Chapter 7
Jack, somehow, had managed to completely keep his nose clean, in spite of spending his evenings at O'Malley's, the closest local pub, watching several of the girls come and go, he still kept just enough distance that no one turned their disgust onto him the way they had with the girls.
She wasn't the only one, she knew she wouldn't be when this whole thing started. There was Lia, too, cheerfully jumping on board, so grateful that anyone was paying attention to her that she didn't care in what form that attention came, Hazel and Imp quickly joining in as well, Hazel somehow managing, in spite of her ice princess attitude, and Imp already a master pickpocket, quickly learning how to snag extras as the men were walking away. Johanna was the last one to start sneaking out with them, a tiny little pixie of a girl the others called Whisp, and it was Johanna that bothered her more than any of the others. The girl was only fifteen, too young for any of it, to her way of thinking.
But it didn't matter to Jack, as long as he got his money, carefully stashed away. She had half-expected him to flaunt it, wave it around, but that would have given him away, she was sure. Instead, he went about his life, being that good guy, winning back his perfect girl, even going to a union meeting or two, giving the girls a much needed night off to sleep.
Everyone knew, of course, about the girls. Whispers, and looks, abounded. Jaguar seemed ready to bully Mrs. Bulger into throwing them all out of the rooming house she was so disgusted, and the dark haired girls leader was starting to get into yelling matches with Lia and Imp almost every day. Everything was coming to pieces, her life was dissolving back into the chaos it had been just after she'd lost her factory job, and she couldn't stop it, it was all her fault.
Small wonder she'd started picking up bottles of laudanum again. The opium and alcohol mix had been her best friend in the days before Jack Kelly had found her on the church steps, and it was becoming that again. The dull, dazed feeling it left her with made going through the motions, any motions, so much easier. She didn't have to feel much of anything.
Days started to blur together, blobs of time dripping past in clumps. One day was Monday, and the next thing she'd know, it was Thursday. She tried to keep up selling newspapers, but the act itself was so absurd, so pointless that she could barely invest any effort into it. And Jack's occasional snarking didn't help matters at all. The fact that she was his favorite of the girls, but that didn't stop him from sampling all his own goods only made her feel worse.
The look on Race's face every time he saw her didn't help matters at all, either. He knew, of course he knew, about what she was doing at night. He probably had even figured out Jack's part in it. She'd seen the looks he gave his leader as well, betrayed and angry. She tried to talk to him, but he walked away, and the disgust on his face was like someone was driving a knife into her stomach, and jerking it upwards. She could almost swear she could see her own guts spilling onto her hands. And that was only the first time. A feeling of shame and regret so real, so physical, that she could swear someone was gutting her. She expected carnage when she looked down, only to be confronted by her ratty dress, over a rattier corset, holding her...assets higher.
It was probably the laudanum. Confusing her, muddling her, making it impossible to think straight, to come up with some kind of plan to get out of it, some way to make all of this madness stop. And the worst part was that she was drugging herself, she couldn't stop herself, she would get so sick, shake so hard if she tried not to take it.
Everything was falling apart. She was terrified it would only get worse.
And, of course, it did.
It was finally getting warmer, finally spring was arriving, and she knew she wouldn't be forced to stand in the snow much longer when Whisp tugged lightly on her coat, to catch her attention. It was morning, and they'd just managed to snag coffee and toast before heading out with the others to pick up newspapers, standing in the back of the line as though half-hoping there would be none left when they got there. The younger girl's eyes were dark, and not completely because of the fact that one of them had been blacked not all that long ago. "Goldie? I...I've been gettin sick most mornings recently."
"Maybe you have a bug or somethin, Johanna, I don't know. Ask Mrs. Bulger." She was so tired, so worn out, still shaking slightly, the drops of laudanum she'd added to the glass of water she'd consumed before heading down to get her coffee hadn't kicked in, or maybe wouldn't, because of the coffee, she wasn't sure.
"Goldie...I've been gettin -sick- in the mornings. And..." The girl's eyes were wide as Whisp caught her hand and pressed it firmly against her lower belly.
It was a bit too firm. And she was sick mornings... "Oh, no." Her eyes closed as she tugged her hand free of Whisp's grip, wincing at the mere thought. "Have you told Jack?"
"I'm too scared he'll hit me." Whisp cringed, ducking her head, and she suddenly knew who had blacked Johanna's eye. Her jaw tensed, fingernails digging into the palm of her hands, and any happy haze she might have managed to gather around herself faded, completely.
"I'll tell him, hun. Let me handle it." The look of relief on Whisp's face was heartbreaking. Worse, because she didn't know how Jack would handle it, what he'd do. He more than enough money to drag her off to some back-alley hack who would probably only succeed in killing the girl, but more than likely he'd dump her on her ass, leaving her to handle it herself. And Whisp was far too young for that.
He was never happy when one of his girls marched right up to him, in the distribution center, and the look in his eyes was murder when she demanded to speak to him for a moment, in private. David was giving him sideways glances as she dragged him off, and she knew she'd pay for the fact he'd have to explain himself to Sarah, but she didn't care. This was too important.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Goldilocks?" Jack's eyes narrowed at her, in the shadows cast by the walls lining the alley she'd dragged him to. "If you wanted me so badly, you could just have waited until tonight. Although you know I hate to wear you out before the paying customers arrive."
"Shut up, Jack. Whisp is pregnant." Her arms crossed over her stomach, protectively, and she braced herself for his fist encountering some part of her. But oddly, it never came. Instead, it found a target in the wall next to her, slamming into it hard enough to almost break bone, from the sound of it.
"Goddamn little idiot." He snarled, pulling his hand back, knuckles bloody, and moving to storm off, clearly intending to go after her.
She caught his arm, pulling him back, forced to exert rather a lot of effort to do so. "Please! Jack...stop. It isn't her fault!"
"And what money do you think she's going to make when she's rolling around the size of a house? And then when she's wasting all her time taking care of some bastard brat?" Jack gave her a dark look, his concern firmly rooted in greed.
"I'll work extra, to make up for it. Forget this...stupid selling newspapers shit. I'll quit this, start working earlier, find someplace else to live. Just don't hurt her, alright?" It was like a death sentence, agreeing to more of it. She was never going to get out from under it at the rate she was burying herself, but she was too worried for Whisp at the moment to care.
Jack twisted, his arm getting free of her grip, wrapping his own fingers, instead, around her upper arm, squeezing. "You'll make up for her? How about this...you give me 75% of what you make, and maybe I won't beat the little twit until she loses that stupid baby. How about that? We have a deal, Goldilocks?"
The lust for money and power in his eyes made him seem like some kind of monster, terrifying, and inescapable. She was almost unsure how she'd ended up here, even. How things could have changed so much, in just a few months. Agreeing to his terms was going to be the end of her. She would never get away from him, never escape. This was going to be her life, forever.
She met his eyes, just staring into them, trying to see past the greed and the anger, trying to find some kind of hope that there was a person left in him that was honest, and good. She stared for so long that he actually flushed, looking away, shaking her to bring her attention back to his question. "Do we have a deal, Goldilocks?"
"Yeah, we have a deal, Jack." There had been something there, buried, at the back of his eyes. A sad little boy who was doing horrible things because no one was telling him not to. But she knew better than to think she could ever change that. The bruise on her arm when he finally walked away, a bruise she knew would bloom nearly black on her skin, was proof that the scared little boy would never learn to stop himself, or at the very least, she wouldn't be the one to teach him.