White ceiling.
Again? Don't tell me this was a nightmare, Scarlet screamed in her mind but when the familiar pain in her chest and thigh returned, she knew everything that was supposed to go wrong had gone wrong.
The last few days of her life flash backed like a tsunami wave hitting a city in front of her eyes. It all came back to her, starting from Roman's eyes when he kissed her goodbye, stepping inside the car with Mason. Worst was yet to come when she saw herself getting caught, again and again, and learned how stupid she had been.
Jason's words, the deal and the marriage, everything rushed back to her, especially the last few moments of Ryder's rage.
No matter how much she tried to wipe it away, she could see the deep blue sky she had been lost in as Ryder held her against the beach sand, ruining her, forever.
"Scarlet," a voice called her back and she gently turned to face her left.
"Mase," she smiled warmly at the rugged face of the man who sat beside her bed on a chair. Now that her vision became clearer, she understood she was back in her room in Miami. As much as she loved that thought, her eyes searched around for Roman.
His expression was a mixture of many as she pointed out happiness, but somewhere a mild sadness seeped in through his eyes. "Rome?" she asked immediately.
"I'll tell you, soon. Please rest, Scarlet. You need to get better first," while that answer would never be satisfactory, with the chaos of everything increasing around her, Scarlet chose to listen to him. But the uneasiness would remain.
Mason's eyes annoyed her. Why did he look so defeated to her? Why no? She was back, wasn't she? Then why was he still looking at her this way?
"Where's Roman, Mason?" she asked, unable to hold herself back.
"Scarlet, please. I am sure he's okay -"
"What does that mean!?" she snapped, sitting up in her bed.
"It's barely been half a day since we got you here, Scar. Please, I am begging you to calm down. Chris and Stephen will find him soon," Mason urged. But Scarlet's heartbeat wouldn't let her calm down. She knew it. She knew it the moment she had woken up and he was nowhere to be seen.
But her thoughts didn't remain with her for long as the door opened and Rihanna practically ran to her, enveloping her into a hug that made her slightly wince even though she let out a breath at the fact that Rihanna seemed alright. At least physically.
"Oh my God, I am so sorry!" she shook her head, stepping away from her, her tears dampening Scarlet's shoulders. After her, Adrian took Scarlet into a careful hug, kissing her forehead and moving away soon, but not before Scarlet saw a treacherous tear escape his eyes.
"The doctor's coming, okay?" Rihanna told her as Lydia walked in.
"Hello, Lydia," Scarlet spoke up in a monotone, her eyes still trying to find Roman. Why isn't he here? she screamed at herself.
"Hello, Scarlet. It's not very good to see you again." Something was wrong here. The air stilled in the room as Lydia checked her blood pressure, Mason eyeing her every move.
"Her wounds are healing, I hope?" Adrian asked.
"What about the wound on the thigh?" Mason added.
"The wounds are fine, Mason. I have already checked on her twice today. I know they're healing just fine," Lydia nodded nervously but Scarlet knew why Lydia couldn't meet her eyes. She had known and been through it.
"Doctor, is everything alright?" Rihanna asked, as she caught the doctor hesitating. Ignoring Rihanna, Lydia's eyes travelled to Scarlet, who gave her a slow nod, gulping loudly before Lydia began. Even though she had done this a lot many times before, telling about Scarlet would be the most difficult thing in her twenty year long career as a doctor.
Lydia never expected to do this in her decades long career but when she had been flown in from New York to personally check up on one of her first patients, she knew something had gone terribly wrong. She was used to many things in her profession, violent things tended to happen before patients were wheeled into the ER.
But she had seen Scarlet grow up. She had seen her as a child, so the words she spoke after that, even hit her, "there are indications of forced -"
"Stop!" Mason yelled, shutting her up. He didn't need to hear it when he saw the marks on Scarlet's neck, peeking through the t-shirt she had been changed into. He couldn't hear it, not when he knew he couldn't do anything to reverse it.
Scarlet fell back on the bed, taking a deep breath as tears welled in her eyes. It was okay to cry after surviving it all, wasn't it?
But when a few tears had left her eyes, she began to cry loudly, not able to control the emotions anymore while everyone around her remained quiet.
Rihanna stood frozen beside her bed, her back towards Scarlet as she breathed heavily, but Adrian fell down on the chair next to him, holding onto its hand support to maintain his sanity whereas Lydia stood with her head bowed down.
