Chapter Five: Lark Returns
Come on...You can do this…
Charleen stood in front of the Sirens club. She half-expected there to be a few bouncers outside, guarding the place but there weren't any, much to her relief. Already, her heart was beating frantically in her chest; she could practically feel it in her forehead: thump, thump, thumpthumpthumpthump. Just the idea of waltzing in, getting close enough to Barbara Kean and putting a gun to her head—that was, admittedly, the hard part.
She'd only been in the Sirens once before and that was a formality of staking out the place. There were over a dozen customers here the last time; that didn't include the number of staff who were at Barbara's beck-and-call, or the tigress that always prowled around her whether as a girlfriend or her bodyguard (Charleen wasn't sure just what Tabitha was to Barbara, but she didn't doubt the woman's skill one bit).
She checked the bullets in her gun for the umpteenth time. Five shots. She had no intention of firing it, but if things got messy—if things didn't turn out for the best, she'd fire them all at anyone who came within a herculean inch.
Check it again, just to be sure…Yeah, five shots. She'd counted them already! She was stalling, she knew it!
Charleen exhaled deeply, closing her eyes. She put the gun behind her back as she walked into the club, pretending to be sweet and endearing. The closer she approached Barbara's little perch at the end of the room, however, the harder it was for her to swallow; her feet were like cemented blocks.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her right shoulder and pulled her back to the side of the room. Charleen pointed the gun shoulder-high at whomever had snatched her arm; she let out a stuttering gasp when she saw Sylvia standing there.
Immediately, Sylvia snatched the gun out of her hand, holding it in front of her.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" She hissed.
Charleen lowered her hands and said curtly, "Doing what you couldn't do."
"After I just told you not to go anywhere near her?"
"Well, honestly, I didn't think you were going to show." Charleen looked her up and down. There was a distinctive difference to the woman that had been lying in bed, tearful, gasping for air as she sobbed dryly in her pillow to the woman that now stood in front of her. "What happened to you?"
"Nothing." Sylvia lowered the gun.
"No, you're out of bed and you're not crying anymore. What'd you do? Where'd you go?"
Sylvia handed her the weapon; Charleen took it cautiously.
"Stay here."
"Wait. What are you doing?" Charleen asked worriedly.
"I'm going to talk to Barbara."
"About your club?"
"Yes." Sylvia placed a hand along Charleen's face, her palm cupping her cheek gently before she scooped her into a warm embrace.
Charleen welcomed it, wrapping her arms around Sylvia's middle.
"I knew you'd snap out of it." She said thankfully.
"Stay here. And please do what I say this time."
She nodded as Sylvia moved away and towards Barbara's throne.
Sylvia waded through the crowd, ignoring the astonished glances and disappointed glares that filtered to her direction as she came closer to where Barbara sat. Up three steps, Barbara sat like a queen, one leg crossed over the other; she was beauty incarnate, and dressed down to her stilettos in royalty; a golden telephone perched on a gold-plated end table. Standing beside her was Tabitha, dressed in black leather, her studded whip sitting on her hip.
When she came into the open, Barbara, who appeared to have been on a phone call, hung up on whomever she'd been talking to as she placed the phone back on the receiver, grinning broadly.
"Well, well!" She mused. "Look who's out of bed!"
"We need to talk." Sylvia told her coolly.
"I imagine this is about my new club?"
"It's about more than that, actually. It's about the promise you made to me."
"I can't imagine what—"
"Three weeks ago," Sylvia said dangerously, "You tried to make a deal with me."
"And you rejected it."
"You'll forgive my disingenuous response seeing as I was displaced with shock after being immobilized for a day and a half while Jerome and his fucking psychotic fanbase nearly destroyed the city. If you'd like a refresher: part of that deal was that I'd get to keep my club, my people would not be harmed, and it would stay on the table until further notice—out of friendship, you said."
The guests who'd been chatting in their own conversations silenced as their attention turned to the louder voice addressing their hostess.
"Not even one week passes before you buy out my club, you intimidate what used to be my staff to either follow or die—and you take out every major Head of the Five Families because, oh yes, you knew for a fact that none of them would follow you: Better to execute than recruit in your case, huh?"
She stepped a foot closer gesturing to the Sirens club in general.
"Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds like you went back on your own offer. And so quickly too…Now, if that isn't a good show of our true friendship…" Sylvia's cynical smile didn't reach her eyes. "I don't know what is."
Barbara frowned, uncrossing her leg so she stood daintily.
