The study was dark, the curtains drawn on late afternoon or early evening.
I wasn't sure.
I wasn't sure of anything anymore. Only that Jake was dead. Ruby was dead. And I hadn't seen Isabelle for several days.
Those were the three things I knew. Those, along with one suspicion, were all that was on my mind.
The suspicion, that I was losing control, losing my mind, was fluctuating in certainty by the second.
With every whiskey I'd knocked back the notion had intensified and washed away, and every time I felt myself growing certain that I was, losing my mind that is, I knocked back another drink and let the thought wash away.
But it didn't work. It wasn't working.
The out of control world I'd wound up in was a relentless truth and one which couldn't simply be washed away with JD.
All the alcohol was really working on was the ache in my chest. The dull ache of heartbreak. Like a bruised rib. The swollen soreness which soared in me everytime I remembered Izzys face, the last time I had seen her. Puffy eyed, red cheeks, sad and swollen features. The sad swollen features of a girl I'd let down. A girl who wouldn't look at me the same, with love and understanding, ever again.
A girl who I had hurt, who I had wounded. Who wouldn't trust me now or tomorrow or ever. A girl who looked at me and saw only a monster.
I wouldn't ever see her the way I once had, full of sweetness and light, ever again. Because she wouldn't look that way when in my presence now. She would only ever look like a girl harbouring disgust and horror, betrayal and a sadness so pure it spilled from her in every moment.
And she would look that way because of me.
This I was certain of because she had fled every room I had entered since the morning she'd found out about Jakes death. And all the times she'd not been able to leave she had shrunk into her brothers side, hidden away from me by burying her face in his neck or his shirt, pulling his jacket around her so that he would chuckle and remind her she wasn't as small as she used to be, that thst didn't work anymore.
She hated me, I could tell because she tried her best not to look at me now and when she did it was with more fear than she'd ever looked at me before.
I'd lost her, just as suddenly and as easily as Larry had warned me. I shouldn't have been shocked but somehow I was, and this was all I could do to numb the pain.
The light of my life, the most precious thing I had, my soul, snatched away from me and why? My own stupid decisions. Things I should have thought through but hadn't made the time.
So she was gone and the life we all knew was burning, turning to ash all around me. And I couldn't think, couldn't see straight, couldn't stand the self loathing and the pain which had overwhelmed me since I'd realised. She was gone.
The rest paled in comparison to her. She was all Id ever thought I could save. Everyone else already scarred, izzy had been the only pure thing left in our lives. She'd been the one I was really fighting for and now, what? She was tarnished with grief just as the rest of us had been, she had seen death and all his dark twisted friends.
And worse, she had seen worse than that in me.
I poured myself another glass. Hoped the dark would creep up and consume me. Hoped the hopelessness would fade and the insencent buzzing in my mind would settle long enough to let me think. For long enough to let me think of a better plan. A method of winning this war which felt now like it couldn't be won but which had to be.
I knocked back the glass and poured another. Tipped my head back, eyes closed. Waiting.
"You fucking bastard!"
I looked up at Larry slowly, bracing myself for the onslaught of fury I knew I was about to face. Grief drove people mad. I'd seen Larry lose people before. I was expecting hell. I was prepared for hell.
So I remained calm, on the outside at least. Looking up at him from where I sat at my desk, cigarette smouldering between my lips, feet on the table, a telephone in my hand.
I'd been debating calling Sam, putting him on red alert and all that, letting him know i didnt care where he took little Della as long as she was safe. As long as they couldn't get to her.
"You fucking bastard! I thought we were watching her fucking house?!" he shouted slamming his fist down on the table when he felt I wasn't listening, though I was.
I was listening and thinking, taking it all in, processing it slowly, calmly, knowing that I needed to tread carefully if I was to get the response I needed from him.
"Van fucking look at me and tell me why Ruby is dead..." he snapped, and when I looked up at him again he knocked my cig from my hand and sent the phone flying too.
"I was using that..." I mumbled, blunt and stupid, woozy with the whiskey I'd spent my morning drinking.
"Well you're not now, you're talking to me, we're having a conversation and you're about to tell me why the fuck Ruby is in a body bag!"
"Lau..." I drawled a lazy warning, warning him not to raise his voice, my ears burning with the paranoia that Izzy might be somewhere near by, listening in, learning more about the evil I attracted. Gathering more and more reasons to hate me.
The office was dark, I hadn't turned a light on for days. Id learnt of Ruby's murder in the dead of night and i had stumbled through the dark to the cabinet we kept the drink in, and I had drunk. Drunk in the sunrise until the morning slurred into the afternoon. I hadn't seen a soul all day, until now. Until Larry had forced the locked office door open and stormed across the room to me.
The me who was slow and out of sync and struggling to say the right thing. The alcohol had numbed me to tranquility but now I couldn't speak, not clearly not sensibly, not charismatically or encouraging the way I needed to be.
"Larry I was using that phone," i let out a long sigh, "Ruby's dead because the Reids fuckin shot her..." i said knowing as the words slipped from my lips that they were the wrong ones, that I was heading for a smack across the face.
And when it came I wasn't stunned or surprised and the pain ached a dull ache. My cheek bone throbbed and i felt the pressure behind my eye, but it wasn't bad and it didn't help. Maybe it helped larry but it didn't help me.