"Ryder did this to you?" Rihanna asked as she turned to face her. Her eyes held nothing but rage as she sat next to Scarlet, holding her in her arms as the tears flowed. "H-he did this?" she asked again when Scarlet tried to stop her tears. As she held Scarlet in her arms, her eyes saw the wound on the thigh that had been dressed multiple times since Scarlet had been brought in. She saw the bruises beside her jaw, she saw the marks on her body as she changed her.
All the indications existed before her but she had chosen not to believe it.
Feeling herself detach from everything around her, she turned to face Mason who was now inconsolable himself, as she held Scarlet firmly in her arms."Kill him," Rihanna said with no remorse in her voice. "Kill my brother and my father and burn my Uncle. Kill them all!"
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
The sea swallowed the sun ahead of her, the sand becoming softer below her feet as a warm breeze made her shirt fly sideways, exposing her pregnant belly. She pressed her hand against it, feeling her baby in there as a small tap came on her shoulder.
"Here," Scarlet handed her the cup of chocolate milk as she held coffee in her own hands.
"Why are you out of your bed?" Rihanna asked her as she noticed that Scarlet had changed once again. But it had barely been a few hours since she had woken up.
"Don't worry, Ri. I am much better now," she told her with a smile that didn't meet her eyes.
Of course, she didn't feel the physical pain under the painkillers' effect anymore, that was a good thing. Her concern was more to do with the emotional trauma that her own brother had unburdened on her, the one she didn't deserve.
Rihanna, after getting to know everything about Scarlet's family knew that she would be fine no matter what she had been through but no one deserved to be so hurt that they would stop feeling emotionally too.
She couldn't see Scarlet becoming that person, she just couldn't.
"I can't apologise enough for what Ryder -"
"The doctor's here for a check up, baby," Adrian called out to her, cutting her in between as she nodded at Scarlet and then walked away. "I hope the baby's fine," Adrian said as soon as she was out of hearing range.
"Me too," Scarlet said. "I wish she could not be here at all. This isn't okay. It'll only get messier, Adrian."
"I.. I was thinking about that..." Adrian nodded. "My paternal grandmother, she lives in Barcelona. We could -"
"Stop thinking, Adrian," Scarlet said, turning to him. "There's no time for thinking anymore. You need to take her before I find Roman, before all of this turns into a war," she pleaded, taking his hands in hers.
"I can't leave you here, Scarlet. I let you go once when I made you run away from Summerville. For once, let me be the brother I was to you!" he argued, pulling his hand out of hers and sitting on the fallen log beside them.
"Adrian. You're going to become a father soon but for that you need to protect the mother and the child. Forget about me, I'll be fine on my own. I have a home here, I need you to find yours where you are safe," she tried to reason with him.
He was silent for a minute but then got up and held her in his embrace, "I'll talk to Rihanna. I'll try to tell her about this, but if she doesn't agree..." he trailed, his mind debating. He had a sister on one hand, and Rihanna on another, but any idiot would know that protecting a baby was more important than protecting a girl coming from generations of gangsters. She would hold her own, for now, even if the fact that he would have to leave her behind killed him.
"You'll reason with her," she told him sternly. "You're not doing this for yourself, Adrian. She's not doing this for herself. You're doing it for that child; my godchild, goddammit!" she snapped, tears escaping her eyes for the millionth time this week.
"You're right," he whispered, nodding his head. "When did you grow up, cousin?" he chuckled, with a throat full of emotions.
"I don't know, Dre. But I don't like it at all. It's a trap, growing up," she mumbled against his chest.
"Come back home, now. It's getting dark," he told her. Even though she nodded at him, as soon as Scarlet turned her back to the sea, she whispered to herself that there was no home without Rome. It won't feel home, not here, not in New York, not even in Port Angeles.
As Adrian left to join Rihanna, Scarlet called the one contact she had reserved for these situations.
"Richard?" she spoke into the phone as soon as he picked up.
Richard was the one contact she had to call when things would finally go south. His name wasn't disclosed, even to Rome. He spoke to her once a month, updating her on anything she needed help with. A liaison for her in another continent, that's what her grandfather's lawyer had called him when Richard's number was first shared with her two years ago.
Mr Taylor could never die without a plan in place for his only grandchild. There was money, there were weapons, there were contacts she couldn't even dream of in Europe. And Richard handled it all for her.
"Good evening, Miss Scarlet," he replied in a monotone. "A little early for our call, isn't it?"
"I hope you got your monthly check," she asked him, drawing a house with her finger into the sand as she leaned down, ignoring the little pain she felt in her thigh.
