Woman Named Red

by Stasia Black

  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 sharp 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.”

  I can’t bear to look at her anymore. Her beautiful face and that swollen cheek from that bastard back at the restaurant. Her swiping at her tears has washed away the artful makeup she used to hide what the 12th Streeters did when they took her. She’s a mass of bruises. Broken how many times, all because of me?

  I jam the car into gear and the tires squeal as I pull back out into traffic. It’s eight o’ clock, so not high-traffic time, but the streets are always clogged downtown. I weave around cars in and out of lanes. I need to be in fucking motion.

  “If they were the ones who tormented your family, how could you go to the 12th Streeters for help?” I yank the clutch into fourth gear and slam the gas down in order to speed through a yellow light. It turns red right as I enter the intersection but I keep going.

  Scarlet grabs the dash to brace herself but answers my question. “I thought they were just the gun. I thought you’d been the one pulling the trigger. On the street, the word was you’d screwed them over and that was why they weren’t big players anymore. The enemy of my enemy, right?” Her voice is bitter. She crosses her arms over her chest and looks out her window.

  I weave in and out of traffic, cutting off some fucker driving a Tesla to pull into the parking lot of my building. I bring the car to a jolting stop in my allotted spot and Scarlet and I are both jerked forward by the sudden halt in momentum.

  “What now?” I ask through my teeth.

  She breathes out an explosive breath before finally looking over at me. “What can there be now? You saw what happened back there. You hate me. I lost you thirty million dollars. Which, even if I didn’t want to happen in the end, I still orchestrated. I wasn’t able to stop it.” She shakes her head. “This isn’t something we can come back from.”

  I hear what she’s not saying. What she really means is my involvement in her father’s death. I think of some bull-necked bastard like Francisco breaking her father’s leg. Francisco wasn’t the leader I worked with back then. It was Benny. He was a giant dumbfuck, but mean as hell. He liked to do the dirty work himself. I think of him grabbing sweet Scarlet when she was just a little girl. She must have been so terrified. Seeing what they’d done to her father. No doubt Benny stood there yelling right in front of her face what he’d do to her if her father didn’t pay…

  Christ, then I think about her being in the hospital fighting cancer and learning her father had died. Then she got out and had to carry everything on her shoulders. She survived cancer, survived her father’s death, had to take care of her kid brother, and then being homeless—for years.

  Until her rage at the man who caused it all finally boiled over and she decided to do something about it. No wonder she’d come for revenge. I’m only surprised it took her as long as it did. And then—I hang my head—my behavior just now at the club.

  Being hated by the people I love is nothing new. At least this time I deserve it.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice is so low and choked it barely comes out at all. “I was young and stupid but that’s no excuse. I’d checked around and knew the reputation of the 12th Streeters. Fuck, it’s what attracted me to them. I wanted power and I would have done anything to get it.” I shake my head. If I’d known they were going to intimidate and threaten Scarlet’s family like that? Would I have stopped it?

  I scrub a hand through my hair.

  “Let’s just go get some sleep,” Scarlet says, sounding despondent. “It’s been a long day.”

  I let out a huff of air. That’s a fucking understatement if I’ve ever heard one.

  We’re both silent as we step into the elevator. I put my key in and turn it so we head straight up to the penthouse with no stops. I look over at Scarlet and she glances quickly away like I’ve caught her staring.

  Her blonde hair is falling out of the pins she used for her updo and it’s matted on one side. With
the exposed bruises on her face, she looks like a beautiful, broken flower. My miracle. And yet I let the world batter her. I spoke words I can never take back. I think of her gorgeous eyes, so bright in that moment when she came underneath me tonight.

  The elevator ping startles me. Scarlet hurries out the door and I stand there like a statue, only stepping off when the doors start to close again.

  Miracle lost. My fault. My fucking fault.

  Still, I just move outside the elevator into the foyer of my apartment and stop there. I don’t know where to go. What to do.

  A big part of me wants to run after Scarlet. To beg her to do the impossible. To forgive me. To tell me it wasn’t all pretend. Tonight, before I squashed it, I could have sworn there was something… In the way she looked at me— That just for a moment—

  Don’t be a fucking idiot, you fucking disgusting loser piece of shit.

