Meet Me by Moonlight: The Lost & the Fallen: Book One

By Michael A. Ambrosi and Sarah E. Kushner

Her mother called her the Devils girl, and Grace grew up believing it. She now works in a brothel in the failed mining town of Silver Bough with nothing to look forward to but the slow fade of day into night. Soon, shell be too old to keep around, so Grace feels her only recourse is to trick a man into loving her and whisking her away from her life as a whore.

Grace teeters on the edge of madness and despair. Some nights, she imagines herself wandering into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Shes in dire straights; her only options are a loveless marriage or disappearing into the desert to face certain death. Then, everything changes with the arrival of a mysterious stranger who claims to know all about her past.

This stranger wants to show her who she really is, but Grace finds the truth crazier than fiction. Shes flung into a world of dark forces, frightening apparitions, and near-certain destruction. Does she have the strength to survive her own fate? Will she allow others to control her, or will she draw on her inner power to save herself and rise about the lost and the fallen?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jul 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781480819306

Michael A. Ambrosi

Sarah E. Kushner is an artist and art director in Los Angeles, California. Meet Me by Moonlight is her first novel. Michael A. Ambrosi is a freelance writer and advice columnist. He also lives in LA.

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Copyright © 2015 Sarah E. Kushner & Michael A. Ambrosi.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-1928-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1929-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-1930-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015945560

Archway Publishing rev. date: 7/9/2015

Contents

Special Thanks

Meet me by moonlight

Part 1 Silver Bough - 1854

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Bern

Ellie

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Joe

Chapter 7

Myra

Chapter 8

Interlude Simon’s Return

Part 2 Descanso - 1858

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

About the Authors

SPECIAL THANKS

To Mom and Dad, for never saying That’s a really bad idea…

To Casey, for saying You aren’t allowed to quit.

And to my friends, for not minding my insanity too much.

~SEK

To my Mom and Dad for always hanging in there and listening to my stories.

To every teacher that never gave up on me.

To my friends, too many to name, who have constantly supported my writing through the years.

~MAA

A special thanks to M, for pointing us in a better direction.

MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT

For Voice and Piano in the Key of G

Joseph Augustine Wade – 1840

Meet me by the moonlight alone,

 And then I will tell you a tale,

Must be told by the moonlight alone,

In the grove at the end of the vale

You must promise to come for I said

I would show the night flowers their Queen

Nay turn not away thy sweet head

‘Tis the loveliest ever was seen

Oh meet me by moonlight alone

Meet me by moonlight alone

Daylight may do for the gay,

The thoughtless, the heartless, the free,

But there’s something about the moon’s ray,

That is sweeter to you and to me

O remember be sure to be there

For tho’ dearly a moonlight I prize

I care not for all in the air,

If I want the sweet light of your eyes

So meet me by moonlight alone

Meet me by moonlight alone.

"I have tried. I’ve tried to be a good person, and yet everything goes wrong. Why don’t you show me a little mercy… for once, just once, in my wretched life…

Instead of forcing me to live…Just let me die?"

Grace ended her prayer with a single breath into the heated air. She sat and leaned back against a rock as she closed her eyes. There were no tears left, only grit lay behind her lids, not even darkness lay there anymore. The sun overtook all things in the desert, and it beat down on her no matter where she went. She had expected that the shade of the rocks would bring her some comfort, but it hadn’t. Her head soon fell forward into her hands, her grief tumbling out of her in uncontrolled waves that dropped silent and dry into the sand.

The desert is filling me. I can feel it overtaking me, a heartbeat of endless nothing. How cruel that this nothing sounds so much like water. But there is nothing. Nothing but the sun beating against the sand and I. A burning in the center of my body, a fire that feeds the forge that pounds out blade after blade within my mind.

A rapid rushing filled her head, heartbeat pulsing in her ears with the drop of her head. It sounded like water rushing through a stream in increasingly rapid waves until it increased into the rush of water pumping through a mill. Her pulse hammered at the back of her eyes and coursed through her head. The sound became a rising wind that rushed and spun within, toppling her senses and kicking up the pace of her breaths upon her palms. A sharp pain hit her and it was some time before she realized that the pain came from outside of her. The rise in the rush of tornados in her mind was in the air around her as well. Her eyes fluttered in the sunlight as she dropped her hands into the dust. She listened carefully to her own mind, straining to hear. Flying grains of sand struck at her skin, and she realized what the rushing sound was. The sound rose in the distance and sobered her away from her despair, lifting her to her feet with the movement of a hunted animal on the watch….

