She tried ignoring the hunger in her tummy. It was gnawing at the corners and pestering her constantly. She pulled the edges of the scruffy coat around her shoulders. True, it was once an ermine fur coat, but it had fallen into a sad heap. Stains, thin and threadbare to barely keep the warmth in, and a deep slit in the side up to the thigh. She shivered, pressing her legs against her chest to keep most of the warmth she could create in her.
Every day was like clockwork. The Rules of the Clock, Ma called it. Five a.m. Get out of bed (and try to stay awake.) Wash with buckets of collected rainwater. Dress. Six a.m. Collect Ma's clothes from the laundromat. Not enough for her own. (Try not to sneak an extra cup of coffee from the vending machine.) Take Ma's coffee home. Six-thirty a.m. Set the alarm clock to a five-minute timer (and take awake the snooze button.) Seven a.m. Breakfast. Pick up Eggs Benedict for Ma. Two hash browns. Baby spinach. Four pieces of thick bacon. Two poached eggs. Benedict sauce. Fresh parsley. (Check the change if there's enough for an extra hash brown.) Seven-fifteen a.m. Walk with Ma to work. (Sneak eat the hash brown. ) Eight a.m. Wait. (Waiting, and being bored, bored, bored.) One a.m. Ma finishes work. Go home to sleep. And we repeat all over again.
"Ya poor soul."
Erin barely moved. Bradán levered himself onto the steps beside her. The backdoor of Lucky 8's was safe for her. Safe with Bradán on guard from the brawlers and troublemakers. Garret made sure of that. As long as Ma worked; he'd provide the safety of her daughter, seated on the wooden steps and lean-to of rusty metal. The wood creaked as the bulk of the bouncer's seat combined with Erin's bent the wood almost to a snapping point. No customers passed, except for a staggering drunk. The day was young. Business would strike at night. That's where his fists would come out and he'd earn his stripes.
He reached into his jeans and took out a sandwich, unwrapping the top plastic. Thin slices of ciabatta. Thick-cut bacon. Tomato, lettuce, garlic mayo, and melted butter oozing between the layers. He split the BLT in half. "Hungry?"
Erin was always starving. Ma got the best of everything. 'Its our living, honey bun. Everything I earn is for our living." While not dropping a scrap for her daughter. What Garret paid her disappeared into mink fur coats, plunging dresses with eye-catching necklines, Jimmy Cho heels, and food that would make Erin drool. Her Ma had once clamped her mouth shut over Chicken schnitzels, making Erin bite through her tongue.
Erin shoved the half sandwich into her mouth, smearing garlic mayo over her cheeks with greasy bacon, not even chewing an ounce of it.
"Jesus Christ, Joseph, and Mother Mary." Bradán had barely peeled off his portion of plastic covering the sandwich. "Ya pig."
"I only got one hash brown for breakfast." She licked the glob of mayo. The BLT wasn't the best. The bacon was lukewarm, but it was far better than waiting ten whole hours until she could eat anything.
Bradán handed her the remaining sandwich.
"You not hungry?" she asked.
"I'll live." Garret gave each employer thirty percent off everything he provided his clients. Food was better than the slop she had at home, if you didn't pig out the caviar, fifty thousand dollar bottles of champagne, Wagyu steaks, Caffè mochas, and buffalo fried chicken wings.
The sandwich curbed her breakfast cravings. She could hang on until midnight.
What kinda' Ma leaves her daughter in the cold until she's finished? Bradán thought. Poor girl.
Erin had been waiting here outside Lucky 8's since she was three. As a baby, a tenant had offered to look after her, for price while her Ma was at work. Thirteen dollars a day. It had been too much for Ma to pay, so she approached Garret. He'd hammered out a deal. "You work for me seventeen hours a day and your pretty lass will be safe."
Now she was Garret's best angel. With the best lifestyle in the club and body on offer.
You get the rich scrapings while I get the hog's filth! Erin's belly churned, hungry for more. Shut up. She shivered, the wind biting at her like needles. Her teeth chattered as Winter greeted her again like an old friend. Hello, Erin-what's-your-name, are you cold? Good. Let's see if I can freeze you to death before the five hour mark, hmm? Let's try with this breeze here.
Ice blasted against her, flapping open the coat. Erin curled into a tighter ball, pulling the fur in an iron-death grip around her. Then the night temperature and smells would come like a gale. Putrid, rotten, like sewage, cigarette smoke and urine. The sweet smell of blood and too strong alcohol and moldy clothes.
