Cindy-Lou was blonde and her age hung still in the air, like the sweet scent of cocktails on the New Orleans’ night.

Her eyes were crystal-blue and they’d shoot right through men like a pair of whistling bullets. No one ever took Cindy-Lou for being dumb, well, at least not without coming to regret it.

Her lips were hypnotic. They were full but not the fullest. Red but not the reddest. And they were always glossy, though rarely the glossiest lips in the room. Yet, in any crowd, it was Cindy-Lou’s lips that were the most entrancing. Cindy-Lou wasn’t the kind of woman to waste too many words; not on men at least. But even though her lips were often at rest, they always seemed to be sprung with urgent possibility. Men would stare at those lips like boys fixated on flashy automobiles they could neither afford nor operate, thrilled at the prospect they might just get to see them move if they hung around for long enough.

Cindy-Lou’s lips were wrapping themselves around a cigarette. She picked up her desktop-lighter and a streak of flame shot up in front of her, illuminating her face with its fierce yellow dance. Cindy-Lou drew on her cigarette, its tip burned brighter than the dim lamp on her desk. The shadows of the city night swam across her as she sat in her office listening to the hum of the bar below.

That hum was a comfort to Cindy-Lou. She knew she’d be making a good dollar tonight and she hadn’t always been that lucky in life. She had been through too much to forget her many strange fortunes and how she’d struggled to endure against a whole heap of mishaps.

Cindy-Lou loved these moments. She loved sitting blissfully alone in her office listening to a roomful of dollars flowing her way below, as the liquor flowed out of the bottles in the other direction. She’d always marvelled at how alcohol loosens pockets just as surely it loosens tongues. 

She’d have to show her face in the bar, of course. Not yet, though. And not for long. Cindy-Lou knew she was not the kind of woman who had the luxury of making herself too available. Her enticing beauty gave her the power to be a fleeting prize. She could fill a bar for a whole day just by being in a room for a few precious moments now and then, greeting some regulars by name and flashing her narcotic smile.

Suddenly, Cindy-Lou’s eyes shot down through the window to a street lamp that was pooling its light on the pavement opposite her bar. A great hulk of a figure dodged away from the light and approached her building in silhouette. Her eyes gunned at that silhouette, barely believing it was there right now, after so many years, even though she always lived with the expectation of its return. Cindy-Lou knew exactly who was making for her bar and she’d have shot that man dead in the street if only her eyes were able to dispatch real bullets.

Cindy-Lou heard the bar fall silent in little more than a heartbeat as the silhouette stepped inside. She knew all too keenly that, in a bar, silence can quickly get expensive. Cindy-Lou flared her nostrils in furious resignation and pulled herself real upright in her chair. 

She was gripped with dread, and it took nearly all of Cindy-Lou’s focus just to keep drawing on that cigarette with her customary languid, self-assurance. She’d be some fool not to be fearful when a man like the silhouette burst into her bar. But she’d be a bigger fool to let herself show it. Weakness was a drug that men of a certain kind lived by exploiting.

Her office door burst open like it was hit square-on by a train. Cindy-Lou kept her cool as steadily as she held her cigarette. And the only thing moving on her cigarette was the smoke which curled gently towards the ceiling.

The silhouette threw his fists onto her desk and put his snarling face about three feet in front of hers. He’d likely have got closer if it wasn’t for that burning cigarette.

There was a long pause. For once, Cindy-Lou spoke first.

‘So, why y’bin killin’ again, Frankie?’ She knew to ask a why question rather than enquiring as to who. She equally well knew she’d not get an answer. Cindy-Lou was sure to make no effort to look Frankie in the eye.

Frankie banged his enormous fists on her desk which, heavy as it was, quivered like a newborn puppy in response. Cindy-Lou could feel she had to be mighty careful. Frankie was bursting with an all-too real, murderous rage, and it was worse than ever.

