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She never loved her husband.
She respected him to a certain extent. He was a useful man, a rich man, a smart man. He was just not smart enough. Smart enough to amass a fortune. Smart enough to keep many business partners and few friends. Smart enough to keep an eye on his lovely wife. And smart enough to watch Jack Noir. He was smart enough to think that his trusted lackey, his own apprentice, was his biggest threat.
But though he was smart, he was wrong, and he was not smart enough to live.
= = =
She didn't do it for Jack, though she told him she did. He didn't believe her, because he was always smarter than her husband. He was very stupid in his way, headstrong and stubborn and full of loathing. But he never trusted her, and in that, he was smarter than her husband, because she was the biggest threat he had ever encountered.
She attended her husband's funeral in a black coat and a hat with a veil, and watched Jack on the other side of the grave. He stared at her, glaring, never taking his eyes from her. He was starving and possessive and couldn't tell where she was looking because of the veil, and she knew at the time that he would never trust her now.
Perhaps once he harboured thoughts of an empire greater than her husband's; making something truly worthwhile. He may have dreamed of making this hole of a town into something special. Of being the big cat at last and not some fat man's minion, of people knowing his name and fearing it even as they craved what he could give. And beside him, her. And before him, her husband.
She knew what he wanted. He'd told her before, the words ripped from him on dark nights when her husband would be out, on smoky afternoons in his flat, on a thousand thousand occasions before she freed herself. He wanted her, and he wanted him to know. He was so insecure; she prized it and took advantage of it and used it whenever she could. He wanted her to leave her husband, to choose him, to show to the world that Jack Noir was better than any man.
= = =
She did it for herself, of course, and when her husband lay dead and Jack washed the blood off his hands, her only thought was for herself.
Jack should not have been surprised.
= = =
For awhile, he still thought to claim her. He watched her intently with hungry eyes over her husband's grave as somebody faceless shovelled dirt into it and the few friends and dozens of business partners slowly made their way elsewhere. She imagined the sound of his teeth grinding together, his breath on her throat and his choked mutter. It was always the same sound. "You're mine, mine, mine, mine-"
But she wasn't.
= = =
"Slick," she said one night, the streetlamp light drifting in the window of his flat and bathing grey-black in sharp relief, "where now?"
He had plans. He relayed them frenetically, throwing on a house coat and pacing as she lounged in his bed and watched him. He couldn't stay still, too caught up in the hundreds of things to do; connections to make, deals to force, a friend to bring in here and a minion there. He was all potential.
She watched his eyes flash with fierce desire, and she listened and took note of all his plans, and stored them away for later. And when he stopped, alight with glazed eyes and a sharp, wondrous grin into the future at things only he could see, she called his name again and pulled him back to the ground.
= = =
She always called him Slick. It was something for just them. Later, as he went out and made his city and owned the world and took almost everything he ever wanted, she made sure it wasn't Jack Noir they knew, but Spades Slick. He hated that, as she'd always known it would, the name stuck.
Because he was hers, but she wasn't his. It was the best thing she could ever give him. He was a thousand times better than her husband.
= = =
She'd never loved her husband. She'd thought for the longest time that the only person she could ever love was herself. But she loved Spades Slick, the first thing to belong only to her. So of course, she had to let him go.