Scarlett looked down at the leaves that comprised her salad, poking at them and shuffling them around the bowl. She was making a half hearted effort to eat them at best. Looking up, she gave a small smile to her companion, the woman who had invited her to lunch, Wendy Briese. At first Kincaid had put slight resistance to the idea - not because she didn’t like Wendy, more because she would’ve preferred to be alone but Wendy was persistent in her attempts to persuade, talking about the benefits it would have for teamwork and cohesion and Scarlett’s defenses had crumbled quickly. So here she was, sat opposite the woman she was due to team with against Mika and Camilla at Velocity, having already exhausted all her usual small talk and chasing lettuce leaves around the crockery with her cutlery.
“-bigger than both of us, so I don’t think taking her head on is a good idea. But you know that spear she does? She puts a lot of momentum behind her when she does that, and we could use it to our advantage.” Wendy had been droning on for the last five minutes about the match, although Scarlett had only caught bits and pieces of her strategizing. “I mean, I could trip her and lock her in the Banshee… but your Kimura… could you get it on from her attempt on the spear? It’d be a tough counter so… Scarlett? “
“Huh? Oh….yeah….the Kimura. I’m pretty good at getting locked in pretty quickly. Might be something I could use as a counter to Camilla’s spear perhaps, do you think? It’s going to be tough given how she comes in. Or maybe try the Scarlett Fever. Either way it’s like a seeing a rhino bearing down on you isn’t it?” Scarlett shrugs her shoulders. “Plenty of options though I guess. Just preferable to keep Mika in than Camilla. We shouldn’t take her on head first.” Still looking lost in her own thoughts, the red head spears the smallest piece of lettuce she can, stopping it halfway to her mouth. “Think Mika and Camilla will even be able to work together? Given what those two have done in recent months?”
“Why not? We can, and you took the FFW Championship from me, and we’re eating lunch together” Wendy said with a small smile. “The truth is, Camilla’s frustrated, and apparently I’m her scapegoat for that. If she’s willing to screw Valerie over, she’s willing to team with a woman who defeated her twice. I have no doubts about that.”
Scarlett seems to have not heard the answer. “I guess we can. You did invite me to lunch, even though I took the FFW Championship from you. And you did try to reform Isabella. Maybe anything could happen.” Placing her fork down on the side of her salad, Scarlett lapses into silence as she holds her glass of water to her lips, the level barely falling as she takes the longest, smallest sip possible. “Wendy. Have you ever….? No. forget it, it’s not important.” She places the glass back on the table with a little shake of her head. “So Mika and Camilla. We can definitely take them.”
“Everything okay?” Wendy asked, raising her eyebrows at the aborted question. “You’ve barely touched your salad, and… you seem to be zoning out a little…”
The cajun nods her head. “Yeah...it’s a personal thing you know? One of those things that’s nothing really but just sometimes distracts you; eats away at you. Forget I mentioned anything. It’s not important.” As if to emphasize the point, Scarlett taks a mouthful of salad and fixes a smile on her face.
“Well… okay…” Wendy said uneasily. Shoving her own finished salad away, she sighs. “If you need my help with anything, just let me know, alright?”
“You’re going to turn this into one of those things aren’t you?” Scarlett’s look turns a touch accusatory. “One of those things where you start raising alarm bells with people like Cody and Kelly and Christian and...Asking them if they noticed anything...’off’....about me right? Done with the best intentions and because you’re worried but…” The young woman sighs. “And you can’t okay? Cody can’t find out.”
Wendy grimaced for a while. Obviously the promise that she’d have to keep something from her boss wasn’t settling well with her, but finally she nodded in acquiesence. “That’s fine.” she said. “You have my guarantee of discretion.”
“Natalie.” Scarlett looks pained as she utters the name.
“Oh GOD!” Wendy hissed, revolted. “Scarlett, you cannot SERIOUSLY be thinking about joining those Blondetourage idiots again. I mean.. it’s bad enough that Kate-”
“NO! Oh God No. No. Just...NO.” Scarlett shakes her head at her lunch partner, a look of disgust evident. “I’m not crazy. I’ve not been dropped on my head that many times. Not yet anyway.” The disgust starts to fade. “I’m talking about my mother-in-law. She’s not a nice person, Wendy. Not at all. Pretty much within thirty seconds of meeting me she’d decided that I was a gold digging trailer trash whor----” Scarlett caught herself as she remembered who she was talking to. “Who wasn’t good enough for her son. Now she’s blackmailing me. And I can’t tell Cody. I just can’t.”
“Why not?” Wendy asked bluntly. “It’s his mother, after all.”
Scarlett shakes her head. “Mother in name and genetics only. There’s no love lost between them. And the information she’s got, that she’s using to blackmail me with, affects Cody. And Christian. And Cory.” She shrugs her shoulders. “It’s my family so, I can’t risk it getting out and hurting them.”
Wendy looked around, as if suddenly worried there might be someone around to overhear. Then she leaned forward, and lowered her voice. “Do you know what it is?”
Scarlett nods, leaning forward over the table and lowering her voice. “Let’s just say one of them isn’t everything he seems. Natalie knows and is using it to keep herself in a certain lifestyle.” The woman leans back in her chair and crosses her arms before shrugging her shoulders. “That’s the long and short of it.”
“That’s pretty sick, holding her sons hostage like that. A mother should nurture her children, not exploit them.” Wendy sighed. “Are you sure you shouldn’t tell Cody?”
