sam_mm (sam_mm) wrote in morningstar_mnr, @ 2008-03-20 14:07:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | jane, shila |
San Diego, CA, Shila, the OG boys and Jane... Closed.
Shila was fiercely grinning as they returned to the hotel room that afternoon. "We've got him. When I showed the judge who financed his investment company, I could see in his eyes that Judge Heche knew your soon-to-be-ex had milked you for everything you'd had and everything you ever would."
Jane ventured a smile, she was still reeling emotionally, "I just, I had no idea what he was worth now, I mean, I knew where it started of course, but, I really hadn't thought much beyond protecting my little trust fund." Compared to everything else, it was little now, but it was still hers. "I still can't believe it."
"Believe it, girl. You're going to be able to move into your own penthouse in the Manor when we're done. And make no mistake: men like him, even if he'd had a billion dollars he'd still want to gobble up your trust fund. He never will have enough." She gave that nasty smirk again. "And I will make damn sure he never, ever will."
Jane couldn't help but be just a little bit scared of Shila, she'd seen a whole other side to her today, when Shila had gone from being gentle and reassuring to cold and calculated, hard almost, with just a touch of pit bull terrier to her. She hadn't let John get away with anything. Jane was incredibly glad that Shila was on her side, "Well, I don't know about a penthouse, but, really, I don't think I'd know what to do with myself if I didn't have something to do, I might keep working and stay in my little apartment for a while, at least, until the dust has settled and everything's transferred. Just in case."
She meant just in case John tried to not pay up, something that Jane was sure he might try at least once, and she didn't want to get caught out by it.
"There's always art. Or running your own company with real employees and everything," Shila grinned. She started coming down off her 'I'm the better lawyer here' high, and stopped being the hard bitch whirlwind she'd been all day and dropped into one of the overstuffed chairs. Even the gangers were looking at her with respect. They'd been present in the otherwise courtroom as protection by Shila's insistence and allowed reluctantly when she had produced the hospital reports and accused John outright of attempted murder.
"In about an hour, we have reservations downstairs for dinner," she informed everyone.
Jane looked round at that, "Um, not anywhere posh? I didn't, I mean, I don't have clothes for posh." The heather coloured skirt and cream jacket had looked good, but she'd been wearing them all day and although they fitted beautifully, they were still unfamiliar clothes, and she had begun to feel ever so slightly uncomfortable in them. "Could I shower first and maybe wear jeans or something?"
"Sure. That's why I gave us time between coming back and dinner. And yes, jeans are fine."
Jane smiled, "Oh good, I'll er, be right back out then." She disappeared into her room, and true to her word was out in around fifteen minutes, wearing a comfy fit pair of blue jeans, obviously new, and a slightly oversized t-shirt in a pale lemon colour. White sneakers replaced the slate grey heels from earlier, ad she'd tied her hair back in a simple tail at the nape of her neck. She didn't realise quite how young she looked, but she was used to carrying id anyway. "I'm set."
The two men in the room hadn't realized how pretty she was until that moment, either, and their faces showed this realization. Shila elbowed Bomb with a grin. "Suck in those tongues, gents."
Jane looked puzzled for a moment, and then blushed as she realised they were all looking at her, "I'm sorry, is there something wrong? Should I change?"
Still with the uncertainty, the self-doubt, but it would probably take years for those to go away altogether.
"No, Jane. The boys are just realizing how pretty you are is all," Shila said as she stood up. "Ready?"
"Oh," if anything Jane blushed a little more, "I er, guess so? I have ID, and it's still warm enough, oh, would I need a jacket?"
"No, it's downstairs off the lobby. Let's go."
With a lighter heart, the hearing had gone remarkably better than Jane had expected, Jane headed for the doors, she was only stopped by the insistence of one of the bodyguards (she wasn't sure which one) who wanted to check the corridor first.
The procession made it down to the lobby in this method. And the lobby is where it came apart. John slid into view with a greasy smile on his face as he 'appeared' from behind a column. "Melissa ... can't we talk about this? Just you and me?"
Jane immediately blanched, going almost pure white, and stepped backwards, away from him. Fear radiated off her in waves, but she shook her head, backing into something solid and risking a brief glance upwards before her gaze dropped back to the floor. The solid thing was one of the bodyguards, and she tried to sidle round him.