‘It’s been years, Frankie, ’bout seven years if I’m recallin’ it straight. I told y’last time it’be cheaper to go see the priest. And that’s sayin’ somethin’!’

Frankie growled at Cindy-Lou through his bared teeth. ‘Don’t need no priest!’ He banged a fist on her desk once more. ‘Ha’ much?’ 

Cindy-Lou gave no answer. She’d never given him a price. She didn’t want his money. She took it as a form of control. The price needed to be an amount that hurt Frankie, at least a little. Cindy-Lou was in no position to state that price and he knew it.

Frankie threw a thick roll of dollars onto Cindy-Lou’s desk and turned away, shifting the focus of his rage towards the window and out into the city. Frankie stared into the night like the kind of money he’d just pitched at Cindy-Lou meant nothing at all to him.

Cindy-Lou thumbed through the corner of each dollar bill without removing them from the roll. It felt like enough money, just. She picked up a velvet ribbon from her desk and opened a drawer with one of the keys that were strung onto its length. Cindy-Lou threw the roll of dollars inside with a thud, sliding the drawer shut and locking it just as swiftly as she’d opened it up.

Frankie spun his head around in Cindy-Lou’s direction, glancing to where he’d heard the drawer slam shut. It seemed he’d been expecting change after all. Cindy-Lou felt it was time for them to move. 

Ignoring Frankie’s hooded glare as though his face somehow wasn’t even in the room, Cindy-Lou stood up and collected her office door. It had lain rudely open to its widest point after Frankie’s intrusion. She gestured at Frankie to step though. After a pause you could’ve cut straight through like you were slicing a po’ boy, Frankie took a deep breath and moved out into the gloom of the corridor. Cindy-Lou picked up her deck of Luckies and some matches. She was sure going to need another cigarette soon.

Cindy-Lou couldn’t rightly recall ascending the uppermost flight of stairs to the attic-room since Frankie was last here. She was dreading the state the room might be in. Using another key from her velvet ribbon, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Cindy-Lou pulled on a chord hanging from the ceiling, making a lightbulb flicker at her bidding.

The bulb blinked on and off, as though reluctant to be shocked from its slumber after all this time. Cindy-Lou winced. Frankie was not a man given to waiting for anyone or anything. She doubted he’d wait to let his own breath catch up. Maybe the moonlight streaming through the small roof-window would be enough for them to see by? The lightbulb fizzed and popped its last, its strobing light gave way to the cloak of darkness once again. Cindy-Lou blinked to let her eyes adjust. 

‘It’s headin’ towards a full moon.’ She noted, confidently. ‘We don’t be needin’ no lightbulb.’

The room was not nearly so dusty as Cindy-Lou had feared. There was a wide square column in its centre, made of wood with old steel bracings. The shackles were still there, their chains welded firmly back onto the steel bracings of the column. Cindy-Lou looked fondly across to the old chaise longue. Now, that was the first piece of furniture she’d ever bought. It was second-hand, even way back then, but it sure was beautiful. There was a large silk cushion resting part-way along the back. A small table sat next to the chaise longue; it held a phone and an ashtray. 

Cindy-Lou lit up another cigarette and turned to face Frankie. Frankie wasn’t looking at the shackles, nor the chaise longue, nor the table. Yet he was certainly a man fixated, and for once this was a man not fixated on Cindy-Lou’s lips. 

Frankie was staring intently at a thick bullwhip that was hanging on the back wall. There were a couple of canes hanging up there too. But Frankie looked square at that bullwhip and Cindy-Lou looked square at Frankie. It occurred to Cindy-Lou that she was one of the few people who ever got to see fear on Frankie’s face. And even now, you had to know just how to spot it.

‘Take off y’coat and y’shirt.’ Cindy-Lou kept her commands firm but calm, as though she was simply reminding Frankie of the inevitable. 

