Grievous (Scarlet Scars #2)(19)

His arm shifts. I can feel his gaze.

I don’t look at him, though, only getting a slight glimpse from my peripheral. If what I said pissed him off, he doesn’t say a word about it, just staring at me in silence as I tinker with the bear.

After a moment, he reaches out toward me, his hand on my back, gently rubbing it, sending sparks up my spine. I turn, caught off guard by the tender touch, and finally look back at him.

“Are you trying to fuck right now?” I ask. “Because we just had sex, like, an hour ago, before you ruined breakfast.”

He laughs, sitting up, his hand leaving my back to instead ruffle my hair. What the hell? He pushes up off the bed, strolling toward the bathroom.

“I need to shower,” he says. “I smell like pussy.”

“You go do that. I’m gonna... do something, I don’t know.”

“Do whatever you want, Scarlet,” he says, which is quickly becoming his favorite sentence—even though he totally regretted it last time he said that. “Just do me a small favor and keep yourself out of trouble, because I’m not in the mood to play White Knight right now.”



Kassian used to tell me I was stupid.

So pretty, yet so stupid. That is why you cannot be trusted to make decisions, suka.

How many times had he told me that? How many times had he used those words to justify the brutality he inflicted upon my life?

So many times I lost count.

I never once bought it, never once believed his bullshit, but sitting here at a wooden picnic table on the Coney Island boardwalk, I’m wondering if maybe he was onto something about me.

Stupid. So stupid.

I shouldn’t be here.

The boardwalk is packed, despite the weather still being cool, the amusement park not far off behind me, so close I can hear the rumbling of the Cyclone and the faint noise of the Wonder Wheel running, excited screams and children laughing and music playing... the sound of happiness.

I can still remember the first time I felt it, the first time I saw the lights illuminating the Coney Island night sky and heard the laughter and thought ‘this is where I’m meant to be forever’. Standing right here along this boardwalk, dirty and tired, having no food or money, fourteen years old and on my own.

Still so much a child at heart but looking way too much like a woman on the outside.

Enough to capture his attention.

Enough to pique his interest.

The late-July air had been sweltering, a touch of sunburn on my sweat-sticky skin, sand clinging to my legs beneath my cut-off jean shorts. I was thirsty, and hungry, my stomach angrily growling as I walked along, passing vendor after vendor on the boardwalk, the array of smells assaulting me.

I just wanted some food.

“Excuse me, do you have some change you can spare?” I asked, again and again, to people who passed, getting a nickel here, a quarter there, but most offered me nothing more than repulsion. Get a job. Get out of my face. Fucking scum. Disgusting piece of shit. The words bounced off of me, never getting under my skin, because I was in the city of dreams.

And dreams? I had plenty of those.

It took more than an hour for me to amass a pocket full of change. I sat against a railing in the darkness, out of the way of the crowd, counting it.

I needed four dollars for a coveted hot dog at Nathan’s.

I only had a little more than three dollars collected.

Sighing, I shoved the change back away. I tried to be a good person, I did, but desperation has a way of bending morals. Lying, cheating, stealing... I hated doing it, but sometimes, I ran out of options, and I had to do what I had to do, blurring the lines. Begging relied on the compassion of others, and I’d learned quite quickly that people weren’t always compassionate. I had to look out for myself.

Shadows moved along the boardwalk as I contemplated my next move. A pair of shiny black dress shoes appeared in front of where I sat. Before I could react, a flash of crisp green paper dangled in my face.

I thought it was a dollar... until I saw the zeroes.

A hundred dollar bill.

My eyes darted to the man holding it. He was handsome, almost like a work of art, dark ink coating his fingers and part of his neck, wearing a dark fitted suit, despite the heat.

“Take it,” he said, waving the money at me, his foreign accent thick.

“I, uh... I can’t.” I shake my head. “That’s way too much money.”

He curved an eyebrow. “Too much?”

“I just need like, another dollar. Just enough to buy a hot dog tonight.”

He crouched down, still holding the money. “What will you do tomorrow? And the next day?”

I shrugged. “Same thing I did today.”

“But you will not take my money?”

“No.”

He laughed, like that amused him, before standing back up. “Come on, I will buy you that hot dog you want, pretty girl, and I will not take no for an answer.”

Right there. Right there. Just a few feet from where I sit right now. Kassian Aristov had watched me for over an hour as I begged for change, hungry, before he waltzed into my world and took over my life.

He told me once it was my tenacity that intrigued him. I was steadfast, determined to take care of myself, and that got him curious.

He knew, right then, that I would be his. He wanted nothing more than to break me.

“Excuse me, is someone sitting here?”