How many times must I come face to face with death?

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T he trip west would be an adventure. Grace’s favorite Aunt gave her a beautiful book filled with illustrations of birds, a going away present, something colorful to fill the child’s imagination during the long trek. With it resting in her lap, she would study the pictures and keep her eyes searching the landscape for emus and dodos that she thought she could see now and again as they ducked behind trees. There were times that her mother thought that she had seen them too, small, demonic little creatures that hopped about at her daughter’s call. Grace couldn’t remember any of the creatures later in life, or how one day she was sure that her mother and father swatted one away before looking at her and speaking in hushed tones.

A night came when stars fell from the heavens, sparkling and streaking through the sky like so many diamonds. Newspapers would report that if you had gone out in the middle of that night with a book, you would not have needed any other form of illumination to read it. The men and women that traveled with Grace and her family, assuming that the heavens were burning away, hid themselves from the light falling around them. They wrapped themselves in blankets and turned over their wagons. They emptied out chests and closed themselves inside. Grace could hear their soft voices crying out, old prayers begging for salvation, even older hymns. Their small voices only seemed to add to the magic of the night for the child, not fully understanding things like fear and eternal fire.

Grace spun and danced through the encampment, her red curls bouncing on her shoulders, keeping time with her laughter as she held out her skirts to try and catch the falling stars. Everyone hid away but Grace, and no one thought to save her from the doom they thought was coming. She surely should have remembered that, or the small glittering stone that rolled to her feet. But she couldn’t. Grace had held the stone in her hands; its light pulsing against her skin. A faint blue glow before cracking open like an egg and releasing a flurry of smaller, spinning stars that surrounded and danced with her through the trees for the rest of the night.

Grace did remember somewhat that they had lived in a tent for a while as her father and men from the church helped build their new home. The house itself, once finished, was all of one room with a fireplace and a large bed, a table to eat at with slat backed chairs. There was a loft, reachable by a ladder, where Grace’s bed lay. This was indeed a far cry from their home in the city, and this home lay in the middle of nowhere, far removed from any neighbors. The one luxury were the glass windows that the parish had a collection for, a nicety for their beloved Reverend. The nearest town, though moderately sized, was far enough away that it took a full day there and another back to fetch supplies. The home was sturdy in its modesty, constructed of long, split logs. It was functional and kept the elements at bay, the stone fireplace keeping them warm. A small barn was built off to the side for horses and a few goats. As simple as it all was, it was sure to stand strong through time.

The high grass rolled with the breezes that came across the flat land surrounding the home. Grace would sit quietly on a stump outside most days, staring out into the distance. Her eyes would squint and search; the book always on her lap as butterflies played around her head and rested on her fingers. Everything around her new home was golden brown and stretched in every direction for miles. It was the place where Grace came to call home, and after a time, the image of the tall rolling grass grew and filled every space in her mind. This home became the only one Grace could ever remember.

Mother, I brought you flowers for the table. she held out a fist full of bright, papery, red blossoms.

What do you mean Grace? Those don’t grow here. The look of horror that flashed in her mother’s eyes was one that Grace would grow to know well. Burn them, child. No place they can be from but hell.

A common concern as Grace grew up, what was from hell and what was from God. It seemed as the days passed that fewer and fewer things were from God at all.

Grace’s father was a preacher for the families that lived nearby and went simply by the name Reverend to everyone, including his own family. He was a well-respected member of the town and well-loved by his congregation as evidenced by the abundance of home cooked meals that were brought to him by his smiling parishioners. His religion, his form of God, had come to him in a dream as his head lay upon a fine, down pillow in the home of his wife’s family. His was a God of fire, a God ashamed of his creation that only begrudgingly took the most faithful to His breast. This was a God of anger, a God that wouldn’t abandon us, not from love, but from the tearful pleadings within the prayers of men.

Reverend’s beliefs hadn’t fit in with the comfortable members of society in Philadelphia. These beliefs were radical there, heretical at times, especially to those who believed their wealth only proved God’s love for them. In the East, he was an outcast, but here, west, where there was nothing more than high, rolling grass, he was a great man. He was a man of vision. The Reverend was a strong hand in a savage land that had forgone the sins of fine society. He had given up his, or rather, his wife’s comfort and wealth in favor of a life the way God demanded: a life of simplicity and wilderness.