  I stomp to the closest bathroom and turn on the faucet to its hottest temperature. Then I scrub at my bloody hands. Most of it is Nelson’s blood, but my knuckles are split, too. They’re going to hurt like a bitch.

  Just the thought of that fucker brings a growl to my throat. He was breathing when I left. I regretted it the second I let Scarlet pull me off him and I’m still regretting it now. Bastard should be in the ground for daring to lift a hand to a woman—and not just any woman, but my woman.

  No. Not your woman, Benson, get it through your fucking head.

  I splash water on my face.

  And that’s when I hear Scarlet’s raised voice calling, “Enzo? Enzo!”

  I grab a towel to wipe my face and hands as I hurry out of the bathroom and head toward the sound of her voice.

  “Enzo? This isn’t funny, where are you? I know we need to talk. Where are you? Enzo?”

  “What’s going on?” I meet her in the hall as she pulls open the door to a closet that holds extra linens and towels for guests.

  Worried eyes meet mine. “My brother. He’s hiding or something.”

  “Enzo,” she calls, “I swear I’m going to wring your neck. Come out and we can pack my stuff and get out of here. Stop being a little crap.”

  She pushes past me and checks the bathroom I just came out of. She heads down the rest of the hallway. I reach to put an arm on her elbow but then stop myself. Probably the last thing she wants is me touching her.

  “Let’s check the security footage. Maybe he left.”

  “Left?” Scarlet twirls on me so fast her hair flies out behind her. “Why would he do that? I told him I’d be right back. That we’d talk and figure things out.”

  I shrug, not knowing how to say that from what I’d seen of the temperamental teenager, he didn’t seem like the kind to wait around for a heartfelt what-are-the-next-logical-steps-to-take conversation.

  “Let’s just check the video.”

  She bites her lip, glancing at the hallway that leads down the stairs. “I already checked down in the main kitchen and the other places I showed him.” Then she nods. “Okay, we’ll look at the video. As long as it’s fast.”

  “It’s in my office.”

  As soon as I say that, she starts jogging and I walk double-time to keep up. A few minutes later, I log in and scroll back the security tape that runs in the hallway outside my door. And there, time-stamped fifteen minutes after we left, is Enzo.

  He slips out the door, looks back and forth down the hallway, then jogs for the stairwell. Scarlet makes a pained noise and then puts her hand over her mouth. Instinct takes over and I move close to her side. She lets me, either that or she’s so distraught she doesn’t notice.

  “Stupid boy. Where are you going?” she asks, voice tight. She crosses her arms over her stomach like she feels sick.

  Then she turns and heads decisively for the door.

  I take her elbow, spinning her back to me. “No. Scarlet. You can’t go looking for him now. It’s nine at night.”

  She rips away from my hold, her face all challenge. “Exactly. And he’s out there alone.”

  I walk in front of the door of my office to block it. “He could have gone in any direction.” I lower my chin, “and you know just how dangerous the streets can be at night.”

  “Exactly!” she says again, looking at me with eyes full of fear. “You don’t understand.” She shoves me away from the door to get past me.

  When I try to stop her again, she shouts at me, “Stop it! You don’t understand anything! You don’t know what he’s been through already.”

  I still don’t move, though. She’s in no condition to go recklessly chasing around the city tonight looking for her brother.

  She just keeps pounding at my chest over and over. I grab her by the upper arms so she stops hitting out so recklessly. She’s going to hurt herself if she keeps it up.

  “Then tell me,” I finally say. Maybe if I can get her talking, she’ll calm down.

  She stops her useless attack but looks up at me with eyes so desolate, Christ, I thought there was nothing left inside me that wasn’t already hurting, but she found a new raw piece to stab with that look right there.

  Even after everything she’s already told me, there’s something else.

  Some secret so bad she’s held it back when she didn’t seem to mind ripping into me earlier. I want to step away and throw the door shut.

  But she opens her mouth and I don’t take any of the cowardly ways out. Whatever she has to tell me, I deserve. I’ll stand here and take it even if it damns me to hell.