Bomb took hold of Jane's arm, steadying her even as Shila stepped forward. The jovial, winning woman from upstairs was gone. Even the pit bull lawyer was gone. In their place was One Pissed Black Bitch. Shila was shaking as she stepped up into John's personal space, teeth clenched and bared, eyes narrowed into slits. "Listen to me, you piece of shit. You stay the fuck away from her. You don't try to talk to her, you don't approach her, you don't even fucking look at her without my saying so. And if you don't like that, you can eat the shit that your fucking smile hides because I will go straight to the police with the proof that Jane's 'accidents' were no fucking such thing and that you killed your own fucking bab--"
John hit her at that point.
Jane yelped, and would have gone to Shila, but she suddenly found herself behind a wall of very angry males, luckily they moved towards John, stepping carefully around Shila and separating the women from the complete idiot in front of them. Even Jane could see that there was no way John could take all three of them, she was surprised Shila hadn't fallen.
"Don't touch him," Shila's cold voice shouted out. When the four men turned to look at her, there was a phone in her hand. Tinnily came a voice from the handset. "9-1-1, what is your emergency?"
"I've just been assaulted by one John Richard Anderson. I have witnesses. We're at the Olympus Hotel on Sixth street. Yes, I'm staring at him right now. My name is Shila Zalack. Thank you."
She smirked.
Jane was shaking, bad enough he'd come here, but to hit Shila? For some reason Jane had thought it was only her, but now she began to realise that it might not have been her at all. It was him. She was still backing away, finding herself back at the lifts, and wondering if she'd be better off just making a dash for the airport and any plane to anywhere but here.
"You're going to jail for that one, bastard. Good luck in court tomorrow, you stupid, violent fuck." John turned with a derisive snort (covering his sudden fear of this woman who wasn't afraid of him, and her fierce friends), just in time to see the police come in.
"This white bastard hit me, officers. The three black men and this woman here are my witnesses." Casually Shila went over and gathered Jane again. She felt it was important that Jane see the police deal with John. "Come on ..." she murmured to her client. "You don't want to miss this ..."
Jane was wide eyed and obviously still terrified, still shaking even, but she went with Shila anyway. She even felt better about the four guys that surrounded them, which was rather a strange feeling. She never said a word though, worried that anything she said would be either completely inappropriate or show her up as the idiot John had her convinced she was.
Shila gave her story to one officer while John spoke to another. To her credit, Shila gave only a mildly edited version of her speech to the officer. Then the three gang members gave their version of what happened to the officer. Then it was Jane's turn.
Jane stuttered and stammered her way through it, so obviously scared that even the police officers softened and were gentler. Especially after she'd mentioned that they'd been in court that day trying to sort out her divorce from John, and that he'd hit her before she ran away. The lobby felt way too crowded and Jane was extremely conscious of the people passing by, stopping to look, and it just made her feel even more trapped, wanting to escape. She got twitchy, wanting to run away and hide.
Shila moved closer to Jane, figuring that being female, she would be less threatening and more comforting. After a while the police took John away to book for assault, and thanked Jane and Shila for calling to report the attack and wished them a good night.
Only when all of the police and John were gone did Shila sag. "Damn ... I need a drink."
Jane just huddled in on herself, her arms wrapped around and her shoulders hunched up. She kept her head down, apart from one brief glance upwards, "Ice, you n-need ice, f-for t-the b-b-b-bruising?" She just wanted to cry, but she'd long ago learned that tears didn't stop it from happening, didn't change things, and sometimes only made it worse. So she didn't cry, not yet.
Shila gave Jane an appraising look and walked over and put her arms around the other woman. "I'll be fine, thank you for asking Jane. I'll just order two steaks - one to eat and one to wear. That was the scariest thing I've done in a long time ..." she admitted.
Jane nodded ever so slightly, "N-need, t-to get, out of h-here." Her self-control was pushed to breaking point, the one thing she had never even thought of was that Shila might get hurt, that John might do anything like that to someone who wasn't her, and inside, she was finding all the old reasons for running held just as much validity now as they had when she first ran. The small amounts of self-confidence she'd managed to gather were disappearing too fast, and she just wanted to be somewhere alone, where she could lose it without disturbing anyone else.
"Well, we've missed our reservation in the restaurant. Do you want to order room service?"