Reverend would ride into town on the back of a large, gray draft horse, no less than eighteen hands high. An impressive sight for sure when the man already stood a head or moreover everyone in town. Reverend was broad and wide, he could pick up a calf like it was no more than a pup. His strength was considered an added gift from God by everyone, a testament that they were blessed from on high with a shepherd that could truly protect them from God’s inevitable wrath.

On Sundays, the Reverend would perform his ritual. He insisted upon silence as you entered the house of the most holy. Upon crossing the threshold, one’s lips had to seal until one left. Reverend would sit beside the pulpit as his flock came and took their seats, looking up from his Bible on the occasional whimper from a child or if a crinoline rustled too loudly. He would pull out his watch at precisely the same moment each and every time, the time to close and lock the doors. God did not wait, and neither did Reverend.

Reverend would stand then once he had checked the time, and he would walk to the opposite end of the church to the door. His steps were heavy and beat into the boards of the floor with great force. Or so it seemed in the silence. Once the doors were reached, they were slammed shut and bolted from within. A symbol perhaps, of being locked out of God’s kingdom.

His footfalls would turn and take the same path back to the pulpit, heavy, thunderous. Reverend would then stand in his place at the head of the church and look everyone in the eye for several moments of continued silence. No one dared move for fear of causing the wood of the benches to protest the weight upon them. Reverend would then raise his Bible above his head and signal all to stand for a long prayer that enforced their future interment in Hell. Tears fell as weeping and the sound of choking sobs were held in place as the parish was told to sit and the sermon began. Grace knew better than to look away, even to count the butterflies that had gathered on the window frame by her elbow.

Reverend shook his fists into the air, his fingers into the direction of bowed heads of sinners. He delivered each scripture as if possessed, a tempest rising in his dark blue eyes. His sermons called out every secret held within everyone’s hearts. The widower Olsen had committed the sin of lust and covetousness, for gazing upon the young wife of Daniel Thomas. Martha Wilson, she was prideful and vain for pinching her cheeks and wearing a fancy new bonnet. Each member condemned to fire in their turn. His ravings would end when and only when he was done and not by the mark of the hour as the sun passed through the windows. No one should count the hours in God’s presence. After his final prayer, he would walk outside and smile kindly, greeting each of his parishioners personally with a warm grasp of his hands around theirs, and they would think, How lucky we are. How truly blessed. An angel to the meek.

There wasn’t one trace of what could be considered evil upon his features. He stormed and raged within the church, but his look was never one that anyone suspected of anything other than a messenger of God. He was tall, strong and had a face that many women of the town secretly dreamed of when alone. His sapphire eyes were soft yet piercing, and they stared out from strong, angled and regal features. White streaks feathered softly through his blond hair, flecked with auburn tones. He was beautiful and bold and everyone loved him.

Behind the closed doors of his own home, so far removed from the eyes of neighbors, he was a very different man.

Reverend both hated and loved his daughter Grace in ways that no father ever should. He loved her more than he ever loved his own wife, and he hated her for the same reason. It was for some time that he avoided his own notions, allowing his daughter her moments alone staring into the distance while maintaining a firm discipline over her. Grace went about her chores of cleaning and tending to the goats with nothing more than the Reverend’s ever present, critical eye studying her every move.

The first time he beat her she was six years old, with the excuse of punishing her for stumbling and spilling a heavy pail of water into the floor. Winter was overtaking autumn with frost forming on leaves that lay on the ground. Snow flurries drifted along the ground carried by sharp icy breezes that numbed small fingers. The pail slipped easily from Grace’s grasp, its contents toppling onto the floorboards and icing up at the waters edge. Reverend reacted, jumping to his feet in an instant, the rage against his daughter already in place. His large, meaty hands hitting her square across the face and sending her halfway through the room. The windows all cracked and covered themselves with the patterns of spider webs. One could only assume the cause was the force of the blow, something the Reverend never expected. How little he knew.

The jar that sat on the table fell to the floor and shattered, the alcohol it contained slipped through the cracks in the floor. This sudden violence followed with what Grace assumed was remorse from her father. Reverend held her close to him, his arms wrapped around her slight frame, kissing her hair and wiping her tears. He begged for her forgiveness.

