Ok guys, had to change the rating to mature with this chapter and the chapters to come. i wanted to wait a bit to see if i could get some more readers interested before uping the rating. anywho, thanks for all the reviews and alerts. things have been picking up at work and such, so i might be slower in posting, but hopefully i can catch up on writing some this weekend and have things to post soon. hope you like this chapter. it reveals a lot. let me know what ya think!

love a star fall

Chapter eight

Belle looked back down to her lap. "He got in touch with Robert Rose," she whispered.

Slowly, Jack dropped his head down to his hands. He covered his face and Belle couldn't look up from her lap. Spot stared at the two utterly confused. Who was Robert Rose and why was it bad for Belle and Jack's father to have gotten in touch with him?

After a few more moments, Belle slowly looked up at Jack and then over to Spot. She knew he was in the dark. She took a stabling breath before she continued.

"Bobby Rose owns a very popular brothel in our hometown," she informed him. Realization hit Spot and he leaned back into the chair. Jack had taken his head up and out of his hands and now turned to Spot.

"He is a monster who runs a slave market. And the men who go there don't treat the girls gentlemanly. The girls who work for him are broken. Most often they have been sold to him by their fathers or other guardians," Jack sighed and turned back to Belle.

"That's basically the deal Pop made with him," Belle explained. At this point she made eye contact with Jack. "I told you that you wouldn't like what I had to tell you," then she looked back to her lap and continued her story.

"About a week after you left for New York, Rose's men came to bring me to the Garden. That's the name of the brothel, The Rose Garden. Lady Gertrude couldn't do anything to stop him. Rose has ties with all the law down there and they weren't about to intervene on one of his deals. You know all the girls there are called by some sort of flower. They called me Forget-Me-Not. Things weren't all that bad at first," when she said this Jack's head jerked in question.

"They didn't start me out right away. Even though it was a brothel, I was only 11 and Rose said I wouldn't have brought in much interest yet. He wanted to wait until he noticed customers noticing me and then he'd make more money off of my first customer with it being my first time and all," Belle was starting to speak more openly. She had been waiting to talk about this for too long. She needed to let them know what had happened to her. She needed to know how they would react. Would they send her away? She couldn't go on without being honest with them.

"Rose started me out doing housekeeping and bartending work. I would cleanup after the men and serve drinks around the bar and lounges. I was 13, close to 14, when Rose decided he could make some money off me. Someone had approached him with a large offer for me. That first time was the worst. I cried the whole time and the guy roughed me up a little because of it," Belle took this time to turn to Spot and explain a little bit about The Rose Garden and its rules.

"At the Garden, there is a code of conduct among the customers. Rose is a business man and he goes to great lengths to make sure that he can always turn a profit. His first rule is that there is no messing around with merchandise outside of their working hours or without paying. He doesn't want anyone person monopolizing one of his flowers, as he calls us. The second rule is that customers can under no circumstances rough up our faces. Those, above anything else are what customers always see. If we have bruises or what not on our arms or legs, they can be covered by clothing, but faces are always visible. As long as customers follow those rules though, anything else goes. This means if they wanna rough us up, they can. Some of those men could really rough a girl up."

"Those bastads ain't men, Mary," Jack interrupted. Mary turned her eyes back to him. They both could see and understand the pain this conversation was causing the other person.

Mary began to speak again, "that first time was the worst, like I said. I never got numb, like most of the girls who work for Bobby Rose. A lot of em turn to drinking or drugs, like opium. I never did, but I know why it happened. Now, the next two things I have to tell you are gunna really hurt and are personal to you Frankie," Belle warned. "My first customer, the one who made the offer to Rose…," she concentrated on her lap and took a shaky breathe. "It was Matthew."

Jack immediately rose from the bed and began to pace around in the corner next to Spot. Belle had tears slowly falling down her cheeks now. She was controlling her breathing, keeping it from becoming haggard but the tears were uncontrollable. This whole conversation, Spot had remained unmoving and quiet. He dared to speak up when neither one of them looked as if they were going to tell him what that name meant.

