Ynna made her way out the door to see the window open. Gato was nowhere in sight. She let out a sigh. He had no doubt awakened her as he got up to leave on a morning hunt. There was no shortage of mice for him to bring back and present to her as a bloody gift.
Knowing the fitful couple of hours was all she would get, she admitted defeat and fired up her gaming console.
After a while, as the sun began to streak through the room, Karen entered.
“You were up early,” she observed groggily.
Ynna put down the controller. “Yeah, there’s coffee on.”
Karen nodded and plodded over to the kitchen. “We still on for tonight?”
Ynna smiled. “Wouldn’t miss it. Gonna get my hair done, and I’ll be over.”
“That’s a nice treat for yourself,” Karen said through a yawn.
“I thought so,” Ynna agreed, still not sure about sharing her new friends with her mother.
“Happy birthday, honey,” Karen said and made her way over to kiss her daughter on the head.
Ynna smiled.
The machine that dyed her hair hurt, and she hated the entire process. The spider-like robotic spikes poking and prodding her hair forced her to shift uncomfortably, and she winced as the style technician covered his mouth to keep from laughing.
As the arms lifted away from her head, retracting and folding like an umbrella, Ynna caught sight of herself in the mirror. Aside from a few streaks of blood from her scalp, she loved the new look. She shook her head slightly, and a sparkling shimmer flowed through her bright pink hair.
“Suits you,” the technician observed before smirking. “In a streetwalker sort of way.”
Ynna snorted. She had spent her whole life around people who thought they were better than everyone and found it incredibly distasteful.
She had seen the way he had looked at her when she walked in—like some creature that dragged itself from the depths for one taste of luxury.
She smiled as she produced the card, causing him to grimace.
“You win this in a giveaway?” he asked in so patronizing a tone that she wanted to wheel around and slap him.
She smirked. “Something like that.”
He ran a scanner over the barcode and looked at her expectantly.
“A tip,” he said, extending a flat palm.
“Sure, here’s your fucking tip—don’t be a smug, superior dick to people,” she said. It was an old line, but one she was happy to use.
She pulled the lead vest off and jammed it in his hand, snatching back the card and nearly skipping from the shop. She knew she should wait for instructions on how and when to wash and maintain it, but she could look all that up and was happy to be leaving with a win.
The salon was on the Main Street of the district, and she smiled at all the passing shoppers who looked on her with disdain. She remembered sitting with her old friends as they mocked other girls for what they wore. Now, she simply smiled at the same type of snooty bitches as they judged her.
She caught the bus back to her neighborhood and disembarked as the sun was setting. She strode over to D&M Jones’s Diner, where she saw her mother wiping down a table with a dirty rag. When it had been built, the diner had been styled to look old, a throwback to another era. Now it was just old.
The cherry top seats were ripped, the checkered floor was peeling, and the silver metal adornments were coated in brown rust. A fluorescent light flickered in a rounded display—pieces of pie cooked who-knows-when sitting on a wire rack.
The cook nodded from a filthy cooktop as she entered.
“Karen, your kid’s here,” he bellowed. “Your thirty starts now.”
She dropped her rag into a plastic rectangle of what was supposed to be clean water and gestured at a booth.
“Hey, honey,” she said to Ynna before turning to the cook. “Bill, two burgers whenever you finish there.”
He pulled one hand from his trousers, gave his fingers a sniff, and nodded.
Ynna frowned.
“Just tell yourself the heat will cook off any bacteria,” Karen suggested, catching her daughter’s look.
“That work?”
Karen smirked. “Not really.”
Ynna chuckled. “How you doing, Mom?”
“I’m okay, honey. But more importantly, how are you doing? I love the new look,” she said, and Ynna could tell her mom wanted to ask where she got the money.
“Thanks. I do, too,” Ynna said, not interested in giving her what she wanted.
“That’s good,” Karen said with a warm but weak smile. “So, tell me, what’s going on? Tell me about yourself. I see you growing and changing, and I hardly recognize you anymore. I want to get to know you again.”
Ynna smiled, too. It was sweet that her mom was making such an effort, and Ynna told her about her life. She explained that Hector had introduced her to some work opportunities and that she was making friends. Karen didn’t press her on the work but wanted to know all about Pes, Metric, and Whitney.
She seemed thrilled that her daughter was making a life for herself while throwing in some choice words about the value of education.
The food came, and they chatted while Ynna chewed dubiously. They spent much longer than Karen’s allotted break, but with no customers in sight, the cook didn’t seem bothered.
As she finished the last bite of a banana cream pie, Karen looked at her seriously.
“Honey,” she began. “You know I don’t have much money, but I thought that this year, instead of buying you a crappy gift, I would give you something you’ve always wanted.”
Ynna was intrigued. “Okay.”
“From now on, I’m going to try to call you Ynna,” she said, turning her fork in her fingers. “It won’t be easy, and it may take some time, but you are a woman now. A strong woman and one who deserves to be called the name she chooses.”
“Oh,” Ynna said, and for the second time in as many days, she felt tears begin to wet her eyes.