Jane nodded again, just as slightly, "I, I th-think that m-might b-be a g-good idea?" She didn't move though, waiting on the rest to move before she did, wanting to stay as unobtrusive as she could. Not get in the way.
Shila unconsciously caressed Jane's back. "I told you he wouldn't touch you again. I forgot to stay behind the men this time," she said with a soft joking tone. She let go slowly, assessing Jane's stability as she did.
Stability was something Jane just didn't have right now, and finding a way out of the mess she appeared to be stuck in, someplace to hide, was definitely her first choice. When in doubt or fear for your life - run!! A gap opened up as the men shifted around, and Jane took it, sprinting for the stairs and racing up them as if the very hounds of hell were just on her heels.
"Fuck!" Shila shouted as she took off after Jane. The men followed after.
Jane pounded her way up the stairs, hands scrambling for the stair rail, the steps, anything that would keep her moving. Half blinded by the tears she couldn't hold back she just kept going.
Shila had to stop when she came close to snapping a heel (or ankle), and the men pounded up the steps past her. Shila looked up the stairs and sighed. She headed for the elevator.
Jane was out of it, acting on blind instinct, and only when she came out into the cool night air on the roof did she realise she'd run all the way up the 40 floors of stairs. The air helped, and she moved away from the door, finding a shaded corner to curl up in. Wrapped into a ball she rocked slightly, unaware that she was doing so, whilst still crying. At least up here she was away from everyone else. She wasn't crowded in, trapped, or being watched.
Shila ended up in the hotel room switching her shoes. The men trailed along behind Jane, a few floors behind at first, but gradually falling further and further behind as they stopped to check every level as they went up. Perhaps ten minutes after she ended up on the roof, she was found by Muerte.
"Yo, Jane. What's up? Why'd you rabbit?"
If anything, the sound of a male voice made Jane hunch even further in on herself, but the language and inflections were so different from John's that she risked a peek. Although Muerte was large, and somewhat menacing, he was at least, in one corner of her mind, a representation of safety. She looked up a little more, and then shook her head, dropping her face back onto her knees. It would take far too long to explain, so she didn't even try. With a small sigh she realised she had to go back to the room, it wasn't fair to make Shila look for her. Jane shifted, struggling her way to her feet.
"No, go ahead and just sit there a bit. You ran up forty fucking floors - if your legs are even able to lift you, you're not gonna walk far." He sat down heavily himself and pulled out a cell phone. "Shila, yeah. Caught up to her on the roof. You didn't mention she was in the olympics," he accused the lawyer as he winked to Jane.
Jane hadn't even thought about the amount of stairs, and the realisation of what she'd done had her sitting down rather more rapidly than she'd stood up. She was obviously fitter than she'd thought, but then, her job was really quite physical in it's own way. "Forty floors? Oh my," was about all she could whisper faintly. It was almost as big a shock as seeing John in the lobby had been.
"She'll be up in a few minutes. 'Till then, take a break." He leaned back against an A/C unit. "I swear, he ain't gonna touch you. Only reason he got Shila 'cause she jumped in his face 'fore we could."
Jane didn't really doubt him, and she had a sense that maybe Shila had been more aware of what she was doing than not. It worried her, that all these people were standing between her and John, and all she could do was cower in a corner and run at the first opportunity. She didn't mention anything though, stayed really quiet, pressed back in the corner where she had been, hidden in a shadow, out of sight, out of the way.
After about five minutes, Shila came out onto the roof. In her arms was a bedcover to wrap around Jane. She was pretty sure after that run she'd be sweating, and with the fear it'd be cold sweat. So to help her keep warm on the way back to the room, she brought the blanket-like thing.
She walked to Jane's corner and gently draped it around Jane's body and sat down next to her companionably.
Jane hadn't realised she was cold, but the blanket was much appreciated, and she snuggled into it pulling it closer around her. "I'm sorry, I just, couldn't deal with all the people, staring, and, questioning with their eyes, accusing almost."
"Accusing John," Shila clarified. "Not you. You weren't even involved, it was all me and him."
"But he, well, he wouldn't have been there if I wasn't, and, well, you didn't have to do that." Jane was sure that Shila would understand what she meant, so she didn't bother to expand on it.
"Sure I did. I was so pissed for everything he's done to you ..." She was quiet a moment. "Did I ever mention I've had a string of abusive relationships?"