It could NOT get any worse? she moaned to herself.
It was the crack of thunder made Erin shrink under her coat. She hated her Ma. She really, really hated her. All was visible was a streak of red hair peeking from the fur. Just her, Bradán, and her freezing nuts inside a crappy coat.
The rain fell in a thin miserable drizzle then slid off her nose, slowly soaking into the fur coat.
Obviously it could, indeedy.
"You wanna beer? It'll warm ya up rather than that..." Bradán wrinkled his nose at the ratty, stinking coat.
"I'm underage."
"It's better than that thing ya wearin'. "
The last time it rained was when Erin was five and it had come down in torrents, drenching her like a miserable cat. She'd run into Lucky 8's, asking the customers where her Ma was. They stared, smiling behind manicured fingers at this pathetic bedraggled creature of a girl, tugging at their hems and coats, asking for her Ma, saying she was wet, cold, and hungry. Bradán had been watching the bar, a beer in one hand. This little waif had waddled over to the counter, her tiny tuft of red hair peeking over the top, asking if she got eat something.
Crash!
Smashing glass and spilt whiskey turned heads. "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL-!!"
Garret had dragged her out by the roots of her hair and hurled her down the back steps. Erin had never been hit before and his fist split her lip. The second filled her mouth with blood. The third nearly dislocated her jaw.
The sound of crunching bone had stopped Garret. She was his angel's wager card. If the babe died, Shannon would leave and his clients would not be drawn to the angel. Then he drew the knife.
"Now you listen to me, you little tyke. If you EVER step one foot into my house, I'll cut you open like a pig."
Little Erin had been too terrified to speak.
"After I'm finished with you, I'm docking a week's wages from your Ma. That'll teach her to keep an iron grip on you."
The metal had cut her deeply. Enough to reach the bone.
Garret had barked at Bradán to patch the bleeding "tyke" up.
When Ma had found out, she'd stormed out after her shift was finished and dragged Erin home by the cuff of the neck and beat her in the apartment, screaming at her.
"YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH!!"
"EVERYTHING I DO FOR YOU! EVERYTHING I GIVE YOU, AND THIS IS HOW YOU TREAT ME?!"
Her Ma's rage was nothing compared to Garret's. Unremorseful. Unforgiving. Unleashing her rage upon Erin until her fists and feet satisfied her. Erin quickly knew her place that memorable night. Like her Ma did in Lucky 8's. Shannon showed Garret's girls who was the true angel of Lucky 8's, cementing her position with her iron fist. She was the angel of gold and pearls.
Erin had learned to keep her fat mouth shut. If you knew my Ma's temper, you'd stay away.
The Rules of the Clock were the rules her Ma had instated. "Break them and you'll feel my fist, Erin. You get my things ready. Come with me and wait. You'll wait rain, hail, or shine until my shift is over."
The Rules of the Clock could be damned, Erin thought. Shucking the coat, she stood up, her frozen limbs cramping as she stretched. Her muddy Vans kicked the coat into a heap beside Bradán.
She was not stick-and-bones like the wrenches who lived in the sewers, but her body showed signs of misery. Grimy skin stretched over cheekbones that were visible as if the skin had been carved up with knives. Her slender body was thin and almost every bone could be counted in the ribcage and spine. Her fists kept her alive. She ate what she scraped and stole.
More like her temper. Red hair to match her blade-sharp temper, quick on the draw and to deliver.
"Ya not waitin' ?"
"Screw that."
Bradán had seen Shannon show any girl trying to claw her way to the top that she was the most powerful woman in Lucky 8's. It hadn't been a pretty sight. Some had ended up half-drowned, a worse fate than the men who were too rough with the girls.
"Ya know she's gonna beat the crap outa ya if she catches ya-"
"Are you seriously thinking on stopping me?" She swung a dangerous eye at the bouncer. Built like a brickhouse he might be, but Erin had dolled out punches to men like him who overstepped the mark.
"No. But I'm warnin' ya." He wiped raindrops from his moustache.
She required something to divert her from the rain, nasty and thin over her skin. Something to stop her from personally strangling her Ma when her shift finished. She required something to divert the gnawing moan in her belly.
She needed food.
Millie would have food. Millie always knew where the best diggings were.