Her mother was gone.
But where?
Chapter Eleven
My stepfather, Edoardo Accardi, ex-enforcer for the now extinct Genova crime family (you’re welcome for that, by the way), had a certain flair for theatrics. The man had a way of talking, of saying things, like he was always standing on a stage in a one-man show of his own fucked-up production, and most of the time, only one person sat in his audience: yours truly. It wasn’t voluntary, I can tell you that much. No, the man targeted his monologues right at me, assaulting me with the words just as hard as he used to batter me with his fists. This is for your own good, Lorenzo, he’d say. Toughen up. Stop crying. Don’t beg. Be a man, goddamn it. Be a fucking man! Never mind the fact that I’d been just a boy at the time… a boy who couldn’t understand how beating me unconscious was for my own good… a boy who heard nothing but riddles whenever the man spoke.
But he succeeded, because all these years later, I can still hear his voice. His words bounce around in my head, taunting me, turning me into the monster he’d tried—and failed—to put down so long ago. And while I can’t exactly claim to be fond of his methods, I’ll give credit where credit is due—the man certainly knew what he was doing.
The hardest part of the business is minding your own.
He used to say that all the time. I never really understood it until I came to New York.
And here on the rooftop of the rundown walk-up, tucked into a shitty-ass Lower East Side block, freezing my nutsack off as I sit on the cold concrete ledge beside a crazy pickpocket with red lips and watery eyes, I’m having a hell of a time minding my own business, because there’s a big part of me itching to dig into hers.
Women are distractions and feelings are detrimental, but I’m finding myself feeling some type of way about this woman at the moment, and I don’t appreciate it. There’s voodoo in her blood, and it makes me want to slit her fucking throat so it’ll all spill out, rain red down on the city beneath us before shoving her over the side.
Fly, little witch. Don’t forget your fucking broom.
But I don’t do it. I don’t do anything. Because I try to not be that kind of person—the kind of person that beats others for their own good.
Edoardo Accardi might be in my head, but he’s never been in my blood.
Scarlet stares off into the distance, like she’s lost in a void somewhere along the edge of the neighborhood. I can see part of the river a few blocks away. Hell, from right here, I can just about see the dock I stood on in the darkness the night I first encountered Scarlet, when I met whatshisname to talk about his boss’s problems.
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my beat up old metal tin and flip it open, taking out a joint and the battered book of matches, ripping one off and striking it against the back of the pack, igniting the flame on the first try. Lighting the joint, I inhale deeply, taking the smoke in and holding it, before extinguishing the flame with the flick of my wrist and tossing the match over the side of the building.
“Did you fuck him?” I ask, slowly releasing the smoke from my lungs.
Scarlet’s brow furrows as she turns my way, her eyes flickering to the tin as I close it. “Who?”
“Whoever put the hickey on your neck.”
It takes her a moment before she lifts her hand, fingertips pressing against the side of her neck, surprise on her face. The patch is small, more red than purple, which means it’s fresh. I took it as a thumbprint at first, like someone had choked her, but the more I looked, the more I saw the bruised lips forming on her skin. Someone marked her not long ago, probably while I was already here, waiting in her apartment. Chances are, whoever that is probably also fucked her, and while that might not be any of my business, I find it curious.
Curious, because of the hunger I saw in her eyes when I had her pinned against the door, as she ground against me, practically fucking the gun tucked in my waistband, desperate to satisfy an ache.
Which means they might’ve fucked her, sure, but they didn’t do a goddamn thing for her.
She looks away again without answering.
“Figured,” I say, taking another hit, letting the smoke burn my lungs as the sensations soothe my muscles, calming the storm in my mind. “Was it your little cop friend again?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, not really. I don’t get down with the whole sloppy seconds thing, no matter who it is. Not in the business of picking up another man’s slack.”
“You can leave, you know,” Scarlet says, her voice flat. “Really, you can go.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
She doesn’t answer again, acting as if I didn’t ask that question, continuing to stare out into the city. Icy fog surrounds her with each shallow breath, but she doesn’t otherwise seem bothered by the cold. It’s strange to me, considering I’m finding it damn near intolerable. My asscheeks are like ice cubes.
“So, where are you from?” I ask.
A moment passes before Scarlet turns my way. “Really? You had your hand down my pants five minutes ago, a knife to my throat a minute before that, and you want to make small talk now? What’s next… the weather?”
I shrug. “The cold doesn’t seem to bother you.”
She sighs loudly as she looks back away. “I was born and raised upstate. I’m used to the cold.”
“How’d you end up here?”
“I saw a movie that made me want to see the city, so I ran away and never looked back.”
“Ah, let me guess. Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Oh, no, wait… Westside Story?”
She shakes her head. “The Muppets Take Manhattan.”
Okay, that makes me laugh. “Sounds life-changing.”
“You’ve never seen it?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“They come to the city to make it on Broadway, and I figured, you know, what was stopping me from doing that?”
“Can you sing?”
“Nope.”
“Dance?”
“Not the kind of dancing they’re looking for.”
“Hate to break it to you, Scarlet, but that’s probably what was stopping you.”
“Yeah, well, in my defense, I was only fourteen at the time, so I had no idea what I was getting into. I was convinced that all I needed was a ticket to New York City and everything would work out, that someone would take one look at me and think, ‘yep, she’s the one,’ and my life would be perfect.”
“You’ve been on your own since you were fourteen?”
“I ran away when I was fourteen, but I was on my own long before that. I didn’t really have anything here, you know, but I had even less there. At least here I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do, to be whoever I wanted to be. I figured whatever trouble I got into in the city would pale in comparison to what I went through before.” Frowning, her voice is quiet as she adds, “Turns out I was wrong.”
“What trouble did you get into?”
“A guy promised me the world only to destroy my world instead,” she says, cutting her eyes my direction. “Or however you put it.”
“Tough break.”
“Yeah, well, it is what it is. So, what about you?”
“What about me?”
“What’s your story?”
“I have no story.”
“Everyone has a story.”
I consider that, continuing to smoke, grateful when it starts to warm me up, fending off the bitter cold. The world always feels better when a haze covers it, hiding a little bit of the harsh reality. “I was just a normal guy… normal family, normal life. But I was at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and saw something I shouldn’t have seen. The mob killed my family, tried to kill me, but I survived, and well… I’ve been gunning for them ever since. Doesn’t matter what I have to do, who I have to kill. I’ll get my revenge.”
“A vigilante? That’s what you’re telling me? Just a guy trying to punish all the bad in the world?”
“Pretty much.”
Rolling her eyes, she swings around, shoving away from the ledge as her feet hit the roof. She comes right at me, pressing up against me, as I let out a stream of smoke, blowing it right into her pale face.