This is the setup and opening post for a story that never really got off the ground. It is somewhat a modern day 'Red Riding Hood', and the 'big bad wolf' could be any type of upscale gangster with creative ideas as to how Scarlett can pay back the money she owes.
Scarlett Capuche is twenty-seven years old, and is the owner of one of the city's most successful restaurants. Though small, it is in an ideal location to attract the lunch and dinner crowd for the financial district, while small and cozy enough to bring in the artsy crowd from the nearby suburbs. Her father was a chemist, her mother a chef, and between the two of them, they brought molecular gastronomy into their business long before cooking shows like 'Master Chef' brought it into the main stream.
Or, rather, she owns 25% of Out of the Box, which also specializes in gourmet picnic basket meals. The other 75% is owned by her parents, who have retired and moved to Charleston to enjoy the fruits of their labor (65%) and by her brother, Hunter (10%). Hunter is not involved in the business at all, so the bulk of the responsibility has fallen on Scarlett's shoulders as manager.
At first, Scarlett was proud, and enthusiastic about the trust. She'd been working around and at the business since she was a child, and she'd done well in school, graduating early from high school and going on to take business classes at the local community college, in order to keep her hand in with the business. She'd always been a bit of a goody two shoes, and smug about it, she'd been homecoming queen, prom queen, and perpetually on the honor roll, and took a somewhat more perverse pleasure in it because her brother, Hunter, was such a screw-up in the eyes of her parents - bad friends, drinking, drugs, dropped out of high school at seventeen, though he was arguably as smart as she was. He'd gotten his GED, finishing the test first and barely hesitating at any of the questions, and apparently he was satisfied with his non-working 10%, and moved out. What he does, Scarlett wasn't certain, but he never seemed to lack for money, a car, or a place to stay.
Somewhere in the mix, things started to go bad. Scarlett had made a couple of bad supplier decisions, spent money that the company couldn't necessarily afford due to fluctuations in investments on sprucing the place up. The weight of running the business, of having her parents, her employees, depending on her had gotten harder and harder to bear, and she'd done something really, really stupid. Her ex had turned her on to this 'sure thing' and she'd invested everything she could scrape up, including the company payroll, and lost it all.
She'd turned to Hunter, but he shrugged and said he was short on cash at the moment, but he knew where she could get a loan to tide the company over for payday. There had been glee dancing in his eyes when he said it, and he'd upped the ante the same way he'd always done when they were kids, adding in the one dare she never could resist. "Unless you're chicken..."
They'd loaned her the money, even at a reasonable rate of interest rather than usury, but there'd been a condition. She had to take something from one of her regulars ... nothing much, just his cell phone. He'd taken some pictures, the man said, of one of his friends, the kind she didn't want spread all over the internet like he was threatening to do. It sounded sort of fishy, but Scarlett was desperate, so she'd done it.
Turns out, big surprise, that the story was a line of bull, but now Scarlett was hooked, plus she still wasn't out of the red with the business, and paying back the loan had been problematic. "That's okay, sweetheart," the man had said. "You can work it off ... like with the phone."
She ought to have been mortified. She ought to have called her parents to fess up, and she ought to have told Hunter to get the fuck out of her life and stay out. But she couldn't. Maybe Hunter thought it was her pride that kept her from it, or maybe he knew something she hadn't figured out yet ... that she felt more alive since this started than she ever had ... and the idea of going further in was better than diamonds AND a new Lexus.
"Goodnight, Miss Capuche."
Scarlett looked up from where she was counting out cash into a neat little pile, frowning at the interruption. Luckily, this wasn't the first time she'd been preparing to make a payment on her 'outstanding balance' to the assholes Hunter had hooked her up with, or she'd probably have given herself away by doing one of those guilty tells. Funny, she guessed, how you get used to it. The first time, she'd been shaking in her Cazabat boots, flinching at every sound, with the doors triple checked locked and the lights off. Afterward, she'd realized that acting like you had something to hide was the one thing that made everybody sit up and take notice.
"I thought you'd gone, Louis. Did you need me for something?" She paused in her counting, her perfectly manicured fingernails tapping lightly on the bill's surface. His expression told her that he'd love to give one of his trademark ladykiller remarks, but they'd had that discussion before, and she'd meant it when she said she'd fire his ass in a heartbeat if he didn't take the hint. She didn't date employees of the restaurant, no matter how gorgeous they were. That was a mistake she'd made once, half a lifetime ago, and she wasn't the kind to repeat her mistakes, not when there were so many new ones out there waiting.
