Chapter 26
Scarlett
It’s not usual to meet up at the track on a weeknight, which works fine for me since I only want my girls here. The few boys that are racing at the track when we arrive are promptly kicked off the property by Widow. He doesn’t even have to raise his voice.
Or say please.
“You know what I recently realized?” I tell him as we stand on the frozen mud, staring at the empty track and hating the sound of the silence. I wish we could fill it. Not tonight though. It’s dangerous enough for us out here as it is.
“That I’ve had a hard-on for you since moment one? That I’d have killed literally anyone else that stole my car.” Widow presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek, looking me over with a guarded expression. Life is moving fast for Adrian. If he trusts me, he’ll be happy. I can promise that.
“Liar.” I throw a saucy look back at him, lifting a silk-clad shoulder and winking.
“You don’t hurt women, which is good since that’s what I’m here for.
” I bite my lip for him and he gives me this cocky yeah, I’ve got you smile back.
It’s literally the dynamic I’ve always wanted. Fuck, being with Widow is good for me.
I turn away and saunter off with Nisha and Basti and the cardboard box, snapping my fingers.
Bohnes is waiting off to the side, leaning against one of the trees with his arms folded.
He has his hood down and a knowing smile on his face, like this is precisely what he expected of us from moment one.
Refusing to be complacent. Refusing to be normal. Success against all odds.
Ash pulls his mask down, a bold move since he looks exactly like Aspen. But if I’m not beating his ass, and I told my girls he’s not the bad twin, then they believe me. That’s what a reputation does. I’ve worked hard for this.
“Do you know why I’m asking my crew to mark themselves with an easily identifiable symbol?
” I ask Alexei, turning to him as he steps up beside me.
His attention moves rapidly from one source of contamination to the next.
Can’t blame him. Nasty stuff happens in Prescott, especially here at the track.
Doesn’t keep him from being astute.
“If they’re here now, they can be trusted later.
” He sounds confident, smooth and easy. His hand slips into his pocket when a girl gets too close to him.
I watch him just barely resist the urge to pull out his needles.
He controls himself. “They can be trusted when we have money.” A grim smile.
“The only time this symbol will be a danger instead of a boon is right here and right now. You really believe you can extricate yourself from your new in-laws someday? Mama and Papa never could.”
I smile back at him, and it’s just as grim.
“That’s why all four of you need to work together. And also work together with my crew. That’s the only way we can do this.” I laugh and purposely misquote one of my favorite movies—The Craft. “Better that you should rush upon this needle than enter my crew with fear in your heart.”
Bohnes is definitely chuckling at the reference.
“How do you enter?” he asks mysteriously. Somebody else gets our strange sense of humor and answers with a third quote from the movie. It’s a shocker to Bohnes, I assure you. Hah. Knew it. Peas in a Prescott pod.
“With perfect fuckin’ love and trust.” Widow smirks, playing right into the moment.
Ash is still half-dead and yet to realize that he’s going to stay alive.
His eyes search through holes in the chain-link fencing, scanning the woods for his father’s hunters.
He’s jumpy and gloomy, but obedient, edging up to stand between me and my new husband.
“Are we getting ink, too?” Ash whispers, voice rough.
One of my girls has this awful piece of shit truck with a sports exhaust. It backfires, causing Ash to whip out his sword.
He holds it in two hands, eyes dragging across the crowd as he searches for the shooter.
My crew finds this hilarious, breaking up into hysterical giggles.
“Down boy,” I whisper back, putting my hand over one of Ash’s. He sheathes the sword with this delicious shick sound that has me excited in ways a normal woman might not be. “And yeah, it’s ink all-around, baby.”
Alexei shudders and reaches up with gloved hands, almost touching his temples and then thinking the better of it.
He’s stressed, waiting for someone from the mob to contact us. It’s inevitable. He booked a wedding ceremony at their church. Worse: he’s just learned that I’m going to request that he, too, get a tattoo today.
“Whoever gets this mark is quite lucky.” Alexei says the words like he believes them, but looks like he’d rather kill everyone here than accept a tattoo from Treasure’s mother’s second-cousin’s daughter-in-law. I grin and reach out to pat his arm. He doesn’t flinch away.
