Chapter Twelve
The sun rises in the east.
I’m not sure how old I was when I learned that. To this day, I’m not even sure why it happens that way. Although, it doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s just an undeniable fact, one I think about those mornings when I sit up here, on this rooftop and watch the sun peeking out over the Brooklyn skyline, bathing the borough in an orange glow, like the streets are on fire.
Some days, it feels like they might be.
It feels like Brooklyn is burning and I’m just here, sitting, watching it disintegrate as I breathe in the smoky air, my lungs scorching and chest aching, not doing a goddamn thing to stop it. Because, seriously, what the hell am I supposed to do? Huh? I’ve yelled ‘fire’ so many times that nobody even looks my way anymore when they hear me screaming, like I’ve become nothing but white noise in a crowded city full of overpowering voices.
I’m probably not making any sense to you. It’s okay. I don’t understand myself anymore most days. I just sit on this ledge and stare out at the fiery horizon as another day dawns, too strong-willed to ever fling myself off the side of this building but yet too damn powerless to ward off my inevitable fall. So I sit, and stare, and wait, and cling to the little bit of hope I wake up with every day, but I don’t stop doing it, I don’t just give up, because maybe—goddamn it, maybe—I’ll find my wings again and get to soar.
Fly the fuck away from all of this.
But until then, I’m just grounded.
Tagged and tracked.
My wings got clipped.
I’m a little caged birdie.
Sighing, I bring the joint to my lips and inhale, taking a puff of scorching smoke into my lungs, holding it, letting it soothe the pain away as it makes my head just a bit more foggy so I stop agonizing about a life on the other side of that too-deep river that I’m never supposed to cross.
“You know, I didn’t kill you when you stole my wallet. Didn’t kill you when you stole my money. But my medicine? That’s crossing a fucking line, Scarlet. I might throw you off the roof for that.”
That voice makes my skin prickle, places inside of me tingle, as it calls out behind me on the roof. Lorenzo. The tiny hairs covering my body stand on end, like sparked by electricity, as I hear his footsteps. I wouldn’t classify myself as ‘frightened’, because I’m pretty sure he’s not really going to kill me, but I would say it’s kind of alarming, because, well... I’m only pretty sure. There’s still that chance he might actually throw me off the roof and make me go splat.
“Your medicine, huh?” I glance at the horribly rolled joint I got from the repurposed Altoids tin I swiped from his pocket while he snoozed in my bed.
“Yes,” he says, pulling himself up on the ledge beside me, swinging around so his feet are dangling over the edge. He’s dressed now, from head-to-toe, like he took a nice little nap so he’s ready to go. “It’s medicinal.”
I take another hit of it, holding the smoke for a second as I offer the joint to him. Or, well, relinquish it, I guess. Not really mine to offer.
Letting out the smoke, I playfully ask, “So what’s your ailment, huh? Glaucoma?”
Wordlessly, he takes it from me. “Close.”
Close.
My stomach drops when I see he’s staring at me peculiarly. He motions toward his injured eye. Shit. He’s being serious?
“I, uh… I didn’t realize…”
“You didn’t realize my eye was all fucked up?” he asks, taking a hit, letting the smoke filter right back out as he says, “Kind of hard to miss, Scarlet.”
“No, I mean, I know it’s messed up. I’m not blind, I can see, but I just didn’t realize...” I trail off as he curves an eyebrow, continuing to stare at me. I’m not blind. I can see. Did I seriously just say that shit? “Wow, I should probably stop talking.”
“Might be a good idea,” he says, taking another hit before holding the joint my way, like he’s actually offering it to me. I take it from him, watching as he exhales slowly. He doesn’t look offended, at least. “I used to be able to see shadows, make out shapes, but that kept getting worse, went away completely about a year ago. Total darkness now. I’ll probably lose the eye eventually. Hell, I’m surprised it’s survived this long. It’s been dying one hell of a painful death for about twenty years now. Guess it’s as stubborn as the rest of me.”
“I didn’t realize...”
“Yeah, I got that,” he says. “Got it the two other times you said it. Don’t go walking on eggshells around me over some perceived disability you’re thinking I’ve got now. Don’t pity me. I’ve learned how to compensate for what I’m missing. You don’t need depth perception or pinpoint aim to throw a fucking grenade.”
“I don’t pity you,” I say, because I don’t... I don’t pity him at all. I more so pity the people who cross his path, who incite his wrath, like I seem to be doing at the moment. Getting on his nerves. “So it hurts? Your eye? What does it feel like?”
I’m asking a lot of damn questions. That’s what the look he gives me says. But I’m as high as a skyscraper, so high I’m almost convinced I can fly. His medicinal is the good shit, and yeah, maybe it’s medicine to him, but it’s also highly illegal, I know, because there’s no way something that potent is government taxed.