"Who is Matthew?"

Belle looked up and kept her eyes on Jack. She knew he was too enraged to answer Spot. His hands were balled into tight fists and kept going from his sides to his head and back again.

"Matthew was Frankie's best friend growin up in our neighborhood. There were four of us who livied near each other and were constantly together. Me, Frankie, Matthew and Elsa. They were all the same age and I was always the bratty little sister who wanted to tag along. Frankie and Elsa never minded so much but Matthew was always tormenting me and picking on me. He never did anything too harsh because of Frankie, but soon he started taking his attention towards me in a different direction. I was never too comfortable being alone around him so I always tried to avoid it, but one day we ended up alone in Frankie's bedroom. He and Elsa had gone to get a deck of cards to play with. When they walked back in the room, they saw Matthew getting too friendly with me," Belle paused here. She took her eyes away from the pacing Jack and glanced at Spot. "Frankie and Matthew weren't friends after that."

Belle looked back at Jack. He had slowed his pacing and taken his hands from balled fists to laying flat on his hips. He turned to face Belle. "Please sit back down, Francis," Belle asked him.

Jack slowly complied. Once he was seated, Belle took another long breath and began to speak again.

"Matthew being my first customer isn't the only thing I have to tell you that will hurt you, Frankie." Jack winced at Belle's ease with which she referred to her past. As hard as this conversation was for her, Spot thought to himself, she was holding herself together very well. She was visibly upset and hurting but she spoke calmly and matter-of-factly.

Belle had started to speak once more. "Elsa's ma got really sick. She wasn't able to take care of Elsa anymore. She sent Elsa to The Rose Garden too. She came a few months after I did, but since she was older than me, Bobby started her right away. You know how frail and gentle Elsa always was. She couldn't handle it. She fought and struggled for two years. She got sick, like her ma. She died, Frankie." Belle whispered the last part while looking into Jack's eyes.

Jack dropped his head back to his hands and it stayed there for several minutes. During that time, neither Belle nor Spot spoke. Everyone was quiet, taking the moments to adjust to everything they had just heard. Finally, Jack brought his head out of his hands and stared at Belle.

"I am so sorry, Mary. I never meant for any of this to happen," he spoke with tears in his eyes. "I thought I was leaving you with good circumstances. I thought…" he paused here briefly, "you'd be better off."

"I know," Mary was quick to respond. "I know you thought that Frankie. I wasn't hurt by any of that. What I never understood was why I never heard from you again. For a few months, I held on to hope that you'd try and get in touch with me at Lady Gertrude's place and when you didn't hear from me, you'd somehow figure out what happened. But I never heard from you. That's what hurt. Why didn't you try and contact me? That's the only question I have."

Jack couldn't answer. No answer he could give her would be sufficient enough. Belle could sense that Jack needed some time. She had just given him a lot of painful information. Belle was always a thoughtful and understanding person. So much so, that it often allowed her to overlook her own feelings and focus on easing someone else's pain. This is how she felt now. She had just shared the torture she had lived with from the time she was 11 to 16 and she was thinking about the pain her brother felt.

She spoke, "its okay Frankie, we can talk about that another time. I know this is a lot to hear right now."

At this, Jack looked up at Mary. He reached across the bed and moved closer to her enveloping her in a tight embrace. Both had tears on their cheeks and were being comforted by finally feeling the love of family again.

Spot took this as his time to exit and let the pair have some time to themselves. He quietly left his room and went down to the main living room. A few of the guys were playing poker and asked Spot to join them. He declined. Instead he walked to an old worn out chair in a far corner of the room. He sat down and sighed. Belle's pain was much bigger than he had imagined. He couldn't process what he'd just heard. All he knew was that he had an overwhelming desire to be in that room with her. He wanted to never leave her. To protect her and erase the pain she held.