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The wordcorddredged up another sickening memory of that day all those years ago when she’d given birth to that tiny caul-covered child, its body shrouded in that sac like a sign that this girl was special.
Scarlet hunched over and dry-retched as the images came back visceral and vivid, like they were happening now, had never stopped happening, would always be happening in some sick dark corner of the pulsing universe.
Scarlet pressed her forehead to the wall and closed her eyes, fighting back the sick, forcing away the memory. It was like morning sickness again, like her body had recorded every moment of that singular life-changing pregnancy, held on to every vibration in her womb, every kick, every turn, every cry, every sigh.
Now nameless emotions roared through her body, emotions that Scarlet didn’t think she’d experienced the first time around. In fact she remembered being extraordinarily calm at the time, her heart beating slow and rhythmic like she’d been in a trance, deep meditation, in tune with something profound and mysterious, the pull of fate, the push of destiny.
Scarlet groaned and clutched her belly now, pushing her forehead harder into the wall as she was transported back to that time, could see herself spread wide on a plastic sheet on her apartment floor, pushing that slick sausage-like creature out of her body, hoping for one dark moment that the thing would just come out dead, that it would get the message that it wasn’t wanted, wasn’t meant to be, shouldn’t have ever been, would never fucking be.
She almost screamed now, but no sound emerged because her throat was constricted and tight, her eyelids fluttering as that decades-old hatred surged through her veins, pumped through her arteries. The hatred burned hot now, just like it had back then, back when she’d put together her plan, channeled the rage of rejection into a legal strategy that would give her both revenge and freedom.
But she’d been denied her revenge, denied her freedom, and now the rage burned hotter, white-hot and rancid after three decades of festering inside her, coiled like a serpent in its hole, dark like a dragon in its lair.
Of course, the years had also graced Scarlet with the sickening self-awareness that arrives with age.
She now knew that some of that hatred was directed at herself.
At the woman she used to be.
Smart like a whip, sharp like an arrow.
But still so young, so innocent, so foolish.
So in love.
Or at least what shethoughtwas love.
What a silly chicken-brained twit she was back then.
Falling for the oldest trick in the book of man and woman.
Holding on to the innocently dumb hope that a man like that would suddenly come around once he saw the child, sawhischild, sawtheirchild.
If only she’d seen through her own innocent stupidity back then, Scarlet thought as the blood-red hate—at herself and him and Benson and the child—darkened her vision until the stairwell seemed to spin around her. If only she’d ended the pregnancy when it was clear that the asshole didn’t want to be a father, didn’t want to be a husband, didn’t want to be with her.
She should have ignored his sweet words and listened to her sad heart, given voice to her doubts, embraced her insecurities because they were telling the truth, telling her she was just an exotic toy to this man, that he’d tire of her soon enough, that she’d never change him.
But she’d been drunk on love back then, a starry-eyed Indian girl whose work ethic and intelligence had gotten her that American scholarship, gotten her a ticket to the Land of Milk and Honey, the Home of the Free and Brave.
She’d been a virgin when that dashing young Dean had taken an interest in her exotic looks and accented charm. Free and alone so far from the conservative middle-class home on the outskirts of New Delhi, Scarlet had fallen hard and deep for the man’s elegant Southern manners and movie-star good looks, been seduced like a dream by his sweet words and sensual promises.
And then, after the very first time, when he’d made her writhe and moan, whimper and wail, experience things that were so forbidden to a girl from that closed corner of Indian society, Scarlet had understood thatshewas the one changing.
Changing into something Scarlet didn’t even know lived inside her.
But lived inside her it did, and what that man did to her in the darkness of the night awakened that feral creature which yearned for freedom from the dark cage of her soul.
A creature that once unleashed could not be put back in its cage.
Especially not after it had been betrayed.
Betrayed in the most primal way possible, the most ancient of double-crosses, the most visceral of deceits.
A betrayal that still festered.
Humiliation that still burned.
Anger that still raged.