Scarlet
I want to grab his hand and snap one of his fingers as it strokes my head, but the man holding the camera has a gun on his belt and the two men standing behind him have guns on their belts. There’s nothing I can do but kneel here, feeling sick to my stomach and wishing that I was here on my own because Moira was someplace safe. We were going to use Moira as bait, but it was going to be safe, and she was going to be in on the plan. This isn’t the same. This isn’t the same at all. Moira is putting on a brave face, but as soon as Mickey takes his hand from her, she lets out a shaky breath.
I stand up and help Moira to her feet as Mickey walks around us to take a look at the photographs. “Very nice,” he says, nodding. “You see here, the way her dress rides up her leg? Nice, huh?”
There are two distinct groups at this party. I could tell that the second Mickey dragged me in here. There’s the group that belonged to the old Don, Moira and Cor’s dad, and there’s the new group, which Mickey recruited. The old group stands on one side of the ballroom, sipping whisky and talking quietly of football, guns, and cars, and the good old times. The other group shouts and drinks too much, clapping each other on the back on the other side of the room. But Mickey doesn’t seem to notice the difference. When we came in, he greeted both groups with wide smiles, not noticing when one group only returned his smile warily. It’s like he’s in some kind of dreamland, a world all of his own, and is incapable of seeing what other people truly think of him.
Mickey and his goons—men who all look the same to me, dirty in cheap suits, licking their lips and rubbing their noses too much, reminding me of the coke-snorting agents—move to the other side of the room, messing around with the phone.
“Are you okay?” I whisper to Moira.
She looks up at me like a little girl. “I’m fine. I—what are we going to do? This isn’t going to plan, is it?”
“No,” I admit. “Not quite.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I’m going to have to play along with Mickey,” I tell her. “I have to make him believe we’re really on a date or whatever sick thing is going on in his head. Look at his face. He’s out of it. He’s ready to believe anything if I can play it right—”
“What are you two chin-wagging about?” The man reeks of sweat and whisky, a flat-faced, mean-looking man with a tattoo of a cross right between his eyes that creeps down onto his cheek on one side, where the tattoo artist must have slipped. “We like our women quiet—quiet and willing.”
I take Moira by the arm and lead her to the door, where Mickey stands. “Cor will have a very big fright when he sees that photo.” He smiles. “I like the idea of him standing there feeling small and useless while I’m up here having a party. It’s good, isn’t it?”
I’m going to shatter your face, I think. I’m going to break your teeth.
“It is ...” I smile coquettishly, looking down like I’m shy. “Well, it is funny. I don’t want to be mean about Cor, but it is funny.” I giggle.
Mickey just stares at me, his face blank. I can’t tell if I’m having an effect on him or not. He’s a much harder case to crack than the two FBI agents.
“Let’s get you two out on the floor. If you have prizes like these,” he goes on, turning to the men for approval, “you don’t keep them locked away, do you? Look at her.” He points his fat finger right in my face, not noticing when he almost jabs me in the eye. “It’s always a shame when a woman built like this tries to spoil herself with work, but at least she hasn’t completed the job. Later tonight, yes, but right now, let’s party!”
I’m on Mickey’s arm, and Moira’s on some other creep’s arm as we sweep into the ballroom. In any other circumstances, I would allow myself some girlish thrill at being in a room this beautiful. The walls are marble and tall, four chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The floor sparkles and hired waiters circulate with silver platters shinier even than their shoes, which are shined to perfection. It’s the sort of fairytale setting most women dream about, I think, even if I wouldn’t admit it. But the scene is spoiled by Mickey’s men pawing at their prostitutes, by the smell of weed and cigarettes and sweat, and by the last Don’s men looking shame-faced and uncomfortable on their side of the room. In the corner one man slaps a woman across the face. Nobody does anything.
Moira gets dragged to another section of the room where she is thrust into a group of men with women on their arms, all of them playing at being civilized. But at least that group seems to just be talking. Nobody is pawing; nobody is slapping. And then I’m dragged toward the old Don’s men, Mickey smiling like a victor as he parades me in front of them.