  “You never asked, why now? Why after all this time did I decide to come after you?” She looks just as pained by the words as she says them. She’s not relishing in what she’s telling me. But it’s like the darkness has to be expelled from inside her, regardless of what it’s going to do to me.

  “It was Enzo.” Her blue eyes cover over with a sheen of tears that don’t fall. “He’d been hanging out with some other street kids. I never liked it. They were nice enough. They form a kind of family and look out for each other, but the sad truth is that most of them have become addicts of some kind. And the way they get money.”

  She squeezes her eyes shut and her whole face crumples. “They convinced Enzo it would be so easy. We were heading into another hard winter. There were no beds in the shelter and we both hated those places anyway.” She looks back up at me like she’s begging me for something—forgiveness or redemption?

  “I had no idea what he was going to do. If I’d known.” The tears crest and fall and her face contorts as she talks through her tears. “He came home with two hundred dollars and when I demanded to know where it came from, if he’d been selling drugs, he just completely broke down. He said his friend Shawn said it wouldn’t even be real sex. That rich men came to Haight-Ashbury looking for boys like him, just for—for— Enzo cried and said the other boys said it wasn’t real sex if it was just his mouth but that he— He said he just wanted to get us a nice meal and—”

  She breaks off and I can’t stand it. I cross the few steps and grab her into my arms. Finally, she lets me, sinking into my embrace. Her whole body is trembling so bad. Damn it. Her skin feels cold, too. Like reliving that made her ice down to her bones.

  “Shhh. Christ. Don’t think about it anymore, honey.” I rub her arms up and down, trying to warm her. “That won’t happen again. It’s just one night. We’ll go out first thing tomorrow morning and we won’t stop until we find him. You know how smart he is.” My words might be placation than anything else, but she’s got to get some rest. “We’ll start looking at dawn. I swear. I swear, do you understand me?” I pull her back long enough so that she looks in my eyes. “Do you hear me?”

  She meets my gaze and nods, her chin still trembling. I draw her into my chest again and continue stroking her back, rubbing her shoulders, anything to try to comfort her and erase everything that happened to her before she met me.

  Because my very presence is a reminder of everything that’s so fucked up in her life.

  I hold her tigh
ter. Christ. I never want to let her go. She’s too precious. Too beautiful. She’s suffered so much. Too much for her short life. It’s not fair. I thought I knew suffering, but I didn’t know a fucking thing.

  “Come on, you’re exhausted. Let me put you to bed. I promise, first thing tomorrow, we’ll be pounding pavement. I have some connections I can call and they’ll help us look for him.”

  There’s a second’s silence but then I feel her nod against my chest. “Okay.” It’s the faintest whisper, but I hear it.

  Thank Christ. I lean my cheek against the top of her head and breathe her in. This might be the last time I’ll ever hold her like this.

  If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to even the scales for this woman. I’m going to do everything in my power to bring her happiness and peace.

  Even if it means disappearing from her life so she never has to face the reminder of all that I’ve done to her.

  * * *

  “Kennedy, baby,” my mother cries out from the other room, “why do you hate me? All I ever wanted was a little boy to love me. Instead, I’m a prisoner. If anyone knew how sadistic you are, if I could leave here and tell anyone how you torture your own mother…” She breaks off in a fit of crying.

  I’m curled up under my bed with my hands over my ears, but I can still hear her. I always hear.

  “Stop hoarding it!” she suddenly yells. “You’re starving me. I could call the cops on you, you know. You’d go to prison and you know what they’d do to a scrawny little kid like you? You wouldn’t survive a week.” She laughs harshly.

  “But I don’t do that, do I baby?” Her voice has gone wheedling. “Because I love you, no matter how cruel you are. It’s a mother’s burden. Even if you’re a monster, I still love you. But I pray for your soul. Every day, I pray for you that you’ll find the light and get this demon out of you.

  “All I want is my sweet little boy back. You were such a beautiful baby. You barely ever cried. I’d take you to the park and you’d giggle at the leaves falling. We were so happy back then.”