After that day, he never said a kind word unless he was drunk or had beaten her. A growing resentment within his heart pulled and twisted at him. What he felt was not God’s will and no amount of self-punishment would ever relieve him or make the feelings end. He only ever seemed to enjoy Graces company when she stayed quiet and did her chores, or he held her tightly on his lap. He’d tell Grace she was beautiful. He’d whisper into her hair with light kisses that carried vespers of clear, burning liquid that he gulped greedily from canning jars. He would mumble Lord, forgive me. He’d pet her hair and say that she looked just like her mother did when they first met. The only difference, Reverend said, was the bewitching flame of Grace’s hair. She was a doll, a fine porcelain doll. From then on, there were no colorful birds, no butterflies dancing on her fingers.

It was inevitable that her mother, Lila, would walk in and see her daughter in her husband’s arms. The man she left everything behind for, the man she forsook her family’s wealth for. She would scream and he would jump up, knocking Grace to the ground. He would swear it wasn’t him, that Grace bewitched him. Her mother would repeat her husband’s sentiment, saying that the devil himself was wrapped in Grace’s curls. Actions so oft repeated that Grace’s mother soon lost her mind with a growing rage against her own daughter, insistent that the child was the Devil’s own bitch.

Lila began to age, to an extent that she looked older even than her husband, ten years her senior. The woman who had once been a porcelain doll was now cracked and weathered, a combination of harsh treatment, the shift from a comfortable life in the East and her own inner torment. As time went on, she began to blame her own daughter for her losses, her mind turning to the manufactured religion Reverend had created, imagining demons around every corner.

Lila bore her bitterness against Grace at every turn. The devil was tangled in the girl’s hair or swimming in the ocean of her eyes. Lila’s mind was soon lost. Her hair went white, her skin wrinkled and Reverend wanted very little to do with her by that point. Instead, he’d drink and spend stolen moments alone with his daughter. Lila raged and imagined plots against the Lord and the good Reverend.

Grace was only nine years old by this time. How could she know what kind of plans Reverend had? How would any child know?

On a clear, golden day, with the sky swept clean of clouds that left the world vivid and bright was when things went too far. Grace could not remember what exactly happened that day and never would, not past a series of screams and blurred colors. She didn’t understand how her mind made her forget to spare her the grief of it. The point where memory started back she was crouched behind the barn and crying. Her jaw clenched and spasmed with pain. Tears came so hard and fast that she choked trying to stifle their sound. Her stomach churned in a vile way that made sweat rise up on her skin and leaving her with a desperate need to vomit in relief. Grace knew she had to remain quiet despite the discomfort. Every need she had to scream, cry or expel the foul contents of her belly had to be suppressed. She pressed herself low near the ground, balled tightly against the barn wall, trying to be as silent as a scared child could. All she knew was that she had to remain small. They couldn’t find her if she were small. He couldn’t find her. Being small meant being nearly invisible. A child’s dream.

Get up! came Reverend’s voice, like a drawn out peal of rolling thunder over the plains. The sound of him echoed deep within her. His form stood there, towering over the child, his long shadow blocking the sun.

Grace got to her feet, not even her terror could keep her from obeying. Reverend grabbed her arm, twisting and yanking as he pulled her away from her hiding place. He took her back to the house, his grip so tight he lifted her from fully walking on her own, her small feet flailing in the air. Over the threshold and into the house they went, there was a punishment to be had.

Lila stood in front of the fireplace, clutching a large pair of shears in her right hand. She snapped them over and over again in a kind of psychotic rhythm while fixing her eyes on her oncoming victim.

It’s time we purge the devil from you for good. Get that little witch here!

When she was within reach, Lila thrust her free hand into Graces’s hair, twisting it into her fingers tightly. Grace wailed at the sharpness of the pain. Then came the shears, and the screams as the blades began scraping and cutting into Grace’s scalp. The ropes of hair fell to the floor, butchered from her flesh.

This is your own damned fault you little demon bitch! We’ll take the devil out of you yet! Lila cackled, a maniac intent on her obsessions, snapping and tearing until every last bit of hair was gone. Grace didn’t dare struggle, she had already lost. She could only shiver and hold back her emotion as her mother, once finished with her furious task, swept the hair off the floor and tossed it into the fire.

Smell that, Grace? That’s the smell of evil burning. That’s the smell of burning whore. Lila threw the last bit of hair clutched in her fist into the flames. Grace’s hair was the one thing that was her own and she had secretly loved it. Watching it shrivel and turn to ashes was a torment of its own.

It wasn’t my hair. It was the drink. Grace spoke in a single breath into the crook of her arm as she lay upon the floor where she was dropped. A furtive act of defiance for no one to hear but herself.

