Pacifier

🥀Van🌙

"Ok ok, shows over ladies and gents, the show is over..." i clapped my hands together, "you may exit through these two doors, to my left and to my right... Have a safe journey home and a fullfilling nights sleep ladies and gentlemen, goodbye!" i took a little bow, gestured like an airhostess with my arms to the exit and watched, cracking half a laugh as the rest of the crowd scattered. They left the place in a rush of words and whispered and sobs, and when they were gone they left dead silence and Ruben disturbing the peace with his snivelling. I took a moment to bask in the calm after the storm and let out a long sigh.

"Right then, girls..." i yawned, stretching a little melodramatic, a slow revolve, "you won, so... You can follow Meghan here and she'll take you to your new home alright?" i asked nodding to Meghan who stood with her arms hugged around her, trying to hold back angry tears which threatened her eyes. She looked down at Ruben waiting for him to stand up but he didn't, he just stood there snivelling, sickening her to the core exactly as I'd hoped he would.

I hadn't been sure see, I hadn't been sure his humiliation, the trauma of what his uncle had done to him would keep him quiet like that. I hadn't been sure whether in his desperation he might have opened his mouth and tried to get something out.

But I'd been right afterall and now Meghan couldn't take her eyes off him for the disgust she felt. In her eyes he was nothing but a coward who'd been willing to let her die. She wouldn't go back to him again.

"Meghan go with Blakes back to the Amber Lounge, give the girls rooms to stay in, make sure they know the rules... Girls... You don't have to come with us if you don't want to, and if you do you don't have to work for us... But if you come back to Billy Reid before this war is over, the next time a bottleman turns up you wont be so lucky..." i said dismissing them, gun still in my hand as I waved them away behind me, the small crowd of girls shuffling away out the door where the rest of our audience had fled through not five minutes before.

I watched them leave, nodded for Blakes to go with them, guard them on their journey through Reid territory until they reached the cars where Bob and Larry were waiting to pick them all up.

As the doors swung shut behind them i crouched down to take Rubens collar and haul him up. I sat him down in a chair and pulled up one beside him.

"You want a drink Ru?" i asked, "glass of whiskey?" i asked and when he didn't respond I smirked and shook my head. "No no best not had you, don't want your uncle turnin up to this place, findin all his girls have gone and his clientele disappeared, and you in thr center of the room pissed out your mind. All these dead men at your feet..." i kicked the boot of Stephen from Pimlico in London and shook my head. Took a swig for myself and sat down.

"See Ru lad," i said, "those demands your friends made earlier... In case you hadn't guessed... Those aren't gonna happen, I'm not going to give you what you want and all those little threats you made, well they don't mean all that much to me I'm affraid.. Cause you see, Adella Lau's been dead to us for quite awhile now... If you lot kill her you'll be doin us a favour I reckon, and you're not gonna kill our girls, cause your girls are our girls now, and your girl... Your girl has always been one of mine," i split a grin, poked my pointed finger to the tip of his nose and let the scraping of my chair echo and cut the quiet like a serrated blade when I stood up.

"Night lad," i called out to him over my shoulder, glad that our visit had proved almost all of my suspicions.

The Reids were struggling, desperate. If Freddie Lewis and Ruben in his broken beaten up glory were all Billy Reid would send to run the Seven Sirens lounge then they really were losing their grip. Perhaps I'd been right all along. Perhaps Billy Reid had lost the plot.