"No." When she didn't change expression, Louis' expression molded into one of charming boyishness, a wry chagrin that his would-be lovers probably found charming. Right then, he could have been dressed like a Chippendale dancer with bills stuffed in his thong and Scarlett wouldn't have done more than roll her eyes. She had things to do, and people to see ... and the people weren't very nice (at least on the inside) and certainly weren't patient. "I was just making sure the new guy cleaned his station up to standards."
"Did he?" The words weren't harsh, or clipped, but rather just neutrally expectant. If there had been a problem, she'd better not have to drag it out of him. That was why he was head chef.
Louis shrugged. "Yeah. No problems."
Scarlett waited another breath, then raised a smoothly plucked eyebrow. She looked good, as good at the end of the night as she had at the beginning. Her days of working in the kitchen, of waiting tables, of being dogsbody were long gone. Now, she was at the front of the house, and she dressed appropriately for greeting guests and keeping things running smoothly by delegation -- though every once in a while she'd make up one of her special picnic baskets for an important, valued customer ... or one that she had a soft spot for.
"Well then ..."
Louis sighed, his teeth flashing against the dark skin, fashionably shadowed with a light, neat beard, and visibly conceded, if not defeat, at least a stand-off in the status quo. "I just wanted to say goodnight. Are you sure you don't want me to walk you to your car? It's a good neighborhood, but still ..."
Scarlett resumed her counting. She didn't want the payment to be so much as $1 short ... or $1 over, for that matter.
"No, I'll be fine. Go on, just lock the door behind you, and make sure the gate's down over the front." Good neighborhood, but that was all the more reason to make sure the expensive glass door and windows had protection. They'd been robbed before, though that was before the new security system ... one of the upgrades she was still paying off. She was damn sure going to get her money's worth.
Soon enough, she heard Louis call out another 'good night' as he left, and she heard the beep of the door's opening and closing. With a sigh, she finished her task, and carefully put the stack of cash in the deep pocket of her jacket and made sure it was buttoned in. Now that it was time, her heart was beating faster, and she felt ... god, she knew what she felt. It was like a gambler's high, or at least what she'd read about them back in the day when she'd tried to understand Hunter better. She'd felt so superior back then, so righteous and smug because she was making the effort, so certain that she'd never be bit by the bug.
Well, she hadn't been bit by that bug, but rather one that probably was kissing cousins to it. She'd tried to take on too much, too fast, so certain that she'd be able to get it done like she always had before, and instead, she'd fallen flat on her pretty little ass. Still, she was digging herself out of it, no thanks to her asshole brother who was probably sitting back on his couch with a scotch in one hand and god knew what in the other, smirking at her difficulties. Well, she'd done what they asked her to ... and, whether she wanted to admit it or not, it was that that caused the high.
Maybe she and Hunter had more in common than she wanted to admit, especially when he was in the catbird's seat looking down at her.
But there was no time for introspection, and she'd stopped going to her fashionable therapist years ago, and that was a decision she didn't regret. She had a payment to make, and being on time was in her own best interest, at least for now.
She stood, turned off the lights, and gave a final look around before exiting. At least it was late enough that city traffic shouldn't be that much of a bitch, especially where she was going ... though she might have to weave through the johns looking to buy a little pseudo-affection. Outside, the muggy warmth of the autumn day lingered still, making her jacket feel too heavy. The sky above was clear and bright, colored a light blue/black by the lights, accented by an occasional flash of neon. There were still car horns, shouts, a dozen different kinds of music ... the city never slept, and neither would she. It'd probably take at least a brandy before she could even think of sleeping after handing off the installment.
There was the familiar sound of her car's security system turning off as she held down the button on the door, the key in the inner pocket of her jacket. There was no time wasted as she slid in behind the wheel, buckled in, and depressed the button that made the engine hum to life. Another day, another profit ... except today she was going to make a payment for the loan sharks who'd helped her out with her little over-extension problems. At least it would give her a chance to gather more information, because she was determined to find something that would give her the upper hand, some sort of bargaining power. If she was going to be swimming in shark-infested waters, then she either wanted a fucking laser-powered harpoon ... or to be one of the sharks.