“Even you, right?” With another laugh, I hop up on the hood and then the roof of the Pantera, standing there in my heels the way I did on my birthday, the night before Halloween. Turning a crowd into a riot. This is my other-other superpower.
A smile tilts my lips. From up here, it’s easy to spot Bohnes’ white hair in the shadows, his eyes fixed on me.
Widow is standing near the Devil’s trunk with his hands in his pockets and chains around his neck.
Alexei is poised beside the car with a huge space bubble around him.
Ash climbs up to sit on the hood with his sword lying across his bent legs.
There’s another ripple at his presence. It flattens out quickly beneath my unrelenting stare.
Treasure is at the edge of the crowd with her family member, this tattoo artist who’s pretty good but only takes cash and tattoos minors for free. I’m paying this woman with the last of what I have of my own money.
This is me leaping from the pan into the fire.
I paid off the Moreno family. I’m paying now to have Lemon’s burial here, at the track, in the skin of the crew she left behind.
My breath hisses in through my teeth as a tingle travels through me.
Shit, that was poetic but untrue. Tattoo chick laughed when I asked about the ashes, said the particles are too big to be absorbed by the skin or something.
That the ashes would pretty much just pool at the bottom of the ink bottle.
I don’t care.
This is making me, Nisha, and Basti all feel better.
My eyes scan the faces around me, forty girls in total. I know every single one of their names and what they bring to the table. Some of them dressed up for tonight, but they’re from Prescott so they dressed up like hos and now they’re freezing their tits off out here.
My smile quirks up another notch.
“If you’re here, you know this is it. Live or die alongside me.
The fuck do we need Prescott High for anyway?
We’ll get our GEDs.” I wink at them and several of the girls titter, hiking up their skirt hems or flashing me lascivious winks.
Widow growls but they ignore him. “Oh, and just FYI: the rich mob guy proposed to me last night and we were married at the courthouse this morning.”
Complete and total silence.
Ash tugs at a hank of his hair and then calms himself by doing some sort of zen-like breathing exercise while clutching the katana.
I watch his shoulders forcibly relax. He’s come a long way from putting a gun to Alexei’s head mid-coitus.
Thinking he’s about to die has matured Ash substantially, saving me from the trouble of all that extra fuckboy training.
“Prenup?” Shirley asks, fidgeting nervously with the bandanna she has wrapped over her curly red hair.
I plant a fist on my hip.
“Nah,” I say and there’s a collective gasp.
“Proper salaries and all that for our crew. But you fucking heard what Jennifer said Nisha said that I said about this mob shit. This mayor shit. This is you, gambling with your life. What I’m doing is telling you to either risk your life or run away.
Those are the only two choices. If we win, we’ll win big. If we lose, you’d all be at risk.”
I gesture our tattoo artist over while Nisha and Basti help set up the folding table we brought.
It’s time for ink.
Everyone is getting it—even my kept men. Even me (times two).
Red ink on the rib cage for the girls, under the left breast. Or pectoral, for Bastian. A pair of crescent moons, back to back. Two Cs for the Crimson Crew. A set of red sickles, nice and sharp.
“You get this ink, you’re mine. If you don’t like that or you don’t understand it, piss off.” I hop down from the Pantera, like I’m not even wearing heels.
I go first, unclipping my suspenders. My trousers are nice and fit, so they don’t fall down or nothin’. This getup is all for looks, this nice crisp white blouse under the black lines of the suspenders. Peak. I’ll have to ruck the blouse up a bit to free the canvas of my rib cage.
I swing my leg over the seat and flop down, leaning back in Bohnes’ throne chair and looking cool as fuck when I do it.
We dragged this goddamn chair all the way out here just for the aesthetic.
Looks sick with the clawfoot legs buried in the mud and everything.
I wet my lips as the tip of the needle digs into my skin, pouring ink and ash into my blood.
There’s a lot of whispering in the crowd.
No movement to leave. Not a single girl walks away after my warning.
They were all briefed extensively by Jennifer earlier, too.
They’ve had the day to think it over while Bohnes showed me and the other boys the finer arts of homemade explosives.
Oops, our bad, Mr. Archer. Did we waste some of your stolen money by destroying those construction sites today?
We’re going to see a swift retaliation for that stunt.