June 3, 2014

The day Liz handed the keys to Oak House over to Olivia, the contents of the house - and its tenants - became hers. Her possessions, her responsibilities, to do with as she pleased. It would be a lie to say she'd never thought about giving it up; the house was worth a fortune, and even after the bank took its share there would have been more than enough left over for her to start over fresh, and if she sold the artwork and the fucking Tiffany lamps and the furniture, there'd be even more. Sure, she'd thought about giving it up, but she'd never done it, because Oak House was the one thing she'd always dreamed about, the one thing she'd always thought she'd never get to have. Oak House was her home.

She was at home, this morning, lying in her plush, four-poster bed in the master suite on the fourth floor, still dressed in her pajamas, with Noah sitting on her lap. Olivia was reclining against the intricately carved headboard, her knees bent behind Noah's back so he could rest against them, his little hands caught in hers. His blue eyes were bright and joyful, and his chubby little cheeks were rosy and lifted in a wide smile, and when she clapped his hands together he laughed, and her heart swelled with love.

"My sweet boy," she crooned to him softly.

This, too, was something she'd always dreamed of, a dream she'd thought beyond her reach. A child of her own, not born of her body but hers, still. It had taken a great deal of fast talking - and more than a few lies - on Trevor Langan's part, but he'd helped secure the adoption, and it had been official for a few months now. Noah was like her, a child conceived in violence, a child on his own, a child who needed two arms to hold him and a heart to love him, and those things she could give to him, was determined to give to him. She'd failed to keep Ellie safe; she would not fail Ellie's son. Her son, now.

"One day, sweet boy," she told him, drawing his hands up so she could press kisses to the backs of his little knuckles. "One day, we're going to go far, far away from here."

It was easier to think about leaving as something that might happen in the distant future than as an immediate course of action. It was easy to lie there in bed, the warm sunlight slanting across her silk sheets, and think dreamy thoughts of a house with a proper yard for him to romp through, rather than the stonework terrace outside. It was easy, to tell herself she'd have to make a break from this life before he started school; easy to see the logic in it, but hard, still, to follow through on it.

It might not have been a good life, might not have been a happy, upstanding life, might not have been a life someone else would have been proud of, but it was her life, and she had known no other, and the uncertainty of the world beyond the doors of Oak House made her hesitant to walk away. Olivia had lived and worked in this house since she was sixteen years old, and she was now forty-six. What work could she do, with no resume to present prospective employers? She might not have to work at all, depending on how much money she managed to squeeze out of the sale of the house when she departed, but if she didn't work, what would she do all day? And what would become of her girls? Some of them would be ready to move on from this chapter in their lives, but some would not, and if she sold this house, where would they go? What darkness would claim them, if they found themselves cast out? If she didn't sell the house, if she passed it on to Lucy just as Liz had passed it on to her, she would need to work, and that just sent her right back to the beginning, catching her bottom lip between her teeth as she worried, and wondered.

"We've still got some time," she said, half to Noah and half to herself. He was only a year old; it would be a few more years before he started kindergarten. Plenty of time for her to work out a plan.

There came a knock upon her bedroom door then, and she looked up sharply. One of the first things Brian had done when he came on board was revamp the security on her personal suite of rooms. He saw to it that the door was equipped with a mechanical lock, a push button installed next to Olivia's bed so she could open it without having to rise, and a camera had been fixed in the corridor right outside. The feed from that camera was sent to a monitor mounted on the wall opposite Olivia's bed that she could turn on and off at will; usually she turned it off at bedtime, and turned it on when she woke. It was on now, and when she looked she could see Lucy standing in the corridor outside her door, and she relaxed, reaching over to push the button and open the door at once.

"Good morning," Lucy called cheerily as she bounced through the door, the lock clicking into place as it swung closed behind her.

Lucy was another problem; she was Olivia's favorite, insofar as she had favorites, a bright and beautiful girl with a good head for numbers, and a natural successor when Olivia's time as madam was through. But Lucy was also taking classes to become a school teacher, a career that Olivia thought would suit her well, a career that would free her from this life, once and for all. What would become of Lucy, if Olivia passed her the keys to Oak House? Would Lucy end up trapped, as Olivia was now? Was giving Lucy a chance to make a clean break worth the fate the other girls would suffer when the doors of Oak House were shuttered?

"Good morning," Olivia answered, hoping that none of her melancholy showed on her face.

Lucy crossed the room on light, graceful feet, and eased herself onto the bed beside Olivia, reaching out to run her hand over Noah's dark curls while the boy babbled happily, delighted to be faced with his two favorite people in the world.

"How did you sleep?" Lucy asked warmly.

"We slept great," Olivia answered. What she meant was that Noah had slept all the way through the night; she'd not had a full night of sleep in years, and wasn't sure she ever would again. But Noah was happy, and that was all that mattered to her.

The suite of rooms she occupied boasted two bedrooms, a sitting room, and a bathroom, all tucked away behind that heavy locked door. For the first few months Noah had slept in a crib in this bedroom with Olivia, who was loath to let him out of her sight, but he was getting bigger, now, and she had moved him into the second bedroom back in April. He seemed to be doing well there, and she was glad of it.