"No, but, well not in so many words." Jane had seen the shadows in Shila's eyes on occasion, and the anger over what Jane had been through was obvious. Jane had sort of worked it out from there. "It's not, obvious with you, not like, like it is with me."
"I grew up in a harsher place. Harlem," she explained. "So ... looking around, everyone's mom and dad fought all the time, you see. And my mom and grandmother are old-country ... Grandmother immigrated here from Africa ... and a woman doesn't complain. She deals with it. It wasn't until I moved to the Manor and other people stuck up for me that I saw that I could, too."
"And now you're sticking up for me?" Jane lifted her head slightly, a somewhat wry smile passing briefly across her face. "Full circle huh?"
"Yeah. And, in a way, sticking up for myself against everyone I ever dated who raised a hand to me, by standing up to John."
"Is it working?" Jane wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know the answer, but, the question had just popped out before she could stop it.
"I'll let you know how I sleep tonight," she said. "I still need a drink, and now I'm hungry to boot. You ready to walk down one flight and take the elevator to our floor, then walk to the room?"
Jane half snorted, "Walk, maybe, run? Definitely not. And the elevator would be a good idea." She shifted a little, muscles slightly protesting. "No more running tonight, but food would be good, and a drink, yes."
It was going to be harder to stand up now, but Jane was kind of determined to do it by herself, and by using the walls she managed to get herself upright, even if the blanket did have to stay on the ground. She'd needed both hands to lift along with her legs.
Once she was standing, and not before, Shila picked up the blanket and wrapped it around Jane's shoulders again, then lent a supportive arm around her waist. There was nothing forward about it, she was simply concerned that Jane not fall.
Jane had no intention of falling, but the blanket needed holding and she was a little unsteady. It was uncomfortable being touched, and after a few steps she deliberately stepped away from Shila, unable to explain why, but just needing to be separate. She was aware of Muerte's frequent looks, and that both he and Shila were close enough to catch her if she should fall, Jane clutched the blanket with one hand, reaching for the stair rail with the other as they began the descent of the stairs.
Shila was smart enough to let Jane pull away. She'd personally always wanted distance after something like this ... she wondered at her change. What was different about this time? She thought about it as they navigated the stairs, then to the elevator. "It was the fear in his eyes," she murmured aloud as she realized what changed.
"What?" Jane actually stopped and looked at Shila, it had nothing to do with her still slightly shaky knees, no way, but, she wasn't entirely sure she'd heard those words correctly.
Shila shook her head, she hadn't realized she'd said that aloud. "When I didn't back down or fall after he hit me. There was a little bit of fear in his eyes."
"Oh," Jane had no idea, she hadn't been looking by that point, far more interested in keeping out of reach. "I didn't see that, sorry." It might have been real, it might have been good for Jane if she'd seen it, but she hadn't so she couldn't say. Jane moved down a couple more steps, finding it easier to move once she already was.
"Perhaps you'll see fear in his eyes when we go to court tomorrow," Shila said. "He'll have spent the night in lockup. Which reminds me, I need to see if I can borrow a favor or two to push his arraignment for the assault to the post-lunch session."
"So I can sleep in?" Jane was kind of glad they didn't have to go down all the flights of stairs, after the court hearing, and then the lobby and her mad dash, she was suddenly extremely exhausted.
"No, our court appointment is still nine am, and he'll be there, too. But ..." She smirked nastily, then winced as her cheek twinged. "He'll be in those prison orange clothes, and I'll have a sweet shiner. His lawyer won't stand a chance."
Jane stopped at the stairwell doors while Muerte checked the corridor, and then stumbled forward as he indicated it was clear. The elevator was just a few steps away, and the doors opened almost immediately, the thought crossed her mind that he'd already called it, but, it passed as she found her way to a back corner where the walls would hopefully hold her up.
Shila asked, "Ham sandwich and tea?" as she pulled out her phone.
"Sandwich yes, something stronger to drink?" Jane knew she had no real tolerance for alcohol, and one stiff drink should be able to help her sleep through the night without too much trouble, she hoped.
"There's the minibar for that," Shila nodded.
The lift carried them down to their floor, and it wasn't that far to the room. Jane made it on her own, much to her own satisfaction, and the room service wasn't far behind them. In fact, Jane didn't say a word after entering the room, she ate the sandwich, accepted the glass of whisky from the minibar, and then, having drunk that, simply passed out in the chair she was sitting in.