“Have you seen this one, Smiley?” he asks a man with a scar up one side of his face. “What do you think, Patrick? I think she is a very pretty woman. She is the sort of woman who makes you believe in marriage and love, isn’t she? I think you can tell that just by looking at her. Those legs in that dress! It’s enough to make me want to kneel at her feet and suckle her toes.” The old, bald man looks at Mickey like he’s crazy. Mickey doesn’t care, pulling me after him to greet more men. “Trevor, Dylan, Liam, Charles, Gregory, look! Look what I have! Isn’t she a piece!”
No sooner has he picked me up like a toy than he tosses me to one side, pacing off to a corner where a few of his friends sit around a small foldout table playing poker. I don’t know what to do with myself, since in every room I’ve been in the windows have been padlocked, and even if they weren’t, we’re too high up. The doors have two armed guards. There’s no escape—not unless I want to get myself killed. I could appeal to one of the old Don’s men, but there’s no way of telling if they’d help me, especially since they’re here, too scared to act as it is. Maybe I could get my hand on a gun, but then what? Shoot out every single man in the place? I need a plan, I need something to happen ...
“Excuse me.” I’ve dreamed of his voice for two months, hearing it in the whispering winter wind and the creak of the boiler and the pattering of rain—hearing it in my own dreamy moans. “I’m here to see Mickey MacFarland.”
Those who knew Cor before Mickey killed his father grow quiet instantly, nudging each other and pointing toward the door. The others keep talking until Mickey turns and sees Cor trying to push past the armed guards.
“Let him through!” Mickey roars, pacing into the middle of the room and holding his hands to the ceiling like some kind of preacher. “Let him through, I tell you! Let him through right now!”
The guards step aside, and Cor walks into the room. The first thing I notice is his beard. It’s so wild now it reaches down to his chest, a dark black tangle. Despite the circumstances and the fear, I get the strong urge to run my hand through it. When he looks at me, I see that something has changed in his ice-blue eyes. It’s like he’s trying to tell me, wordlessly, that he cares for me now—really cares for me. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. I want to go to him, but the floor has cleared, everybody stepping aside so that Mickey and Cor can meet. I’m oddly surprised when I see that Mickey is taller than Cor, which is absurd. Of course he is. And yet, in my mind, Cor will always be taller.
“Did you check him for weapons?” Mickey shouts over Cor’s shoulder at the guards.
They nod.
“Okay.” Mickey smiles. I hate those gums. “Cor, why are you here, my sweet cousin? Let me tell you, before you answer, that it can be for only one of two reasons. Either you are here to tell the truth, that I am the Don of this family, or you are here to die.”
Cor pauses, glancing at me and then Moira. After a while, he says, “I’m here to acknowledge you as Don.”
A gasp goes up from my side of the room, where the loyal men stand clustered. “He don’t mean it,” one whispers.
“No fuckin’ way,” another agrees. “Not Cor. Never Cor. He’s usin’ Moira, the bastard.”
“Quiet. He’ll hear you.”
But Mickey is too absorbed in Cor’s words to hear anything. He claps his hands together. “Say it again!” He’s like a kid on Christmas morning who’s discovered he has exactly the present he wanted. “Say it again, Cor!”
“I acknowledge you as Don,” he says, clicking his neck from side to side. He looks more like a man gearing up for a fight than a man submitting. And yet part of me wonders if it might be true. Maybe being out in the cold, alone without a family, has made him hungry to be a part of the life again. Maybe he’s ready to let his father’s death slip. But his next words push that notion aside. “I reckon you’re getting what you deserve, Mickey. Exactly what you deserve.”
I smile to myself, but then I’m suddenly angry. It’s one thing to make thinly veiled threats, but another to carry them out. What is he doing here? Why would he put himself at such stupid risk? I don’t have any misconceptions about Mickey. Maybe Mickey is smiling and playing the magnanimous victor now, but as soon as the party is over, a black bag will be shoved over Cor’s head and he’ll be taken somewhere quiet to be killed. We all will.