"Can you at least act like you care? Jesus christ you selfish cunt Van!" his voice was raised and it rung in my ears and when I sat up a little straighter, disorientated and nauseous the look in his eyes was sobering. Too sobering.
"I do care Larry," i said, dull voice, tired. I didn't sound like i cared but I wasn't very good at that these days. My father had done a good job of beating that out of me at a young age and now the only way I really knew to show that I cared was by getting things done. "I was using that phone to call Sam, red alert you know..."
Those words seemed to quell his strife a little but they didn't do much, not enough. They didn't take the red rims from his eyes or the tears I could see he was doing well to hold back.
"Have you..."
"I told him not to contact us until I made contact with him, save em being traced but..."
"Don't contact him," he cut me off, "Sams good, really fucking good, they'll already have left," he said, his certainty, his confidence sparking up in his eyes, doing just enough to inspire me a little, to inspire a little confidence in me.
I looked at the phone, half broken on the floor in the corner where he'd sent it flying.
"Alright," i nodded, "We won't call," i said, but that had so far been my only plan to action and now he was looking at me expectantly waiting for something more.
The silence between us buzzed, electric and tense, stifling. It buzzed and echoed in my head and made it hard to concentrate, hard to think. And in the moment I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose, tried to tune back into my own thoughts, tried to make sense of everything and think of something worthwhile to offer my best friends, condolences and revenge, he lost his temper again.
It was the sound of a chair kicked over and clattering which dragged me back to reality this time.
"Larry..." I groaned, rubbing my temples as I leant forward on my elbows, eyes closed so that I didn't see him pacing. Only heard him kick the chair despairing with me, the way Id have been despairing with him had our roles been reversed.
"You really are somethin else you know Van..." he was almost laughing, not quite, too gritty, too angry for humour. It cut. "Ruby's been fucking killed and you're sitting here fucking drunk!" he was shouting again now, that hysterical shout, the kind which only comes from a man on the brink of tears. "Why wasn't anyone watching that house Van?" he asked again and though I didn't have the heart to tell him, I told him anyway.
"I didn't want anyone to think we were watching the house..."
"Are you... Are you being serious?" he turned to me, the shock unforgiving, his despair notched closer to the edge, "are you seriously sitting here, telling me that my grandmother's dead because you were busy keeping up appearances?" he cried, "Jesus christ if that's how you're playing it we really are fucked arent we..."
"Larry," i groaned, running my hand through my hair, elbows on my desk the only thing supporting me. "Larry I'm trying alright," i said, too drunk to really hold myself up now, looking at him double vision. My eye was throbbing still with the impact of his punch though the punch itself seemed years ago already.
"Not very fucking hard clearly!" he shot back.
"Would you pick that bloody chair up and sit down," i sighed trying once more to sit up, reaching across for the bottle of whiskey, grumbling to myself when Larry snatched it away first, poured it for himself.
"Sober up and sort this out," he said, his voice low and threatening, almost growling almost hissing. All I knew was that the agony in his voice was equal to the agony I had caused and the agony he could inflict if I continued to fail him. His eyes were harsh and sharp and I couldn't look away. I knew I couldn't let him down again.
"Sober up and sort this out," he said again, a little louder as he turned away and headed for the door, abandoned that bottle of whiskey on my desk so that as I reached for it and poured myself another glass I could shout too. Slurred as my speech may have been.
"Pick that fuckin chair up Larry!" I called back after him, the whiskey on my lips in the next moment burning and sweet, sticky.
And when the door swung and slammed shut he left me in darkness again, alone, again. Head swirled and swarming with too many thoughts, too many things to consider.
Della. Izzy. The business. The war. Meghan. Billy Reid. The Amber Lounge. Those fat cats from the city. Sam. Jake. Ruby. The Bottlemen family history, all those mysteries and secrets.
Lyra.
It was too much for one man to consider, all of it too twisted up, too complicated.
If I chose to shoot up Billy's place, kill them all over night I caused too much of a scene, presented as unstable, untrustworthy, wed lose the support of the police, we'd lose those clients I'd begun to try and build a relationship with. If I killed the Rieds tonight they'd take their revenge by killing Sam and Della somewhere up in Newcastle.
If I killed them all tonight, if we wiped them out, they took with them Lyras secrets, Izzys history. They took the truth and buried it and we would never know. Was it worth it?
There was no such thing as a free pass now. Every move I chose to make had consequenses and I couldn't think when all these thoughts were buzzing around my brain. I needed to think but it was too loud inside my head. Thoughts and memories, plans and strategies, flashbacks and fears all mangled and mashed up together. It hurt. It hurt and I couldn't think.
But I needed to.
I needed to for my family, for Larry, Della, Blakes, Bob, Bondy and Dylan. I needed to for the girls, for Camille and Nakita. For all the families who just happened to live on the streets I owned, who hadn't asked for the bottlemens protection, hadn't wanted anything to do with us, but who hadn't had a choice when we'd turned up, who needed us now because of us. The evils we attracted. The evils we committed.
And I needed to think, to sober up and sort this out, for her.
For Izzy.
The girl who I loved, dearly and desperately, who didn't trust me anymore. Who wouldn't come near me anymore. Who hadn't let me see her for several days.
I needed to think for her because her life depended on it and her life meant more to me than anything else in this world.
AN/ shit update im sorry