There was a doorway off to the right behind the bar where a short, narrow hall was located. An office was there, along with an employees only toilet and stock room. Mau sat behind the locked door of said office, thumbing through the last stacks of small bills and occasionally glancing at the monitor on the desk, “..Forty, sixty, eighty, five thousand…” She murmured to herself and wrapped a rubber band around the brick, adding it to a pile of what had already been counted. As much fucking money as Sully had coming through this place, one might think he’d possess a counting machine. Maureen was pretty convinced the only reason he didn’t? Wasn’t just because he was a nazi with modern technology, but because should he come up short on the count, the guy wanted someone to cut. He was the kind of man who bought hundreds, if not thousands, of turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas to pass out in the community like some kind of revered pillar but was also a blood thirsty son of a bitch who wanted you shaking in your boots just by the mere concern of making a mistake with his money.<br/><br/>Mau wasn’t worried.<br/>She knew his kind.<br/><br/>Some wouldn’t be able to count correctly for the trembling in their fingers while they flipped through<i>this</i>paper, terrified of getting it wrong by a cent, but there she lounged with her short legs outstretched and bare feet thrown up on the desk like some kind of little pixie, gangster Queen of the southside. Oh yea, she had an air of importance about her, always did end up with some kind of complex when the mood was just right and she was tasked with something like this. It wouldn’t last for long, however, but while it did Mau really soaked it up.<br/><br/>“Ten--” She spoke as she wrote in the ledger, “--thousand in twenties…” And after glancing at the small calendar to ensure she didn’t get the date wrong that was written beside the numbers, she signed her name next to the total and slapped the book closed.<br/>The money piled on the messy desk was a sight for sure, and Mau admired her laughably “<i>hard work</i>”, before standing up so she could neatly stack the cash in a safe. A quick spin of the combination to clear it later, the girl dusted her hands together and plopped back down in the old, but plush, chair so she could put her boots back on.<br/><br/>It was the end of her shift now that the count was out of the way. Normally she’d be staying, but for whatever reason Sully had hired some airhead after a friend of his requested a job for his granddaughter. Maureen watched her on the monitor. She’d been tasked with showing her the ropes but really, how fucking hard was it to fetch drinks?  It wasn't like they offered fancy, detailed mixers. So Mau never bothered, just gave her a name tag, purposely misspelling that name, and told her where to stand. She just couldn’t take her seriously, not even after two weeks. What, with her suggestions of making the place more lively;<i>hip</i>, she vaguely recalled was the word used.<br/><br/><i>Maybe we can do karaoke one night! Or a luau theme on Thursdays! I’m great at planning these kinds of things and could really help spruce the place up and bring in more money. <br/>
Maureen had just looked at her with some kind of smile, “That’s great, Bre.” She’d said, nodding absently, then smiled wider, “But we’re not ‘sposed to make more money, Sweetheart.” Spoke to her like a child also, no matter that she was just a few years her junior, and left her standing there confused. The pub was a front, it wasn’t meant to generate more money. </i><br/><br/>From the looks of it, it was just the same ol’ crowd there, like every other night of the week. Old men reminiscing on days long since passed, and how in their prime things were as simpler as they were harder. The pups, as those very men liked to call them, washing away the days dirty deeds - maybe to cure the ache in their knuckles from the knockarounds they had to give, or the one in their heads that the misses implanted when she nagged about how absent they were lately. The random lonely woman, like Mrs. Makovi there in a booth, hoping that tonight was the night she didn’t have to go home alone.<i>Again</i>. Southie was a place of its own, separate from Boston altogether. The people didn’t like change, and they damn sure didn’t like other folks coming in to try and make that change happen. Their outdated dives were second homes and they’d just assume call an old pal to settle disputes rather than the law, who never had any business sticking their nose in to anything.<br/><br/>She’d just finished zipping up her brown, faux suede boot to the knee when her green eyes narrowed in on the screen. In fact, Mau leaned her little body over that desk to look closer at it when Breanna's form moved off to the side of the camera. Allowing her a good look at the gentleman she’d been chatting it up with for a minute now. Before, she never thought anything of it. The girl was hard pressed to shut up, and at first Maureen might have felt sorry for her current target of conversation but when her vision focused in on his eyes? When it registered<i>who</i>exactly<i>he</i>was? Something more akin to jealousy, and fuckin… hurt too, erupted within her. But even with those two menacing emotions, intermixed with them, was a twinge of elation.<br/><br/>Ryan had been her… her rainstorm.<br/>A skin drenching frenzy of electrical currents, making it hard to tell up from down-left from right.<br/>Nostalgia could be a wretched thing, especially when it only served to make her feel abandoned, but, Mau couldn’t deny that at the very least?<br/>She was real glad to see he was alive. No matter how scorned the boy had made her.<br/><br/>Her eyes moved constantly over his grainy form, assuring they weren’t playing tricks on her, and briefly she had to wonder if he’d shown up there to find her, because really… what were the odds of happenstance? Her ego had little to do with that notion, and suddenly Mau was awash with doubt and a nervousness that had her chewing on the skin around the nail of her thumb. She snatched her bag off the floor and pilfered through it until finding a glass vial with the whitest of powders inside of it. After taking a bump up her nose, pinching the burn in the bridge, those nerves were fizzing out and in their place was a spout of courage. He’d always made her simmer with an array of feelings the girl had little control over, and while he might have grown up and gone off, allowing the world to change and mold him?<br/><br/><i>She</i>was very much the same ol’ gal he’d fuckin left there.<br/><br/>The coke warmed her up from head to toe, put a crooked little grin on her face too, and after adjusting the denim skirt as well as her ribbed, ivory long sleeve? Maureen wasn’t just ready to face him, she was absolutely pining to. Not before making sure the silver, St. Michael’s pendant of<i>his</i>was on shiny display around her trim neck - hanging between the V cut line above her small chest. Sentimental thing. However, when she left that office, and did see him?<i>Really</i>did… the screen on that desk had only made him recognizable, and had done nothing to reveal just how much her boy was different. Physically, yea of course, but it was more so those hardened edges around eyes that looked near lost that had her slightly faltering. Second guessing the fire she walked out of that room with. It only took a moment for her to get it back though, and she moved for Breanna just to give her a subtle nudge with a hip.<br/><br/>“Ya should take a break, Doll.” Mau said, her accent a little trashier than Bre’s, all while she kept her scopes fixated on him, “Nah I’m just fine here--” Breanna beamed an award winning, pearly white smile that reflected her blushing good nature, “And ya leavin anyways, huh?”<br/><br/>“Not now.”