“That’s a very nice thing to say,” Mickey says carefully, looking at Cor as though he doesn’t know whether to believe him or not. “And now, let’s party! Let’s party until the early hours of the morning! Turn that music up!”
The light jazz that’s been playing is switched for some pumping, dubstep music that Mickey stamps his feet to, causing the floor to shake and a picture to fall from the wall. All at once, the room erupts into madness, at least on Mickey’s side, his men dragging the prostitutes onto the dance floor and twirling them around. Moira is dancing with one of the men, doing her best to stay as far away from him as possible. Cor makes as though to take her away, but the man pulls his gun and waves it casually in Cor’s direction. I look at the men around me, seeing that none of them have weapons. Mickey has armed his army and disarmed the last Don’s.
Cor approaches me, jaws clenched, nodding to the men, but all of them unwilling to say too much because they can’t trust each other. “Can we talk?” he asks me.
“Sure,” I mutter.
We steal a moment together in the same room Mickey took that photo of Moira and me. The music thumps through the walls, Mickey’s shouting thumping even louder.
“What are you doing here?” I snap at him, anger making me push him in the chest. “Are you an idiot, Cor? Do you really think this is going to save us? Do you really think this plan is going to work, you idiot? He’s just going to kill all three of us when this party is done. He’s a lunatic, Cor. He’s a fucking lunatic!” I stop, panting.
Cor grabs my hands. “It’s okay,” Cor says, massaging my fingers. It feels so good to have him hold me again, even if it was a fool move, him coming here. “I’ll wait for my chance. I’ll make this work. I’ll find a way. I promise you this, Scar, the three of us are getting out of here tonight, no matter what.”
“I still think you’re an idiot for coming here.”
Cor grins at me. “You know what I’ve missed most of all, Scar? I’ve missed you telling me off. How fucked up is that?”
“That’s because you are fucked!” I disentangle my hands and slap him in the chest. “I swear to God, Cor MacKay, if you die tonight I’m going to kill you.”
Cor wraps his arms around me and pushes me up against the door, our bodies hungry for each other after months apart, my heartbeat so fast I can barely think. Suddenly this whole twisted situation melts away and we’re just two people, his cock getting hard and my pussy getting wet, desperate to be together again.
He brings his face close to mine, his beard tickling my lips. “I love you, Scar,” he says. “I need you to know that. Just in case something does happen.”
“You love me?” I ask, shocked. I never thought I’d hear words like that coming from Cor. “Seriously?”
He laughs quietly. “Seriously. Well—is love when you know you’ll do whatever it takes for the rest of your life to keep that person safe? Is love when you think about that person all the damn time until your head starts to ache because you want to be with them so much? Is love when you can’t stand being apart? Is love when you start to feel something when all your life you’ve been cold inside?” He shakes his head, as though surprised by his own words. “If that can count as love, Scar, then I love you.”
“I love you too,” I whisper, feeling tears well up in my eyes. But I won’t cry. Not here. “I love you so—”
The door vibrates with the force of Mickey’s knocking. “Hello, darling!” he roars. His voice is thick with alcohol. “Are you in there? Please do not make me feed Moira her fingernails. That would be very annoying.”
Cor tenses up, but then forces himself to relax. “I need to get Moira somewhere safe for when the violence starts. She’s not like you, Scar. She can’t take care of herself. Come on. Let’s go. We have to play this game awhile longer.”
We step away from the door, allowing Mickey to stomp into the room. When he takes me by the arm, I see the naked hatred in Cor’s face, but somehow, he manages to resist the urge to go crazy.
“You don’t mind if I take my date with me, do you, Cor? Oh, and cousin.” He pats Cor on the back, flashing his gums. “If you want to work your way up to lieutenant, it’ll be a good idea to be loyal—very loyal—because I really respect that. So no more secret meetings with the Don’s date, okay, pup?” He claps Cor on the arm way too hard. Cor winces, but stands his ground. “Good lad.”
I want to look at Cor, to tell him it is okay, but then Mickey is dragging me down the hallway to the ballroom.