Pacifier

\\ Della //

I wasn't stupid. I knew that really I had no escape now. This man was much bigger than me, stronger than me. A lot less out of his depth than me.

And it was me who was backed into the corner, it was him who towered above me.

I was the terrified one. We both knew that he had complete control.

So I did as he said.

I bit my bottom lip, sucked in a breath and shut up. I tried to stop shaking but that was impossible so i held my arms, hugging myself and followed him out of my house.

"Put this on," he said shrugging his jacket off, shrugging his hoodie over his head too and handing them both to me. "Take your time about it..." he said standing by his car, looking around. For a moment I wondered why he was willing to risk being seen and then I realised.

The Bottlemen weren't watching me and he knew it. And if he didn't, he wanted them to see us leave like this. With me willing. He wanted everyone to see me leave like this.

If I looked like i wanted to go no one would think anything of it. No one would call the police until my nana Ru came home to an empty house.
And perhaps Nana Ru wouldn't come home at all.

I chewed my cheek, pulled his hoodie on over my head, shrugged his jacket on over that and tried not to show any sign of relief when the warmth slowed my shivering.

"Alreet," he said opening the car door for me, nodding to the seat. I felt pathetic sitting down before he'd even said a word, but I knew how I had to play this. I had to stop playing it. I had to do as he said and hope for the best, even if it made me feel weak, even if it made me feel stupid.

If I ran now he'd only knock me out and steal me away anyway. At least if I was concious i could protect myself.
At least if I was concious i could work out where he was taking me.

The car shook as he slammed my door and the draft it swept up was icy like his eyes when he sat down in beside me, gripped the steering wheel and focused on the road. He didn't look angry but the sharp cut of his cheek bones and his jaw still sent my blood running cold with fear. He looked like a Reid, just as much as he looked like a Bottleman. He looked violent and he looked cold. He looked like the sort of man who would kill me if I gave him reason.

We drove in silence.

"Do you want somet on?" he nodded to radio.

The windows were blacked out, but I recognised the bumps in the road as we drove down the road which wound round to the rough end of town. The end of town where fights were started, fought and lost.

It was the Reids end of town and when the car slowed down my breath condensed and suffocated me. My head throbbed with the fear, my pulse would leave me alone. But he only slowed.

He didn't stop.

For a moment his headlights lit up a grimy innercity street, like a slum, like the gutter. The lowest of the low crawling out of the sewers in highheels and trainers armed with lipgloss and unspeakable homemade weapons. Murders, whores, dealers and smackheads, business men leading double lives as criminals, criminals leading double lives as business men.
It was a cheap suits kind of evening outside the White Lion, outside Roxys where "the girls," danced in lace and leather and the money was paid in directly to Billy Reid.
It was sleezy, it was dirty, it made my skin crawl with a new brand of discomfort.

I wondered after the dead bodies somewhere round the back with the bins. I wondered whether that was where I was going to end up.

"Is this where you think am takin you?" he asked nodding to the smouldering scorched remnants of a building my family had burnt down.