"I offered that deal out of sympathy." She corrected. "You didn't want it, so I recanted."
"You did a lot more than recant. After taking the club that was given to me as a wedding present and basically hiring a totalitarian who's robbing every vulnerable Fence in the Underworld—you're sabotaging everything my husband has built! You want to be on top but you can't see anything past your own fucking nose, can you, Babs!"
Tabitha sensed an intimidation.
She took the whip from her side and within a second, she wielded it back before she lashed it forward.
Instantly, Sylvia caught the whip as it wrapped around her wrist and yanked back.
Tabitha stumbled forward before Sylvia grabbed her by the neck and slammed her down right into the flooring, which crumbled upon impact.
Barbara flinched, stepping back while Tabitha grunted and winced in pain.
Sylvia snatched the whip from Tabitha's hand and placed the ball of her boot against her neck, glaring at her.
Tabitha's eyes widened in both pain and fear as she watched the whites of Sylvia's eyes fill with a brilliant shade of red; a few small black veins crept and slithered from her eyes and neck.
"You want to try that again, Pussycat?" Sylvia challenged. "I'd really love to see your neck snap in three different places after everything you put me through specifically."
"Sylvia, no! Please, don't!"
Sylvia lifted her eyes to Barbara, who'd moved towards her. Once she came within arm's length, Sylvia took her outstretched hand and pulled it to her just as she had with Tabitha's whip.
She sharply turned her around, so Barbara was forced forward and her arm was bent back; a very distinguishable crack was heard before Barbara cried for her to stop. When she did, Sylvia pushed her down to the ground.
Six different unnamed men pointed their weapons in her direction, but she couldn't be bothered with acknowledging them as Barbara scooted away, looking at her tearfully.
"How dare you! Shoot her! Shoot her!" Barbara screamed, pointing at her.
"The man that's in charge of Gotham's Fences dislocated my ward's shoulder two days ago," Sylvia said finally, glaring at Barbara who held her own painfully. "Word is that you put him in charge, so I thought the punishment should fit the crime."
When the guards cocked the hammer back on their guns, they took a stuttering pause as they, too, saw the abnormal change in her eyes and face. The way she dared them to obey.
"If you're going to shoot me, shoot me. My business is not with any of you!" Sylvia said loudly, looking at everyone in the club before she addressed Barbara specifically. "I can either kill the both of you—and trust me, I can and will—or we make a new deal. To this point, you agree to all terms or none of them. If you don't, I'll assume you'd rather die and trust me: I'll happily oblige. That said, would you like to hear my counteroffer?"
Barbara spoke in a strained voice as she tried not to think too much of her own pain; her mascara blackened beneath her bottom lashes even as she willed herself not to cry: "What do you want?"
"You give me back my club, and that's not a request. I want the deed on my desk by nightfall." Sylvia commanded; the sclera of her eyes became white again and her face relaxed. "Your man, Lucas, is no longer in charge of anything. You don't have to worry about telling him; I'll pay that visit myself."
"Fine." Barbara uttered weakly.
"I'll place myself between you, this bitch" (She applied pressure to Tabitha's neck on indication) "and the rest of the Underworld. You will rule the Underworld as you like. If you have something you want to carry out to the masses, you come to me and it will be me who takes care of it and vice versa. But I will never be to you what I was for Oswald—not your lieutenant or anything. I'll simply be your mediator and that's it."
"Deal." Barbara said quickly, nodding her head. "Deal—We have a deal."
"That's not all."
"What else?" Barbara said exasperatedly.
"You owe me fifty-thousand dollars plus ten vig for the next six months."
Barbara looked at her confusedly.
Irately, Sylvia explained, "'Vig' is interest. Weekly. That's your penalty for helping Ed kill Oswald. And that'll be put towards a funeral I'll be arranging thanks to you. Agree to those terms, and we have what you call an 'alliance', however fucked up your idea of an alliance is."
"Fine!" She said harshly. "Fine! Fine! Whatever! Just…" Barbara gesticulated worriedly to Tabitha who was still under Sylvia's foot, squirming a little but still clearly able to breathe.
She released Tabitha, who rolled to her side, holding her throat.
She smiled at everyone in the club.
"It was great seeing you again, Girlfriend," Sylvia purred with a sly smile. "I hope to do this again sometime. Charlie…" She held out her hand and Charleen approached, taking it. "Come with me. We have a few things to take care of before the day is out."
As she walked out, Charleen followed her, mesmerized.
When Sylvia had left, Barbara screamed for everyone to get out. They quickly complied.