What’s that? Lila’s face contorting as she marched towards her was the last thing Grace could ever remember about that night.

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It was dark.

The smell of damp earth and animals was thick in the air. There was darkness, her eyes swollen and stuck shut and she couldn’t quite remember why. Bolts of pain alternated with the vague sense of floating and disappearing into nothing. She could barely feel her arms though she knew they were there, somewhere over her head. There was a slight awareness of her position, but it altered and looped. She could feel the slight throbbing in her wrists where a rope bound and hung her. Or perhaps it bound her to the earth below or tethered her and kept her from floating away.

A single shaft of light broke the darkness as the barn door creaked open, Grace hung limp in its path, unaware and half dreaming. Reverend stumbled through the door, the moon at his back, he wasn’t done with Grace yet. Lila had ruined everything. Lila had stopped his plans before, she couldn’t now.

His footsteps made a drunken stumble through the dark towards Grace, a jar still held in his hand. He then stood there in front of her, studying her body as it hung there before throwing back the last of the drink. The liquor burned sharply down his throat and deep into his gut. He relished the heat.

Reverend had just stood and watched as Lila beat Grace, not expecting his reaction to it. After the deed and after the child was hung in the barn was the first time he had he took his wife to their bed with an ardor for her that he hadn’t displayed in years. He couldn’t help it, he didn’t want Lila, but he couldn’t help it. Since he couldn’t have what he really wanted, he made due. And now Lila slept, worn out from their passions, and he still wanted what he wanted.

He hovered there over Grace, examining Lila’s handiwork. He had half expected to be revolted by it all. The blood and bruises should have made him turn his head, but they didn’t. There was more of a stirring in him than ever before. The more he stood, taking in each wound that lay upon his daughter’s flesh, the more he stirred.

Reverend took out a knife, pausing to look at it glinting in the moonlight, then staggered closer to Grace to cut the rope binding her hands above her head. She fell to the ground with a hard thud and didn’t move, her mind lost in an ether of pain. A small trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Reverend licked his lips and smiled.

He stood there, teetering with drink, contemplating his actions. He recited muddled scriptures of Lot and his daughters. He recited and repeated the sin of Eve. Perhaps he was trying to convince himself that his plan was justified. He threw the jar across the barn, body swaying as he watched his shadow pass over the form of his daughter. …But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.

Reverend, his mind placated with lies, undid his belt.

There was a deafening crack as if a sudden, violent storm had broken inside the barn itself. What seemed like a rain fell upon Grace’s motionless body in hot little drops against her night chilled skin. And then it was silent.

It was some time before Lila moved from the doorway. The rifle in her hand seemed heavy. She blinked, and saw the man that had laid, at last, in her arms only a short time ago, dead on the ground. Even half dead the child had still managed to beguile him. The girl was possessed, she had to be. Reverend was a man of God and there was no possibility in Lila’s mind that he had instigated this. This was the girls doing. A tool of Lucifer. A trap. A viper loose in the den.

Her heart shattered within her breast and the remnants mixed with shards of her broken mind. The pieces tore at her, inflamed her. Her teeth clenched as she charged her daughter, unleashing further fury into the child’s already broken body. Lila’s mad screaming filled the air.

When it was done, when exhaustion deemed she could do no more, Lila stood and looked down at Grace’s body. She aimed the rifle at the girl’s head, but something in her mind seemed like someone had cried out in the dark and she stopped with a sudden jolt. She looked around her, out the door, examined the animals. There was no one. The homestead was miles from anyone and no one could have cried out. The imagined cry, however, made her think twice.

Death was no punishment, she thought, not for this little whore.

And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.

Lila set about making a fire in the center of the dirt floor of the barn, then turned and walked to the wall to retrieve a hay hook.

Damn you to hell.

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Grace fell to the ground and into the mud, having been pulled and thrown from the cart. She lay there limp like a rag doll forgotten in the rain. Lila stood there over her with her fists clenching and unclenching, taking small steps to the right then the left. If it weren’t for the clatter of the surrounding town, one could hear the words that made her lips twitch and bob about with her frenetic breath. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Lila hunched over and looked at the muddied child, her eyes going wide as she curled her lips back to reveal her teeth. Her gaze rolled over Grace’s crumpled body, covered in filth. Her lips began to twitch again as her breath became more ragged, For a whore is a deep ditch…

Lila’s posture went rigid, and she stood again only to clench and unclenched her fists as her breath panted in and out and her mumbling rose in pitch, Get up! Whore! Bitch!