Frankie’s peacoat fell to the floor with a thud. Cindy-Lou didn’t care to ponder what was inside the pockets. Frankie tore off his tie, then grabbed at his shirt and removed it in a couple of raging swipes. He was so mad today, even by Frankie’s standards, that Cindy-Lou got to thinking she should have him in those shackles double-quick.

The chains were heavier than she recalled. It was a relief to clip each shackle onto one of Frankie’s wrists, letting him take the strain. Not that it was any kind of strain for Frankie. He was bigger than ever. A little fuller and saggier in his advancing years, but those muscles were still there, lurking just beneath the surface to strike down any opponent who was dumb enough to underestimate Frankie. Not that he was all-too likely to be underestimated by anyone who saw him in his current state. His body was embossed with thick welts from many a previous whipping, giving his flesh a scaly reptilian appearance that could force an atavistic kind of panic in the uninitiated. 

Cindy-Lou made sure to secure the two short, thick chains that stopped Frankie’s wrists from spreading too wide. He was mad enough already but he was shortly going to get much madder. 

It was probable there was no one more persistently violent and murderous than Frankie in the whole of Louisiana. But truth was that over the years, Cindy-Lou had developed a grudging kind of respect for him. Well, up to a point. Nowadays, men that killed seemed to kill with no compunction, either before or after they struck. Heaven knew all too well that Frankie never so much as blinked between having the impulse to kill and acting upon it. But when he killed, every time so far as Cindy-Lou knew, Frankie made himself pay a price. It wasn’t enough of a price, of course, nothing ever could be. But he paid a price all the same.

Cindy-Lou pulled off Frankie’s shoes and unbuckled his pants, gripping the bottom of the legs and yanking them clean off as he lay on the floor. She stood over him, being careful to stay at his back, then she placed a finger on either side of the waist of his underpants, swishing them to his ankles. Quickly but calmly, Cindy-Lou secured the shackles on his feet in much the same way she’d done on his wrists.

Frankie was already starting to writhe on the floor, fighting against the chains. Cindy-Lou slowly slipped out of her neat little cocktail dress right in front of him, staying tantalisingly just beyond his reach. She arranged the dress carefully on the side of the chaise longue, being sure to give Frankie a full view of her fine silk-covered ass as she did so. Some men in the bar disapproved of her adopting the new fashion for cocktail dresses. Perhaps Frankie did too? She couldn’t care less. Cindy-Lou knew she had the same effect on men pretty much whatever the hell she wore.

Cindy-Lou took the bullwhip from the wall and breathed in its scent.

Memories of the first time came flooding back to her. Back then, she was working for Jago, who had that very-same bullwhip hanging as a decoration in his little bar, which was out by the lake. It was Jago’s habit to take off as soon as he’d cleared the bar of drinkers and locked the door, leaving Cindy-Lou to work on a little later to finish the clean-up and secure the place fully before she left.

Cindy-Lou first set eyes on Frankie through the glass door of Jago’s Bar as she was finishing the clean up one night. Frankie hammered so hard on the glass that she had no idea, to this day, how it didn’t shatter into a thousand shards. 

Thinking she knew fully how to handle violent men, Cindy-Lou opened the door and told Frankie firmly that the bar was closed; not that it wasn’t perfectly obvious already. She could have been a fly curtain for all Frankie cared as he pushed clean past her, knocking her to the floor. Before she could get to her feet, he pulled a stool up to the bar and barked out a single-word command: ‘Rye!’

Now, Cindy-Lou never had been a pushover. But she’d never been stupid either. She’d seen all kinds of men in all kinds of rages but she’d seen nothing as intense and directional as the rage that gripped Frankie that day. She knew better than to keep a man in such a rage waiting and she went straight over to pour his whiskey. 

Frankie was sweating, staring at the bullwhip like it had hypnotised him. Then Frankie started barking and ranting in a fashion Cindy-Lou would expect more from a dog than a man. She tried to ignore it as best she could. She re-polished glasses that she’d already buffed to a shine, and generally busied herself behind the bar far enough away from Frankie that she felt she might have at least a chance of escape if need be. But she stayed close enough to keep him clear at the edge of her view, all the same.