"It's a beautiful day," Lucy said. "I was thinking maybe we could go to the park this afternoon."

"I think that's a good idea. I'll ask Brian."

Olivia did not ever venture beyond the walls of Oak House without her bodyguard. Not any more. She could hold her own in a fight, but Oak House had always possessed a certain veneer of gentility, and she'd not often had to defend herself physically, and she'd certainly never carried a gun. Brian knew how to use one, though, and the years he'd spent working for the police left him vigilant and quick to react. She trusted him to keep them safe, not just her but Lucy and Noah, too; he loved them, just as she did. This place had become his home just as much as it was hers, and that was another worry. Brian had a maudlin streak in him, and he hadn't left the NYPD on the best of terms, and she didn't know what he'd do if he wasn't shadowing her steps all day. The curse of being the boss, she'd realized, was the duty of care she owed to all these people, a duty a less scrupulous woman might not have felt so keenly but which weighed heavily on Olivia's shoulders.

"Brian's on the phone," Lucy said, wrinkling her nose in a way that made Noah laugh. "Sinatra called."

"Sinatra?" Olivia repeated, concerns about her future suddenly engulfed by concerns over the present. "What does he want?"

Lucy shrugged. "I dunno," she said. "It sounded like-"

Movement on the monitor caught both their attention, and they looked up at almost precisely the same moment that Brian knocked on the door, his brooding face clearly visible on the feed from the camera outside. Once again Olivia opened the door remotely, and once again one of her charges came walking through it, although Brian's steps were heavier than Lucy's had been. If he'd been one of the other guards she'd have covered herself up before she let him in because the lightweight black camisole she wore did little to hide her figure, but Brian had seen her naked enough times for the novelty to have worn off, and they were comfortable with one another now.

"Hey," he said, coming to sit on the side of the bed next to Olivia, reaching out to touch Noah's head the same way Lucy had done. In response Noah crooned a soft sound that was as close an approximation to Brian's name as he could manage, and Olivia smiled at the pair of them indulgently, sadly. Noah had no father to speak of, but Brian had been watching over him for very nearly as long as he'd been watching over Olivia, and Brian cared for the boy. Would they ever see each other again after Olivia left this place?

"Just got off the phone with Sinatra," he said.

So I heard, Olivia thought but did not say; she didn't want to draw attention to Lucy's eavesdropping, however innocent it might have been.

"He wants to do a drop. Told him it'd cost him. That ok with you?"

The lockers downstairs provided a convenient place for the clandestine exchange of various goods and documents; for a fee any customer could leave something there, to be picked up later, so long as both parties involved had been cleared by the house. It was a very old practice, and one Lucy would need to learn to navigate, if Olivia did ultimately decide to turn Oak House over to her.

"Who's it for?"

"Kosta."

Olivia frowned. She didn't like this new relationship between the Albanians and the Italians. She didn't know the Albanians, for one thing, and what little she'd heard about them gave her pause. Of course the Italians were ruthless, too, but they'd been a part of the fabric of the city from the very start. The devil you know, she thought.

"He tell you what it was?"

"Nothing that goes boom," Brian answered with a grim sort of smile. "He wants to have one of his boys drop it off tonight, then Kosta can send one of his goons to pick it up tomorrow."

"Fine," she said. The house existed to make money, after all, and Sinatra would pay for the service. "But either Kosta comes himself or he sends Wagner. No strangers."

There was a look in Brian's eyes like he wanted to say something about that, but his gaze flickered to Lucy, and for once he held his tongue. There was no point in him speaking, anyway; Olivia knew already what he was going to say. That she'd allowed Wagner too much liberty, letting him walk through the terrace, speaking to him alone. That she looked at Wagner a little too often and for a little too long, that she was a little too comfortable with him already.

The thing was that Brian was right. There was something about Eddie Wagner, about the softness of his eyes above his bushy beard, about his warm smile, about his quick tongue, that intrigued her. His tattoos proclaimed him a man of faith and a man of service, but he was also a criminal, consorting with mafia bosses, his past littered with charges. Brian had gone through one of his old buddies on the force to find out about Eddie Wagner - Eddie Ashes, they called him - an arsonist and a brawler and a thief, a man whose rap sheet was at odds with the calm way he comported himself. Eddie was tough and plain spoken in a way none of her clients were, and he was curious and quick-witted in a way none of their goons were, and that made him the most interesting man she'd met in quite a while. It also made him dangerous, because he called her ma'am to her face but his hands were made to bruise. She shouldn't want to see him, but she found herself looking forward to the prospect, anyway. She'd always had a taste for danger.

"I'll make the call," Brian said, acquiescing to her, even if he didn't want to.

"Good," she said. "I've got some things to do this morning, but we were thinking about going to the park this afternoon. You up for it?"

" 'course," Brian said. "Always happy to go out with my best girls. And boy," he added, reaching out to brush his finger gently against the tip of Noah's nose. Olivia's son laughed, delighted, reaching for Brian's hand with his pudgy little fingers, and she watched them both, a sense of unease swirling through her belly. Things were changing, she thought. The question remained, were they changing for the better?