The townsfolk all turned or came out of shops to look. There was horror reflected in their eyes. Before them was the Reverend’s wife, at least some terrifying incarnation of her. It was this terrible specter of Lila that trudged, dragging a bloody, ragged mess through the mud. It was only after looking for several minutes that one realized that the shape was a barely living child.

Some of the townsfolk ran inside to hide from the sight of it. More than a few went inside assuming that the preacher’s wife had to be justified somehow. Two men ran forward when they realized that the ragged thing Lila was yelling at, was, in fact, a child, her own child. Grace was so swollen and bloodied, small patches of hair hung limply from her scalp, it was nearly impossible to know it was her. Even her dress wasn’t much more than a shamble of scraps, barely clinging to her body.

Lila brandished a knife at the approaching men and shrieked, Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

The men backed away and ran for the sheriff. Lila pulled up her daughter from the muck and drug her into the nearby parlor house, tripping and stumbling the whole way. This, after all, is where whores go, she had thought. This was where the Devil’s whore belonged.

Frank was the man you went to see if you happened to be in the market for an interesting young lady. He inherited the parlor house from his late wife, Bess, the local madam. Frank vowed to keep the house as upstanding as a brothel could be. Yes, the man peddled flesh, but he figured that it was either him or someone less savory that would do it. At least in this way, he could in some way keep the growing town somewhat refined. He had a decent reputation though the populace usually avoided him out of propriety. For the most part, people would nod and smile in passing as he strode through the town. He hardly raised his voice above a cheerful croon most days, but try to back this man against a wall, and he was all business. He knew how to knock a few heads when the need arose and had brought his brother and nephew with him from Five Points to keep things in line.

Lila thought little of him, of course, but for her current task she would need him. She found him in the front room of the parlor house, as she drug Grace along, leaving a trail of mud behind them.

Frank stood, puffing on a fine, polished wood pipe. The smoke and scent of tobacco permeated the bright, neatly appointed sitting room. His face was placid, one eye squinting slightly as his gaze switched from Lila to the child, to the trail of filth on the polished floor and back to Lila again.

He addressed the approaching woman in an even-keeled voice,What in the hell do you think you’re doing, messing up my floor? only a slight twitch punctuated his question. He rolled a shoulder as he cast a quick look over to some men sitting in finely upholstered chairs. The men shifted, putting down their papers, moving to the edges of the cushions under them. Their eyes narrowed as they followed the path that Frank’s had previously.

I’m sellin ‘er. Lila spat out. Cunts like this belong here. She’s the Devil’s bitch.

Frank stood, quiet, taking a few contemplative puffs from his pipe. He shifted his eyes again to the men seated in the room, and one stood and shifted a hand to a pocket. Frank shifted his gaze back to the woman, She’s awful beat up and her head is sheared. What are we supposed do with a girl like her exactly? She can’t work like that.

Lila’s voice hitched up What’s the difference? She’s intact where you’d need it. Her eyes went wide and rolled in their sockets.

He strolled around the two of them, silent, taking in the full horror of it all. If anything, it occurred to him that he had to get this child away from this woman. This was his town, and this could not stand as it was. He looked over at the man standing, who shifted again and fiddled with something in his pocket. Frank twitched an eye and the man shifted again and sat back in his seat.

Frank liked his town. His town tolerated him. For now the presence of such a public brothel was overlooked by most, for the simple fact that Frank avoided trouble when possible. This, though, this woman with her tortured child, was trouble.

He wanted nothing more than to let a younger version of himself out from a cage deep within his mind. Frank closed his eyes and let images flash behind the closed lids, letting Lila’s face take the place of others that had taken the full brunt of his vengeance. His self now, standing there in front of this woman, wanted nothing less than to pull out his old blade from the back of his belt and cut her from ear to ear. He took a deep breath. Yes, this thought was trouble. He and his girls would be run out of town for sure then. A cooler head needed to prevail.

She has to heal before I can do anything with her, He let a puff of smoke trail from his lips. He waved a hand and it seemed like he was about to tell Lila to come back another time, but she cut him off.

So… have ‘er clean house, wash laundry or make dinner ‘til then! She waved an arm wildly at the room and curled a lip at the filth she presumed must be there. She knows how to do all that. You’ll make up the money later on. When she’s healed up and ready, you’ll whore her out like she should be. That is what you do here isn’t it?

Frank straightened