"I did," he replied.
"Add another zero to the end then. Because I have loads of work for you," she spoke into the phone and heard his laptop chime on in the background.
"Right on."
"I need you to book two flight tickets for tomorrow morning. One for Adrian and one for Rihanna."
"Okay, next?"
"Can you transfer their courses to a university in Barcelona?"
"Nothing we can't do in good ol' Europe," he replied almost immediately.
"I want someone to be around them, the moment they land in Spain. Someone always near their house."
"Where's that going to be or are we arranging that?"
"Adrian's paternal grandmother; he'll live with her," she told him.
"I'll look her address up," he nodded, typing furiously.
"That's it. Thank you, Richard."
"How are you, Scarlet?" he asked before she could cut the call. It wasn't like him to continue a conversation longer than needed but today, even he felt something wrong in her voice from countries apart.
"I don't know, Richard. I really don't," she answered honestly.
"I'll handle this stuff. Pull yourself together, eh? Don't want your mother to see you all battered from up there now, do we?"
"No...we don't, Uncle Rick."
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
"What happened to Roman?"
"Honestly, I don't know." Mason breathed out, sipping his coffee, whereas Scarlet sat beside him, near the pool side of their house, only staring at her iced tea.
"Where did you lose him?" she asked in a mechanical voice, emotions very distant to her.
"I found you in an outhouse -"
"Beside the wooden boardwalk. Yeah..." Scarlet nodded, finally taking a sip, while looking ahead at the horizon, plans budding in her mind.
"Roman had told us to check the house while he followed the path to the helipad, hoping to find you nearby. But when he didn't reply in the earpiece and you weren't in the house, I ran towards him," Mason said, eyeing Scarlet but noticing no change in her emotions.
"He wasn't there...Scarlet and his earpiece had fallen off."
For a minor second, her heart skipped a beat and her throat readied itself to cut itself open in a scream of its own but she pressed her nails to her palm and calmed herself down. He wasn't dead, he couldn't be dead. At least that's what she kept on telling herself.
"Later, in the outhouse after I rescued you, I found a little blood which we later found out was his. He hadn't bled enough to...die but we did find a rod. He's alive, Scarlet. I know he is. We will find him."
Just like you found me, she snapped but then reminded herself that Roman's own brother would do anything to save him and she could trust him with this.
"Sir!" A man came running, followed by Chris, who had earlier met Scarlet with his brother and apologised to her again and again.
──────few hours ago─────
"Little bear," Stephen called out, as she got up from her bed clumsily while Chris caught her hand to steady her.
"We heard about..." Chris, for once, hesitated in his speech.
"Ryder? Yeah, I heard that too," She chuckled without a hint of humor. "Guess he was obsessed with me afterall?"
"We are very sorry for what happened, Scarlet. You depended on us for it and we...screwed up so bad," Stephen continued as they followed her to the washbasin. Chris handed her a warm cloth as she washed her face but Stephen could still not look at her without feeling shame. Guilt would kill him right now if Scarlet didn't speak up.
"Hmm..." she nodded and they continued.
"We should have stopped you, we should have been with Rome. You're...you didn't have to do this. I could have gone to the house in your place, fuck, I should have."
"I have never felt this guilty, Scarlet -"
"Guys!" she yelled a little too loudly. "Stop the sob story," she snapped. "Do you realise it was my idea? My fault -"
"Ours," the twins said in unison.
"Okay, ours, fine! But there is no point talking about it now but...what matters now is Rome and Rome only," she yelled, tears falling off her eyes as she continued to splash water on them. "I want to know if he's dead but at least give me an answer," she broke, falling on the marbled floor of her bathroom as the men jumped up to catch her.
"Half a day, Scarlet," Chris mumbled, wiping his own tears.
"We will find him for you in half a day, I swear. No matter how many laws have to be broken or how many FBI geeks I need to work with...we will find him," Stephen told her, hugging her body tightly.
"That bastard is coming back home, I promise you. I didn't become a waiter on your first date for nothing, okay?!" Chris yelled, making three of them laugh, probably for the first time in five long days.
•❅──────the present──────❅
"I know where he is...I mean, not Roman, but I know where Ryder is," Chris said, panting after the crazy run he had to do from his room.
"Where?" Mason and Scarlet demanded immediately.
"Oh, man, what an imbecile...that idiot has come back to his house in Miami, just ten minutes back and is at his place. He went straight to his room and is moving something in boxes," Stephen added.
