WHORE
Dark red, dripping at the bottom of each letter. Sloppy enough to have been done fast, in the dark, by someone who didn't care if they got caught.
My ears ring. For a second the street tilts, just slightly, and I have to plant a hand on the doorframe to be sure of which way is up. The word sits there staring back at me, patient, like it knows exactly how long it'll take to stop meaning something.
"Jesus."
Fuse pockets his phone. "Already called it in to the brothers."
I cross my arms, mostly to keep my hands from shaking. "It's just paint."
"It's not paint and you know it."
"I know what it is." Sharper than I mean it. "I'm not stupid, Fuse. I know exactly what that word's supposed to do to me."
"Is it working?"
I don't answer that, because the honest answer is yes, and I'm not ready to say it out loud.
I walk closer. Run my fingers along the brick beside the lettering, the surface still slightly tacky under my fingertips. Whoever did this stood right here, close enough to touch, close enough to hear if me or Marcy had come through the back door last night.
The thought makes my skin crawl.
"What did the brothers say?"
"Bishop's sending a prospect to sit on the shop during hours till we know more. Another one on your townhouse at night."
He says it like it's already decided, already in motion, and something in me—the part that's spent years being the only line of defense my little family has—doesn't know what to do with being told it's handled.
"You didn't ask me first."
"I'm telling you now." He watches me carefully, gauging how that lands. "Say the word and I call it off. But I'm not leaving you and Rose out here alone with that on the wall."
I don't say the word. "I'm calling someone to repaint it," I say instead. "Today."
"I'll fix it."
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
I should say no. I've said no to help for three years running, ever since the bank and the lease and the long nights alone at the front counter. Asking for help feels like admitting I can't do this by myself. I built this whole life specifically to prove I could.
"I've got it," I tell him.
He doesn't argue. Looks at me for a long second, like he's deciding whether to push, and then he doesn't.
"Mommy?"
Rose stands in the back doorway in her pajamas, hair a wreck, staring past me at the wall. I step in front of it fast, too fast, which only makes it worse. Now she knows I'm hiding the wall from her.
"Go back inside with grandma, baby."
"What's it say?"
"Nothing. Some silly writing. Go on."
She doesn't move. Five years old and already too sharp for her own good, eyes narrowing the way they do when she knows I'm lying.
"Are the bad men here?"
My whole chest goes tight.
"No, baby. Nobody's here."
"Do they know where we live?"
I don't have an answer for that. Not one that's actually true, not one I can hand to a five-year-old without lying to her face.
Fuse crouches down to her level before I can figure out what to say.
"Hey. Look at me." He gentles, somehow, in a way I've never seen from him before. "Nobody's getting near you. Not while I'm around. You believe me?"
Rose studies him with the same dead-serious focus she gives everything. Takes her time deciding.
"Okay," she says finally.
Like that, and nothing more. His word is enough for her. She trusts him completely, no reason required, and that nearly takes my legs out from under me.
"Go get a bottle of juice," I tell her. "I'll get you a muffin later."
She goes. Doesn't look back at the wall again.
When I turn around, Fuse already has a bucket and a rag out of his truck.
"I told you I've got it."
He doesn't answer. Starts scrubbing at the edge of the paint where it's bled onto the brick, shoulders set, jaw tight with concentration.
I stand there for a second, arms crossed, ready to tell him again that I don't need this.
The words don't come.
I watch him work instead. Watch the way he doesn't stop, doesn't ask twice, doesn't wait for permission he already knows I'm too stubborn to give. Watch the same hands that were careful with me a few hours ago now scrubbing a slur off my wall like it's personal, because it is.
Years of doing everything alone, and some part of me that I thought I'd buried right alongside Butch quietly lets go.
I go inside to talk to my mom.
I don't tell him to stop.