulldozer to the rest of my heart.
I slam the steering wheel again. But there’s no one to go beat to a pulp this time. There’s just me.
“So your father sold?”
She shakes her head, her chin trembling. “The reason Dad had been refusing to sell was because we were upside down on the mortgage. He’d just taken out a second mortgage to redo and update the restaurant, but he ended up having to use that money to pay the 12th Streeters. Even if we sold, we’d have to declare bankruptcy. Dad kept trying to find a way around it.” Her voice cracks. “In the end, we lost the restaurant to the bank anyway.”
I take a s
harp inhale of breath. “Which is where I swooped in and bought it for half of what it was worth. Christ, Scarlet, I swear, I had no idea what the 12th Streeters were doing. You have to believe me.” I’m begging and I don’t care. Whatever she thinks of me, I can’t bear that she thinks that.
“I should never have involved them. I knew it, but I just didn’t care. I figured if the restaurant failed and I couldn’t pay them back, they’d kill me and that’d be that. After Mom, it was what I deserved.”
“God, Kennedy.” Scarlet reaches out and grabs my hand but I pull away. How can she even fucking touch me?
“What happened then?” I force the words out through my clenched jaw. I need to hear it all. Just how much she has to hate me for. “How’d you really end up on the streets, Scarlet?” My voice is low and I look at her, both begging for mercy and bracing for the worst.
She swipes at her cheeks and takes a hiccupping gulp of air. She soldiers on, though. She’s not going to let me off the hook.
Right now, it’s all coming out. Every dirty, sordid truth and lie.
“Dad was never the same after losing the restaurant. It had been his parents’ legacy. His mom had met and married his father after moving here from Naples during the post-war period. His dad had just been running a struggling little Italian restaurant, but when she started in the kitchen, Bianchi’s got a solid clientele.”
She bites her lip and struggles to steady her voice for a moment. “It was all my dad ever talked about, passing down the legacy of the restaurant.” She lifts and drops her shoulders, then runs her forearms under her eyes and nose. “But that was gone. And his leg kept giving him problems. It was a bad break and never healed right. He worked sporadically. I waitressed to help out with the bills and we struggled on for a few years. But then I got cancer.”
She shuts her eyes and more tears squeeze out the sides. “He had a heart attack and died two weeks before I got the final scans that I was cancer free. He died thinking I might not make it.
“Then I was weak, still in the hospital, barely turned nineteen. No one was going to give me custody of my thirteen-year-old brother. Enzo ran away from his foster home when I was released from the hospital and begged me to run with him.” She opens her eyes and looks at me. “I said yes. We’d lost everything else. We weren’t going to lose each other.”