"Oh my God, he's taking the stuff from the backroom..."
"What even?" Mase asked, unable to understand why that asshole would risk his life for those pictures. But then, he and the others knew of Ryder's obsession all too well now.
"We don't have time for what even, guys!" Chris added hurriedly. "If you guys don't leave in the next few minutes with us, we'll lose this opportunity! Their house is basically guardless right now ever since they learned that we are currently working with FBI to track Jason down," he told them.
"Half of them have already left for Brazil and his other territories. Which means, if we don't get them here, in the States, it'll be impossible to get them in their own territory. And with Roman missing, Damien and Meredith are ready to help. We'll get him, man. We'll find - " Before Stephen could finish, Mason nodded at Chris.
"None of you will stop me," Scarlet warned them before anyone could leave.
"Shut up! You're staying right here!" Mason snapped at her. "Mom and dad will be here soon, don't you dare follow us -"
"You don't understand!" Scarlet stopped him, her nails back against her palms as she felt the pain of each of the wounds he had left on her. "I have to kill him. I have to be the one. If I don't, this will never stop. I need this pain to end, Mase."
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The man's eyes opened, as he heard a few footsteps coming towards him.
"Oh shit, you're finally awake, thank God, man!" The man beside him yelled a little too loudly.
"W-what?" he asked, confused at his situation. Why was he in a jail cell? "Where am I?"
"Are you for real? You're in Jason's facility or something from the past few hours, man!" he told him.
"Who are you?" he snapped at the guy who was really getting on his nerves now.
"What the fuck, dude?" the guy snapped at him. "A very good place to joke, but you see, I have been here from the past many many weeks; I could use some humour but you better help me get out of here, because HELLO! I AM HERE BECAUSE OF YOU AND - "
"That's enough, Mr Preston," he looked up to see a man who had visited him once with his boss, the first time he had arrived.
"Hey! HEY! STOP!" Matt yelled as the man picked him up, dragging him away from the cell. "What the fuck, man? I gave you all the information I knew about Scarlet! I told you everything about her life in Port Angeles and beyond! STOP!" Matt begged as the man kept on dragging him.
"You're not needed anymore, Matt, and neither is your information," the old man chuckled.
"NO! ROMAN! Help me!" Matt screamed at the prisoner who had just woken up but he only met a confused set of eyes who were still waking up from the drug.
"Roman?" He questioned, testing that name on his tongue, still clueless about the existence of the man who had been dragged away.
A few minutes later, another man walked in, but he was different. He held authority in his walk as he eyed him.
"Who are you?"
"I'm your father, Ryder," the man said, untying him.
"Ryder?" the man questioned. "I...I don't remember my name."
"See, I told you dirt biking is not the best sport for you, son," the man chuckled as he tried to get up, still dizzy from the pain in his head. "You had a terribly accident while my enemies chased you, Ryder. I believe there is some kind of amnesia. But don't worry, I'm here to rescue you, okay?"
"How can I believe you if I have amnesia?" the man asked, debating whether the guy in front of him lied or not.
"How can you not? You're the heir to the biggest gang in the world, my son. Everyone knows you, even if you don't!" he chuckled.
"Gang, you said?" he asked once again.
"Yes, but don't worry at all. We have all the time in the world to re-introduce you to this world," Jason said with a smile as Roman was escorted out of the basement.
He couldn't believe his eyes. His nephew would be pissed, but Jason knew this was the most sadistic way to get back to Scarlet. He would keep Roman alive as Ryder for now and just maybe, Roman would be less idiotic than his nephew.
Jason, later entered a new room where a doctor sat, somewhere two floors above the underground facility. Roman Jonathan would be brainwashed right now, the hit on his head and the few other drugs would make him believe anything. He was miles away from his home, where no one could reach him. He could shape him anyway and the Jonathans wouldn't know until too late.
"What are the chances of his memories coming back?" he asked the doctor.
"While we never know with amnesia, I would say pretty bleak. I would still suggest keeping him away from familiar settings. They can trigger even the deepest memories."
"Of course, he won't ever step into the United States of America again, then," he laughed at himself, whereas at the same time, Roman, who stood above him on another floor, looked around his new room.
"Scarlet," he said. "Port Angeles..." he kept on mumbling while his head began to ache once again. "Who are you?" he wondered as he traced the wounds on his arms, eyeing himself in the mirror for the first time. Everything felt so foreign to him but that name. More than his own, the name that guy had screamed in the cell haunted him.
Who is Scarlet?
•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•