“I’ve never told you this, and you have to understand that it’s hard for me, but I could never call you it because of your brother,” Karen’s words were getting caught in her throat, and she was trying to hold back tears of her own.
“I figured. It’s just—” Ynna began, but Karen held up a trembling hand.
“I know you call yourself Ynna to honor him. I understand that it means something to you, but for all these years, when I heard it, I’ve only heard his voice. I’ve heard him struggle to say Marina, and I couldn’t bring myself to say it, too. He was so young when—when he died.
“And just like you with all this, I couldn’t help but blame myself. I know logically that I couldn’t have stopped him from falling down those stairs. I know that it was an accident. But a mother can’t help but feel—can’t help but blame herself.”
Silence oppressed them as she stopped speaking. Ynna had no words. She just watched her mother weep. She stood and moved to the other side of the table, wrapping her arm around Karen.
“I love you, honey,” Karen squeaked. “I want to honor him, too, and I think it’s time.”
“Okay, mom,” Ynna whispered as she rested her head on her mom’s shoulder. “I love you, too.”
The bell on the diner door rang, and the two women turned. Ynna’s heart pounded as she saw a beefy man with one robotic leg and a ski mask over his face holding a charged gun. Ynna reached before realizing she had left her weapon at The Press.
It was for the best, she decided. Robberies were common, and she didn’t need to start a gun battle.
“Transfer everything you have on sight to this chip,” he demanded of the cook. The man’s eyes darted around wildly. “And some pie, I want some fucking pie!” he demanded. Ynna knew that some addicts needed sugar when they were coming down from a high.
The cook caught the chip in one hand and moved slowly to the register. “We don’t make much, look at this place.”
The man with the gun moved forward threateningly.
“Just give me what you got!”
He sounded nervous, and Ynna wondered if it was his first time. For a brief moment, she had sympathy for him, remembering how worried she had been. She clutched her mother tight.
The cook plugged the chip into the computer, typing nervously on the screen. “It will take a while, this piece of shit is old, and Carcer will be here any moment.”
“I know you don’t have Carcer protection,” the man stated.
Ynna’s heart nearly stopped, and rage filled her as she realized. Killian had looked into her eyes when he played wounded that night at the firing range. He had played her. He must have seen the lenses.
It wasn’t Gato in the night. It was some hired breaker.
She was so angry. She wanted to leap up and beat the armed man to death. She hated Killian. She hated herself for thinking she was smart.
“Here,” the cook said, pulling out the chip.
As the man moved forward, the cook pulled a pistol from under the counter.
“No!” Ynna found herself yelling as the two men fired at once. Sound and light like thunder and lightning filled the space in an instant.
Both men were knocked back, and as he fell, the armed man’s body twitched—an involuntary death throw that was enough to pull the trigger of his weapon as he reeled back.
Brightness filled the room again, and Ynna blinked several times to regain her vision.
Her mother looked at Ynna, her eyes wide with shock.
Ynna looked down to see Karen’s hands move to the smoking hole through her ribs.
“Mom!” she wailed and pressed her hands over her mother’s.
She remembered how she felt that morning with her brother, how he had been playing with that toy dropship at the top of the stairs before losing his balance. Ynna had rushed to him as he tipped over the edge, watching his body contort and break as he fell.
The color drained from her mother’s face just as it had with her brother.
Ynna screamed as she had then.
A tear streaked down her face as Karen looked at her daughter one last time. “I love you, Ynna.”
The words came out heavy, and her head fell under its own weight.
Ynna stopped screaming. The room was silent except for the soft jazz still playing from the jukebox.
Her whole body shook.
The thief was dead.
The cook was dead.
Her mother was dead.
She stood in a daze, looking down at the corpse that had only a moment before been the only person in this world who loved her.
She knew she should wait. Wait to see her mother taken away. Wait to tell the officers what had happened.
She couldn’t.
She heard her own voice say, “I love you too, mom.” She pulled the necklace she had rescued from their house from her mother’s neck and jammed it in a pocket, knowing she would never sell it.
Her shaky legs carried her out through the blurred gaggle of onlookers and down the neon streets. Familiar faces were as strangers as she entered The Press. Her friends were not there.
Dried blood flaked from her hands as she pulled the machinegun free.
She made no attempt to hide it as she stalked toward the pawnshop.
Chapter 11
Two thugs waited in front of the darkened shop as Ynna approached, her weapon raised.
“Whoa, there, girly,” one said as the two lifted their hands defensively.
In a rage, she fired a burst and blazed the face of the one who had spoken. Blood cascaded into the air as the other man rushed forward, spearing her in the stomach with his shoulder. She gasped for air and saw white as he wrestled the weapon free and picked her up with ease, clutching both her wrists in one massive hand.
She thrashed, trying to remember her training, but she was too weak and drained to do much of anything. The brute dragged her inside where Killian was waiting for her. He smiled—a wicked, evil grin.
“I knew I would get you to come,” Killian said, and the thug at her back chuckled.
“Fuck you! I hate you!” Ynna screamed.