“You trying to figure out my weaknesses?”
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
“Big words for a woman who would rather bare her pussy than bare a piece of her soul,” he counters, his gaze trailing down my body. I’m still wearing what I put on last night, feeling filthy, the smell of sex still all over me. “Your pussy’s nice, you know… beautiful… but I wouldn’t exactly call it a secret, not when it’s something a lot of people already know.”
I cringe at his words, shoving the joint back at him, done with it.
He takes it, smoking the rest in silence, holding it in his lungs for long moments before exhaling slowly in my direction, his gaze still on me. I stare off into the distance, at the horizon, watching the orange hue surrounding Brooklyn fade to the typical dismal gray as the day goes on.
“I watch the sunrise every morning,” I mumble. “I’ve never told anyone that before. I come up here and I sit and I watch as it rises over Brooklyn. The apartment is shitty, and the building smells like piss, but the view from up here is the best I’ve found, so I stay... I stay and I watch the sunrise. I look forward to it, every morning. Another day dawning, another chance for things to finally go right. It’s the only time I feel hope anymore, the only time I feel alive. It’s my favorite time of day.”
Lorenzo stubs what’s left of the joint out on the ledge, smashing the remnants into the concrete. “I see sunrise every day, too.”
I look at him with surprise. “You do?”
He nods. “Except when I see it, you know, all I think is ‘here comes another day of bullshit surrounded by all these idiots.’ Doesn’t really leave me feeling hopeful.”
I laugh at that, although I can tell he’s not joking. “That’s about how I feel come sunset—another night in the trenches, trying to survive to see another sunrise. So far, I’ve got a pretty good record. A couple close calls, but I’m still undefeated, so that’s gotta count for something.”
“Why do you do it?”
“What else am I supposed to do?”
“Anything,” he says. “Literally anything else has to be better than what you’re doing.”
“Do you know what it’s like to try to get a job in this city? A legitimate job? I’m guessing you don’t or you wouldn’t be asking me that.”
“On the contrary, Scarlet, I know exactly what it’s like.”
I roll my eyes, because yeah, right.
“I’ve got a brother,” he says. “Good kid, tries to live on the straight and narrow. He doesn’t have the heart for the business I’m in, wants nothing to do with it. I watched him bust his ass trying to find work with just a high school diploma.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t even have one of those,” I say. “So I do what I have to do, I use what I have, and maybe that makes me a crappy person, whatever… maybe I’m ruined now, maybe I’m worthless…”
“I don’t think you’re any of that,” he says. “I think you’re worth a hell of a lot more than you realize. You want to take your clothes off for money? Do it. But there are better places out there, better ways to do it. You don’t sell something for twenty bucks that’s worth thousands. You’re only fucking yourself.”
“Nobody else will take a chance on me.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
I shake my head at his flippant tone. “Have you forgotten about last night? People would have to be crazy to hire me. George was the only one with the guts to risk it, and God knows that’s out of the question now. There’s no way he’ll want anything to do with me. I’m on my own.” I run my hands down my face in frustration, closing my eyes. This sucks. “Selling pussy on city street corners… I’m sure that’ll look great on my resume.”
“You could come work for me.”
“Yeah, right.” I scoff at that. “No thanks.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t particularly like you.”
“And, what, you like bending over and getting fucked for a few bucks? Money that you clearly don’t get to keep, judging by what I’ve seen about your life.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like? Enlighten me.”
“Have you ever had to do something you didn’t particularly want to do, but you did it because it was in your best interest just to go along with it?”
“No.”
I roll my eyes. Again. “It must be nice, being you, being a man in a man’s world. Trying being a woman sometime.”
“I wish I could,” he says. “I’d have a pussy to play with all day long, wouldn’t have to comb the city looking for a woman with low standards and loose morals, since that woman would be me.”
He laughs, but I don’t find him funny. Not at all. He hasn’t the faintest idea what it’s like being a woman, especially one in my predicament. I try not to let his flippant reaction get to me, but it stirs up a hurt I sometimes have a hard time hiding.
“Oh, woe-is-fucking-me. Just the fact that you can make a joke about that tells me all I need to know about you and your privilege.”
“My privilege? Does this look like a face that’s privileged?”
He points to his face, to make his point, like he thinks maybe I haven’t looked at him in the last twenty seconds, like maybe I forgot what he looks like, but he still doesn’t get it.
“Yeah, it does,” I say. “I hate to break it to you, but your face isn’t a detriment. It’s not. If anything, it helps you. People take you seriously, not only because you’re a man but because you’re a man who clearly went through hell. They don’t look at you and see something broken. They see something strong, something that won’t break, because you’re still standing, despite everything. It intimidates them. They respect you for it. But if you were a woman? You’d be ruined. The world would look at you and think ‘aw, poor thing, someone broke her, she must be so weak.’ That’s what they think about a woman who has been though hell. Believe me, I know.”