Slowly, even though she wasn’t directing any effort towards the task, Cindy-Lou found she was starting to make sense of Frankie’s ranting. He was telling and retelling the detailed tale of a horrific murder, a murder that she came to understand had happened that very night. It quickly became obvious Frankie was the murderer. He betrayed not even an iota of guilt. Cindy-Lou was gripped by a cold chill. She wanted to be sick right there and then but fear prevented her from drawing any kind of unnecessary attention from Frankie onto her. On that night, Cindy-Lou felt sure the inside of that little bar would be the very last thing she ever saw. Cindy-Lou was just glad of every moment that Frankie kept his eyes on the bullwhip. It occurred to her that so long as he was looking at the whip, he wouldn’t be killing her. But right as she had that very thought, Frankie turned to stare straight into Cindy-Lou’s eyes.

‘Y’gonna take that whip to me, or am I gonna whip you? Which it’s gonna be?’ Frankie spat the words through his gritted teeth but Cindy-Lou understood them well enough. 

So, that’s how it started. Frankie took his first bullwhipping tied up with ropes in Jago’s back storeroom. Cindy-Lou was smart enough to insist on the ropes. There was no knowing what such a big man in such a mad rage would do under any circumstances, much less so when he was being whipped.

Cindy-Lou knew there was no point going to the police about him. Men like Frankie had an intimate understanding of what threatened them. When they saw a threat, they scared it off, bought it off, or killed it off, usually in that order of preference. Frankie would have had the authorities in his pocket long since.

Cindy-Lou had an absolute hatred for the sessions at first. But Frankie was not about to hear ‘no’ at the best of times, much less when he was caught in that kind of murderous frenzy. And so the whippings came to be a repeated, if generally infrequent, part of Cindy-Lou’s life. Only once had Frankie come to her more than three times in one year. Sometimes, as now, years passed without him showing up. But sooner or later he’d always reappear.

Now, despite what some folks may try to tell you, Cindy-Lou had never been a harlot. She’d not started out with much but she did always have ambition and plenty of it. From the way she saw it, whoring was no way to a bright future. Financially, in a tight town like New Orleans at least, whores may burn brightly for a while, but then, like fireworks, they’d fall to the ground, quickly fading as any early allure was consumed by familiarity, and men’s attention shifted to the next array of sparkling novelties.

For a while, it bothered Cindy-Lou as to why she’d stripped naked in-front of Frankie, teasing him so after that very first whipping. He hadn’t asked for her to do it, neither then nor since. But she’d behaved with similar abandon in every single session she ever had with Frankie. Stripping, teasing, and performing for him, though never once letting him touch her or even brush against her. She was careful to keep contact to a minimum, even when she was tying him up and stripping him.

Each time Frankie came to her, she’d drive him wild with desire but she’d always keep him denied; the bindings made sure of that. 

At the end of each session, Cindy-Lou would never unleash Frankie. Not completely. When she was ready to leave, she’d unshackle just one of his hands and be long gone by the time he’d freed his other limbs. In the attic room, she’d leave the key to the shackles in the hook of one of the canes, placing the tip of the cane just close enough to Frankie’s free hand that he could get to it with a struggle. She’d never return to her rooms in the bar on those rare nights when Frankie was in. She was careful to stay elsewhere so that she was nowhere to be seen as Frankie left in a storm of pain and frustration.

It was only over time that Cindy-Lou came to understand the wisdom of her carefully distanced eroticism.

Cindy-Lou figured that killers like Frankie rarely kill what they want to fuck. Once they’ve fucked it, well, that’s a different matter. So, Cindy-Lou worked out that her tease-and-denial routine was a matter of staying alive.