“Could you tell Terrence something that would destroy your family?” Scarlett shakes her head. “Natalie is...smart.” She takes out a deep breath and lets it out with a long sigh. “Not that it matters. It’s a large sum of money and it’s only a matter of time before Cody starts asking questions and I’ve not got a clue what to tell him right now to explain it away.”
“The truth?” Wendy said firmly. “Look, these things, as nasty as they are, they tend to get out whether you want them to or not. And when they do… would you rather Cody hear it from you… or Natalie?”
Scarlett shakes her head. “I’d rather he not hear it at all. It’s not the type of secret that weasels it’s way out. Not many people, two, maybe three living people know this information and Natalie’s kept it secret for a long time - Hell she only told me so that she could get the money. Plus it’s not in her interests for it to come out. She has twenty thousand reasons a month to try and make sure it doesn’t come out as a matter of fact.””
Wendy sighed, slightly frustrated at Scarlett’s vagueness and her own discomfort of the situation. Finally, she took a deep breath, and looked her in the eye. “Did I ever tell you about the night Terrence and I returned to wrestling?”
Scarlett shakes her head as she seems to relax slightly. “Nope.”
“It was Pollaski’s idea. A rogue company had stolen the Alliance’s World Tag Team Championships, and they challenged the rightful champions to come get them. When they refused, they held an open challenge, and the idea was for us to go in as a surprise, win them, and then give them back to the real champions in return for a title shot.”
“Well… we weren’t the only ones. Three other teams showed up that night, so a giant brawl erupted. And then the trap shut, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by eight other people, pinned down, and having stupid Heidi Christensen threatening to… well, violate me.”
“And then Victor Mandrake showed up. He cleaned house, destroyed Heidi, threw me on top of her, and declared us the new tag champions.”
“But you have to understand… I hated Mandrake. Still do, really. That man… such as he is… threw me in his basement for two weeks to get back at a friend of mine. He’s completely Machiavellian in nature. Think Aimee Easter, honestly. Except seven feet tall and over four hundred pounds.”
“Terrence obviously was a bit surprised by all of it. But I wasn’t, because Mandrake had contacted me a month or so prior. Mandrake had somehow found out where we had lived, and contacted me, blaming me for a friend’s death. He always had some twisted fascination with me… trying to corrupt me. I burned the note, didn’t tell Terrence, because I was afraid he’d do something to get himself hurt. So when Terrence found out that I knew all along that Mandrake was back in our lives… he wasn’t happy. It was a pretty ugly night.”
Wendy paused, sighing. “What I remember most… after Terrence had regained his temper and calmed down, that he told me the worst thing about all of it was that I didn’t have enough faith in him to do the right thing. That I let him get caught completely off guard in a dangerous situation because I was too afraid to speak the truth.”
She looked up at Scarlett. “The truth can be an infection sometimes. The best thing to do is to bring it out immediately and scour it, so that the healing can begin. If you cover it up… it can fester, spread. Turn into something REALLY ugly. You’re already sacrificing twenty thousand dollars a month to hide the truth, Scar. How much more are you willing to give up?”
Scarlett seems to get lost in thought for a moment regarding Wendy carefully. “Scour it. Bring it out. Yeah. Maybe you’re right...but...but there’s got to be a way of doing that without letting Cody and Christian and Cory know. Without destroying the family. Without destroying my family. I mean...if there was a way to nip it in the bud early, before it has a chance to fester and spread and turn into something ugly, they wouldn’t need to know. We could pretend it all never happened right? I can take the secret to my grave.” The cajun fixes Wendy with a pleading stare. “I can’t be the one who rips apart the brothers. Imagine what Cody would think then. There’s got to be another way. Got to be.”
“First of all… it won’t be you who does it. Natalie’s the one who’s put you into this situation. So whatever happens, the blame falls on her. You can only be held acccountable for YOUR actions after all. Other than that… I don’t know. I suppose asking her nicely wouldn’t help.”
“Unlikely. She’s more the sort of woman who would laugh if you were to ‘ask her nicely’ to do anything. More the sort of woman who only responds to direct commands, if you tell her you’re NOT doing something.” Scarlett rubs her eyes with her thumbs and forefingers, letting out another sigh before letting out a small laugh. “Maybe that’s just what we should do. Go see her, tell her I’m NOT sending her any more money.”
“Well, I’m sure if there’s anything that would make her shut up, its two of the best wrestlers in the world telling her to,” Wendy said with a grim smile. “I think between you and I, we’d have a way to make her listen. How far away is she?”
The girl looks a little hesitant. “Well…..that’s...that’s the thing. I don’t know exactly.” Nervously the Baton Rouge native licks her lips. “She has me send a money order to a Post Office Box. Once a month. That’s the only way I have to contact her.”
Wendy looked thoguhtful. “Well… you could always go to the PO Box and wait for her to pick it up.”
Scarlett weighs it up for a moment. “I am supposed to send her the next instalment in a couple of days. If you’re up for it, then, I guess we can go and see how willing she is to listen to a persuasive argument?”
Wendy smiled, looking up as the waiter was bringing their entrees. “You can ask Terrence and Daniel. I can be VERY persuasive when I want to be.”
“Awesome.” The news seems to perk Scarlett up greatly. “We’ll rent a car, pick her up at the PO Box and have a little chat. Once we’ve dealt with Natalie, we’ll deal with Mika and Camilla too.”
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