“I don’t think you’re weak.“
“But you think I’m broken,” I say. “You asked me who broke me, like I’m made of glass and someone can just shatter me and scatter my pieces, like I’m that fragile. I might be hurt, I might be beat down, but I’ll be goddamn if a man will ever break me, Lorenzo. But the world can’t comprehend a woman being that strong. We’re supposed to buckle and break, like the only time we can possibly have any strength is if there’s someone with a dick standing by our side. It’s like a penis is a prerequisite for an opinion, so if I don’t have one myself, I’ve got to be utilizing someone else’s in order to have any say-so in my own fucking life.”
He stares at me like I’m speaking some foreign language that he’s never heard before, and I’m suddenly wondering what kind of women this man spends his time with, because they certainly can’t be the type to stand up to him. “I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what to say right now, Scarlet.”
“Of course you don’t,” I say. “You don’t know what it’s like to have to pretend to be helpless just to stay safe. There’s a reason girls yell ‘fire’ instead of ‘rape’, why we lie and say we have boyfriends instead of just saying ‘no’ when we’re not interested. Because a lot of men respect another man’s property more than they respect a woman’s right to her own body. So while I’m forced to live in a man’s world, I do what I have to do. And if that means taking my clothes off for some schmuck with a few bucks, then by golly, I’ll do it, no matter how you feel about it.”
I get up, to leave, because he’s really touching a nerve right now and I’m dangerously close to doing something insanely stupid, like trying to fling him off of the roof. Wrapping my arms around my chest, my fishnet-covered feet trudge a few steps toward the door back down to my apartment when his voice calls out. “I get it.”
I stall, turning around. “Do you?”
“Mimicry,” he says, swinging around to face me. “You be whoever they need you to be.”
Exactly.
“And I didn’t mean to hurt you when I said you were broken,” he continues. “It’s just a word, you know. Broken. Just a fucking word. Hell, you can call me broken if you want. You can call me anything.”
“Except Scar?”
He reacts as soon as I say it, body tensing, hands clenching in his lap. “You can call me that, too, if that’s what you really want. Doesn’t make a bit of damn difference.”
“You say that as you make fists, like you want to punch me for it.”
“Maybe I do,” he says, standing up, strolling toward me. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to, though. It’s a free country, Scarlet. Choose your own adventure. If you’d rather keep bending over for with these yellow-bellied motherfuckers, I won’t begrudge you for it. But if you want to try something else, I’m sure I can find a place for you.”
“I won’t fuck you.”
“We’ve already fucked.”
“I mean I won’t be your whore,” I say. “So don’t think I’m some thing you can just have or use or pass around. Nobody touches me without my permission, so don’t think—”
“I don’t think it,” he says, cutting me off. “Wasn’t my intention. You’ve got other assets, you know… pussy isn’t the only thing you’ve got going for you.” He grabs my wrist, pulling my arm up, his thumb pressing against the pulse point beneath my tattoo. I can tell it annoys him, not knowing what it stands for. “You’re smart… stealthy… sharp... am I even getting close?”
I shake my head.
His cheek twitches. “Regardless, you are. You’re slick, Scarlet, and I don’t mean that in the wet pussy kind of way, although, well…” He pauses as he looks me over, like he’s lost his train of thought, before he shakes it off, letting go of my wrist. “I’m just saying sex isn’t all you’re good for. You don’t want to fuck me? That’s fine. Under no circumstances is fucking me a requirement. But I’ve seen what you’re capable of. So maybe you’re right, about being a woman. I don’t know, because I’m not one. Maybe, to make it on these streets, you need someone in your corner. In that case, you need to reassess who that someone is, because if they’re not taking you seriously, Scarlet? If they don’t see you for the threat you are? They’re doing you no goddamn good, because when trouble comes, they buckle, baby. They’re the ones who aren’t strong.”
He stares at me, like he’s awaiting some reaction, some sort of intelligent response to that declaration, but he’s kind of rendered me speechless, so I just offer him his own words. “I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what to say to that, Lorenzo.”
A smile cracks his face as he grasps my chin, tilting my face up further, and holding me there. His touch sends sparks through my body, my heart racing in my chest. Working for him would be dangerous, very dangerous, in every conceivable way, and I’m just not sure if that’s a risk I can take.
“You just think about it,” he says. “Jamaica Estates over in Queens… it’s a white house on Midland, not far from Grand Central Parkway. You want me, that’s where you’ll find me. My door’s always open. Literally. I don’t lock my doors, either.”
His thumb lightly swipes across my bottom lip before he pulls away, letting go, his hand leaving my skin.
I just stand here as he leaves, waiting until he’s gone before returning to my apartment. I shower and change clothes, grabbing my oversized black hoodie, tugging it on before leaving, too.