It was a risk, of course, playing with the deep longings of a man like Frankie. She’d often thought around what she’d do if Frankie jumped her on the street, took her off and forced himself upon her. She was sure that if he fucked her he’d end up killing her, sooner or later, and most likely sooner. Cindy-Lou determined early on that if Frankie defiled her, or even tried to touch her, she’d refuse ever to bullwhip him again. She didn’t feel she had to tell this to Frankie. There was no point. When Frankie was brought to her by his rages, he wasn’t capable of listening, not with his ears at least. Once she’d decided her limits, she was just sure he knew. And he’d never crossed the boundaries she’d laid down firmly in her mind. As Cindy-Lou had seen many a time, words can never be trusted. An unspoken limit can be far more powerful than any clause in a legal contract.

Cindy-Lou was equally sure that if she refused to bullwhip Frankie, he’d kill her for that too, probably with her very-own bullwhip. But if he killed her, what would he do with the unbearable rage that broke inside of him every time he murdered? How would he work that way? Sure, he’d carry on his killing somehow. He’d find another Cindy-Lou somewhere. But that would be mighty hard. And it would never be the same. So, this was just how things had to be. Whipping, teasing, denying, and living to see another day.

The idea of involving another person in teasing Frankie came to Cindy-Lou when, for once, she was going steady with a man named Jack. Jack was the sweetest and tenderest of men, just how she liked her lovers. She’d got to pondering how nothing would drive Frankie wilder with desire than seeing another man making love with Cindy-Lou, seeing her blossom and orgasm not at her own hands but at the hands of the kind of true lover Frankie could never be. Watching another man’s loving cock sliding deep into Cindy-Lou’s pretty little cooch, a cooch that Frankie had seen so intimately but had never and would never be able to touch: that, truly, would be agony. It would also be a death sentence for Jack or any other man foolish enough to try it. Since Frankie would have no desire to fuck those men, he’d kill them clean dead as soon as he was able. And he was sure able.

That’s how Cindy-Lou came to the idea of involving other girls in her sessions with Frankie. This wasn’t easy, as the sessions were always impromptu. There’d been a few girls she’d roped in, figuratively speaking, over the years. Some were lovers, others she’d hooked up with in the moment, just for the purpose. However, she found having other women in the sessions drove Frankie to new depths of desire and despair. Such teasing and denial in stereo, with gratification falling only to the objects of his lust, was a richer kind of torture. 

Cindy-Lou was confident Frankie knew darn well that what applied to her applied to the girls that she went with to tease him so. If he ever touched one of those girls, he’d be getting no more lashes of the bullwhip from Cindy-Lou, whatever he might do to her as a consequence.

Cindy-Lou often zoned into reminiscing as she whipped Frankie. She’d always punished him in something of a trance. It was her way of getting through the whole thing.

In the seven-year interlude since she last saw Frankie, Cindy-Lou had lost none of the instinctive skills she’d built up with that bullwhip. She looked down to see that she’d beaten Frankie good and raw all over. The blood flowed from his welts, snaking down to the floor like the long, thick bullwhip itself. Frankie would never plead for anything. But his bloodshot eyes glared at her, telling her all she needed to know.

Cindy-Lou figured she’d whipped Frankie enough. She gave a few agonising flicks of the cane onto his cock. There was no doubt Frankie had a big, thick cock. It needed to be so. On a tall, wide man like Frankie, a prick of normal dimensions would look sort of pathetic. Cindy-Lou could see Frankie’s cock was as hard as ever as it recoiled from her blows. He was close enough to the edge for her to make her next move. Not that she’d ever truly cared whether he orgasmed or no. But she liked to get him worked into an advanced state of arousal before the tease-and-denial began. The beating over, Cindy-Lou phoned down to the bar.

Frankie was a raging mess of blood, sweat and agony when Ba-Boo knocked on the attic-room door.