“Bit of an overreaction, my dear,” he hissed. He obviously didn’t know what stealing Ynna’s tech had cost her, but she wasn’t thinking of that now. She just wanted to see him hurt or dead.
She flailed again, and the massive man wrapped a hand around her neck and lifted her off her feet.
“I’ll. Kill. You,” she wheezed.
Killian’s grin broadened. “You’ll do no such thing. What you will do is disappear. You’ll crawl back into whatever hole you came from and never bother me again. You’ll cut all ties with my employees and go away, or—” and he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Or they will find pieces of you all around the city.”
She tried to speak, tried to tell him what she would do to him, but she could only gasp weakly for air as the corners of her vision blurred.
Killian stood and moved closer. She tried to kick at him, but her legs were weak and flaccid.
“You young assholes think you’re all so smart. You think you can run these streets and cut old Killian out, but I’ll tell you something—I’ve run these streets since before you were a set of options on some doctor’s screen. I’ve survived raids and riots. I’ve pulled through more than you can ever know and come out on top.
“I thought getting rid of Hector would show you your place, but instead, it somehow made you better.”
He shook his head disapprovingly. She tried to thrash again at Hector’s name, but she had nothing left. Even as he spoke, Killian was a fog. “Now, you have given me more than I ever thought possible, and your use to me has come to an end… so unless you want to give me the other thing I want, you can go away.”
Ynna felt herself fall to the floor. She sputtered and gasped.
“I’ll never give you anything,” she forced.
Killian frowned. “Then it was a pleasure doing business with you.”
She didn’t even feel the baton strike her head.
Ynna awoke in a state of misery she had never imagined possible.
The new life she had made for herself was gone, shattered in less than an hour. Her body shook, and she sobbed uncontrollably for what felt like an hour. Her face hurt from being pulled into a mask of misery.
Eventually, she stopped crying long enough to breathe—small rasping breaths that caught in her chest. She looked around to get her bearings, dark clouds dumping thudding rain onto her. She was covered in mud and saw an overpass above her. Her battered body tried to force itself from the ground, but she slipped and fell back into the mud that already coated her.
She felt the fresh wounds and bruises she had no doubt acquired from being dumped in this drainage ditch.
Blood soaked into the dirt as she scrambled up the hill and onto the street above. A lamp overhead flickered in the rain.
She looked up the street, seeing bars with prostitutes standing under awnings. At the end of the road, a taxi waited with a green light at the top. She felt for her cash chip and, finding it, moved as quickly as she could to the vehicle.
She threw herself in and let out a sigh before coughing blood into her filthy hand.
Later, she would wonder how different her life might have turned out if she had decided to go to Rose at that moment, but delirious and exhausted, Ynna entered the only address she knew by heart.
The house she had known her whole life looked unfamiliar and ominous as the cab set down. She moved as quickly as her body would take her to the front door and punched in the combination.
She couldn’t help but chuckle that her father had closed their accounts before they were even out the door but hadn’t taken the time to change the locks.
As the door opened, a beautiful, perfect-looking woman who Ynna assumed was another relief aid, stood before her in the foyer.
“Marina Hawkins, you are authorized as a guest of the household, you may follow me,” the woman said with a flat affect. She turned, and
Ynna followed the thing, hints of bare ass peeking out from under the skirt with each step.
The massive dining room was all but empty as she entered. Her father sat with half-finished steak, a glass of scotch, and cigar. He was the physical embodiment of privilege.
He looked up at her briefly and winced, his eyes instantly shifting away from his child. “You look appalling.”
Ynna felt her eyes burn. She was wounded, broken both inside and out, and all he cared about was how she looked. She realized then that she not only hated him but that he was a truly bad person. She had known it but had held out some sliver of hope for him.
“Mom’s dead,” she tried, thinking that maybe, just maybe, she could elicit some kind of reaction.
He raised his glass in mock cheers. “I know. Carcer came just before you with images for me to identify. I made arrangements for her.”
She saw the steak, drink, and cigar in a new light—he was celebrating.
To go from Killian to this was almost too much. She wanted to see positivity or hope in the world and was only met with the worst that humanity had to offer. As she tried to formulate words, to figure out what to say to the man, another woman entered. To her disgust, she saw that the machine was modeled after one of her schoolmates who her father had always taken a particular interest in. The replica wasn’t perfect, no doubt scammed from images in Ynna’s room, but the resemblance was clear. She wore nothing but an apron and strode over to clear the plate from the table.
Melvin didn’t acknowledge her except to lean back to let her take the dish. He spoke without looking up. “What is it that you want?”
Ynna had been asking herself the same question. She had come to this place thinking it would feel safe, but being here had only made her feel worse. “I need help, dad.”
She hung her head in shame.
He snorted. “So, money?”
She shook her head. That’s all that mattered to him. Watching the robot sway from the room, she had no words.
“I’ll book you a room at BA General,” he offered as though he was the most altruistic man on the planet and bringing up a screen on the table. “After that, I think it would be best if we part ways.”
Deadly in Pink Page 9