I need to clear my head. I need to make sense of this mess.
I need to make another trek to Brooklyn.
* * *
Dry heat billows from the vent in the ceiling right above me, ruffling my frizzy hair, blowing wayward strands into my face.
I don’t bother pushing them away.
It feels like Death Valley in this glass cube they call an office, the fluorescent lights too bright and the air too warm. My palms are sweaty, hands shoved in the pocket of my hoodie. Every breath makes my lungs burn, stiff and achy in my chest, like smoke inhalation got the best of me this morning.
I’m still high.
I can feel it.
The blinds are up and the door is propped open, giving a clear view inside the office, so anyone walking past can see me sitting here. It’s unnerving, but I’m grateful for the openness. It means the detective is too busy to think about hanky-panky right now.
He’s been in and out of the office for the past thirty minutes, barely acknowledging my presence, shuffling through paperwork and muttering under his breath. I’m curious what he’s working on, but if I ask he’ll just say it isn’t any of my business, even if it is... he doesn’t tell me anything.
I stare past him, beyond him, out of the office window of the precinct, a stream of sunlight reflecting off the glass, reminding me of the orange glow this morning. “Two hundred and eighty sunrises.”
Gabe shuffles through a few files as he says, “You shouldn’t be here, Morgan.”
That’s what he always says.
You’d think he’d be tired of repeating himself.
“Yeah, well, here I am,” I mumble as I toy with the edge of the sleeves of my hoodie. “Always exactly where I don’t belong.”
He lets out a deep, exaggerated sigh as he sits back in his chair. “The guys over at the seventh precinct are gonna want to interview you.”
I nod, not surprised.
The police would be crawling all over Mystic. I’m not on record as working there, officially, but my name is bound to come up. The security monitors are nothing more than live feeds, so there won’t be any recordings, which means they’re going to be desperate for witnesses.
They’ll find none.
Nobody’s going to talk.
Certainly not me.
“Was it him?” Gabe asks.
“What do you think?”
“I think it certainly sounds like something he’d do.”
“Well, there you go,” I say.
“So you saw him?” Gabe asks. “Kassian?”
Kassian.
My gaze shifts to my lap at the sound of that name. Sweat rolls down my back. It feels even harder to breathe in here now. Why the hell is it so hot?
“I heard him talking,” I say. “He was looking for me.”
“Did he see you?”
“Would I be sitting here if he did?”
“No,” he mutters. “Probably wouldn’t.”
I can’t even begin to imagine what Kassian might’ve done had he found me hiding behind that bar, how he would’ve reacted to the sight of me cowering there without a top on. Probably would’ve killed everyone. We’ve been doing this dance for a long, long time, but these past nine months have been the worst. I’m exhausted. Most intense game of Hide & Seek ever played, except it’s not a game. Not really. There’s nothing fun about what we’re doing. I want to quit, forfeit, call it a tie and walk away with my head held high, but Kassian Aristov plays to win.
There’s no negotiating with that man.
It’s his way or no way.
And I can’t let him win this one. I can’t. And he knows that. Him winning means the rest of us lose.
“Do you ever watch the sunrise, detective?”
Gabe sighs dramatically, ignoring my question, like maybe he thinks I’m being stupid. “Go home, Morgan. It’s not safe for you here.”
“Not safe in the 60th precinct?” I gasp with mock horror, clutching my chest. “Whatever do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Yeah, well, if I’m not safe surrounded by police, what makes you think I’ll be safe anywhere out there?”
“He hasn’t found you yet, has he?”
“Not yet,” I say, yet being the operative word. If he figured out I was working at Mystic, it’s only a matter of time until he traces me to the apartment, considering George owns the place.
He set me up there when I hit bottom, after I threw myself at his mercy, having nowhere else to turn for help. He hates the Russians with a fiery passion, and the enemy of my enemy, well... let’s just say they’re the only ones stupid enough to jump at that chance.
“Can I ask you something else, detective?”
“If I say no, will that make you leave?”
“No.”
“Then fire away.”
“What do you know about a guy they call Scar?”
Gabe stops what he’s doing and looks at me. “I know anyone with a street name like Scar is probably going to be bad news. Other than that, nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Why?”
“No particular reason.”
“Why, Morgan?” he asks again, voice louder. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Man, this conversation is going nowhere.
“Go home,” Gabe says, standing up, “and stay there. Stay off the radar. Stay out of trouble. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t jeopardize what we’re doing here.”
“What are we doing here?” I ask. “Because I’m not really seeing anything being done.”
He squeezes my shoulder. It’s meant to be affectionate, I guess, but his touch makes my skin crawl. “I’m protecting you, Morgan, just like you need me to do.”
After he walks out, I sit there, considering those words. Protecting me.
If this is how they protect people, I think I’d rather protect myself.