Ba-Boo was a sweet young girl in her early twenties and Cindy-Lou regretted needing to drag her into this. There’d been that regret with all the girls, yet with Ba-Boo and her effortless innocence, it was all that bit deeper. Cindy-Lou would be careful to give Ba-Boo a clear choice, of course.

Ba-Boo came from a good, honest family of the kind that tends to end up poor in a town like New Orleans, and Ba-Boo’s folk were poor alright. In such places, wealth tends to flow along the many lines of corruption that run clear yet unseen around the networks of people that are truly the fabric of any city. In New Orleans, there’s even a pretty word for corruption that takes away the sting: ‘lagniappe’. But Cindy-Lou wasn’t in the business of taking away stings when she called for Ba-Boo. She was in the business of adding a deep emotional and erotic sting to the physical pain she’d already inflicted on Frankie.

Cindy-Lou pushed Ba-Boo back onto the small landing at the very top of the stairs. Ba-Boo dropped her eyes to Cindy-Lou’s naked bosom, then down to her neat little nest of light-blonde pubic curls. Ba-Boo’s face lit up with excitement as she bit on her lip in anticipation. She moved in to kiss Cindy-Lou like the new young lover she was. Frankie let out a agonising grunt of animal pain from inside the attic-room. Ba-Boo stopped dead, perhaps confused, and more than a little horrified. 

Complex as the backstory was, Cindy-Lou was well rehearsed in telling it. It took only moments to get Ba-Boo to understand what she needed to do. 

‘I fully appreciate that maybe you’d rather y’didn’t get involved. I can tease him by m’self. But you n’me together, that’ll be truly agonisin’ for him if y’think y’can bear to do it?’

Ba-Boo was caught in intense thought. Cindy-Lou could see that something about the proposal had gripped her, and when Ba-Boo accepted her invitation she did so with a surprising zeal.

‘Okay. Remember I’ll lead y’round the edge of the room so he has no prospect of gettin’ to you. I mean his teeth are about his only real weapon. But we don’t want him grabbing us either. We’re fully safe when we get to the chaise. Once there, we gonna forget he’s even in the room and enjoy ourselves, y’hear?’

Ba-Boo nodded. They stepped through the door.

Cindy-Lou had seen often enough that when girls laid eyes on the beaten Frankie for the first time they always reacted with shock. They were shocked at the state of him. Shocked that Cindy-Lou could do this. Shocked they were in the room. Ba-Boo was as sweet as any young lover Cindy-Lou had known; sweeter, for sure. Ba-Boo saw good in literally anyone, even some of the jackass hoodlums that letched after her at the bar, people in whom Cindy-Lou could see not even the slightest suggestion of a redeeming quality. But standing there in the attic-room, sweet-little Ba-Boo displayed no shock at all. What came to her face when she laid eyes on Frankie’s bloodied, straining body was determination.

Physically, Ba-Boo was perfection. Her naked hips curved from her legs like a spoon perfectly carved from ivory. The hair above her cooch arranged itself more beautifully than the best of hairstylists could ever have confected, teasing up to the bottom of her soft belly and naturally stopping short of her sweet lips below to frame and accentuate them. Her tight little ass was irresistible. Cindy-Lou could not imagine the agony of having to see that bottom without being able to squeeze its toned, quivering little cheeks. Ba-Boo’s breasts were small and full and her milky skin looked almost backlit, in a way that made a stunning contrast with the sweet, dark berries she had for nipples. Ba-Boo had the kind of face you were certain you’d seen in an old painting, like she’d travelled through time just to be with you. But Ba-Boo had the most terrible teeth. She had the teeth of the poor girl she was. Cindy-Lou loved that about her. In fact, she thought this flaw was a form of perfection in itself. It was something you only saw when she laughed, and Ba-Boo’s laugh was so pure and infectious that her teeth sat within it as a kind of physical punchline that was utterly captivating to Cindy-Lou.

Cindy-Lou reclined on the chaise longue and Ba-Boo started to perform the most extraordinary strip-tease around her. With her slender body, Ba-Boo swirled like a sprite conjuring an erotic spell from somewhere deep in the underworld. Ba-Boo was teasing Cindy-Lou with a long, black cloth belt that she’d taken off her dress, holding each end and pressing Cindy-Lou back into the upholstery. Then she’d loop the belt behind to draw Cindy-Lou into Ba-Boo’s body, brushing her lightly with her perfect little breasts before teasing her away again. Ba-Boo pirouetted behind Cindy-Lou and, with a couple of quick twists, she wrapped her cloth belt around Cindy-Lou’s wrists and bound them behind her onto the legs of the chaise longue. Cindy-Lou strained forward in panic as Frankie writhed and bellowed on the floor, his cock twitching in desperate hunger, his eyes bulging towards them.

Ba-Boo, now naked but for her stockings, flipped over the side of the chaise longue and plucked the silk cushion free. She moved, like a giddy fairy in little sideways bounds twirling the cushion through the moonlit air as she made her way around the sides of the room, landing her steps perfectly in the spaces between Frankie’s abandoned clothes and swinging, every few bounds, dangerously close to Frankie in the middle of the attic room.

Suddenly, Ba-Boo coiled down into a curl in the corner as a ballet-dancer might, then she sprang onto Frankie’s back, clamping herself on, smothering his face with the cushion and entwining her limbs around his like bindweed. Ba-Boo’s feather-light torso was held tighter than a straitjacket onto Frankie’s hulking carcass. 

Cindy-Lou was screaming at Ba-Boo. Frankie thrashed and raged left and right trying to break free and breathe. But Ba-Boo’s body clung on, as light and entrapping as a freshly spun spider’s web. Ba-Boo’s thin limbs were like steel cables winding Frankie in to his fate like the lines that bind even the largest of ships to the tugboats that pull them into dock to exhaust them of their cargo. Frankie threw them both across the floor, crashing the chains to every extremity trying to find an escape. He moved to beat Ba-Boo against the column but somehow she’d twist her body so that Frankie landed most of the blows on himself. With a muffled scream, Frankie became limp. Ba-Boo clung on. Momentarily, Frankie twitched with life. Ba-Boo tightened her coil.

There was, at last, silence. Ba-Boo got up, calmly. Frankie’s body lay like a sack. Cindy-Lou’s precious lips were frozen open in shock.

Cindy-Lou came back into the moment with a shiver.

‘What the!’

Ba-Boo untied Cindy-Lou then calmly used the cloth belt to tie up her beautiful hair. Cindy-Lou winced at the bruises that were already painting themselves onto Ba-Boo’s perfect skin from the inside like the juice from crushed berries slowly rising to the surface of milk. Ba-Boo spoke in a clear, slow whisper.

‘Seven years ago, to this very day, Frankie killed ma brother.’ 

Cindy-Lou’s lips froze still once more. Ba-Boo continued, calmly.

‘Don’t worry. This mess’ll be cleaned up within the hour. Not even Frankie’s enemies will know where he’s gone, and he ain’t never been short on foes. You’n me, we have to get outta the way. I took the precaution of bookin’ a room at the Monteleone.’

Cindy-Lou’s emotions were roiling. She’d felt she had no idea who Ba-Boo was and her very survival depended on reading people right through at first glance. Cindy-Lou couldn’t be sure whether to be grateful or furious. She grappled to regain her usual calm demeanour.

‘Well, I guess he well-deserved to go to hell.’

Ba-Boo looked across to Cindy-Lou, shaking her head softly

‘No Ma’am. I didn’ send Frankie to hell. He’d been there long since.’

They dressed, Cindy-Lou still shivering with shock. Sweet Ba-Boo kissed her deep and full on the lips. Cindy-Lou pulled Ba-Boo close. She could not detect even a hint of rage within her.