Penelope Sinclair

Julius sat down with a beer. “Then I guess I’m gonna drink with you.” He clinked her glass lightly and leaned back. Him and Morgan had had a very tepid relationship, not due to any animosity but just the natural distance of an employee and employer. But Penny was different. Jules suspected that she wanted more to know how Paityn was than anything else, but she was nice to him. He wasn’t used to nice, and had assumed that the wife of a mob boss wasn’t really capable of it, but his suspicions had so far found no merit. He felt bad for her, honestly. Her husband was in jail and her children seemed to view their parents as tyrants. Folly of youth. 

“You look like shit. You sleeping at all?” Penny was immaculately beautiful and looked easily ten years younger than she was, not to mention that her skin seemed to actually glow, a feat Jules hadn’t known was possible, but she’d certainly looked less wrecked.

As tired as she was, it was kind of nice to have company that wasn’t going to jump straight to hostility the moment they sat down. Even though she had been hesitant to hire Julius at first, he’d quickly proven to be loyal to the family and her children. For that she was more thankful than her pride would allow her to admit. She let a small smile grace her lips, just enough to let him know she appreciated the company. 

Both eyebrows rose slightly, unsure if she should be amused or offended that he had the gall to speak to her that way. “Not many of our men would say something like that to me, you know.” And there were even less that she would get away with it. “But you’re not wrong. Who has time to sleep when the city is burning?” Plus her husband pressuring her to find a way to get him out and children who wanted nothing to do with her for the most part. Pile all that on top of mourning for her child and Penelope found herself tired. “Where’s my wayward daughter tonight?” It wasn’t often that he left her side so it left her curious as to how he’d managed a night off.

Location: Brew St. Cafe When: After the weapon delivery disappeared Available to: Everyone (but especially @jacksinclairs​ because well… he is head arms in the end)

The entire wedding had just been a catalyst for the entire situation. The death of Paisley. The torture of the Costello family member. The death of Marcel Costello. But now it was getting closer and closer to Connor’s scene. The biggest shipload of weapons had gone missing and he was certain that it were the Costello’s who were behind it. Who else could it be?

The situation kept Connor up at night because of the fact that their biggest profit was gone and they had no idea yet on how to find it back. It was probably the last thing on their to-do list but it was the main reason why the man had ended up at the Brew St. Cafe. There wasn’t going to be enough coffee to keep him awake, but he could at least try.

Connor turned around with the coffee in hand, not seeing the person standing behind him. It nearly made him spill the coffee but for some reason, he was lucky enough that all of the coffee was still inside the cup. It didn’t take away the fact that an annoyed expression was on the face of the blonde. “You are lucky I’m too tired to even argue about this. You do know about personal space, right?”

In the days following the city-wide blackout, there had been little rest. Had things been in a bit better shape, Penelope may have found it fit to make a joke about the wicked but they were well past that. Even though Bash had been correct that hitting some Costello businesses would be a good idea, the Sinclair family hadn’t made it out unscathed. One of their shipments was intercepted and it was a nice little hitch in the process. 

On her way to grab a hot coffee, she was almost covered in one instead. “And you must be pretty tired to not realize whom it is you’re speaking to. I’m not usually one to pull that card but I’ve slept a total of ten hours this week. You should know all about that.” 

where: sapphire. when: november 15th, 8pm (after the blackout) with: anyone.

She wasn’t too fond of the clubbing and drinking scene. It wasn’t that she was a good girl, but Dahlia didn’t like to be spotted in places where she could be potentially vulnerable. She didn’t like too much exposure – being in the mafia (hell, she hated that word… maybe organized crime was a little fancier) had its risks, perhaps more risks than advantages, and so, if she risked being alone or vulnerable or both, she risked the entire team.

Still, she figured that a drink or two wouldn’t hurt. She wasn’t going to get wildly drunk, or remotely tipsy. Just a tad.. happier. It wasn’t wrong, right? Maybe a bit morally grey of her, but everything about her was morally dubious.

Walking through the crowd, she spotted a random guy making eye contact. Dahlia brushed it off, walking past them as if nothing was happening. Until she felt something get a hold of her right arm, and then her left arm. And suddenly, she was almost completely paralyzed by someone else’s strong grip.

“Ugh–” Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, this had been a terrible idea. Whoever was it that was holding her back wouldn’t last for long. “Let me go,” she struggled, but the crowd didn’t listen. The music was too loud, and suddenly panicked washed over her.

“Please… Just let me go.” 

If she hadn’t been meeting someone at this particular club, there was no way that Penelope would have chosen to be there. The music was too loud and even though the young men were nice to look at, there was no replacement for sophistication. When one was married to Morgan Sinclair for so many years, it was hard to follow up. 

She’d been sitting in a corner booth when she spotted Dahlia trying to edge her way through the crowd. Though they were only related through two different marriages, family was family. And the way that man approached the girl, grabbing her roughly, Penny was having none of it. If she had to stab some idiot tonight then so be it. Who would question her? 

The woman rose from her seat and crossed to stand next to the man who was dangerously close to losing a hand. “Excuse me. I believe you were told to get your hand off this young woman. You’d do well to do as asked.”

Her stomach was settling but now it was her mind that was upside down.

Are you pregnant?

How could she answer that question? She was two months pregnant and no one knew. Charlie felt like there was no going back from that kind of secret. She told herself from the moment she decided to wait before telling Jackson that she was not lying. She was omitting to tell him something and that was different, or so she told herself. But now Penny was here, with her, saying the word she had not dared say aloud yet. Pregnant.

Big brown eyes looked back at her sister-in-law, the answer all over them. “You can’t tell Jack. He doesn’t know.” Her tone was pleading. Jack, nor anyone else, could know about this. Not now. Charlie knew she could not go on like this for long and yet, she was clinching to this with her life. 

“Two months. A little over,” she breathed softly, not daring to look at Penny.

The question had been a complete shot in the dark, taking the smallest details and trying to paint a picture when them. The way Charlotte reacted though? It was easy to see that the stab had been dead on. Penelope sighed heavily at the revelation. There was so much to protect these days and it seemed more and more like she was the only one trying to see the least amount of blood in the outcome. 

“You haven’t told Jackson yet.” The words weren’t a question so much as a statement of fact. No, if her brother in law knew then there was no way Charlie would be out here unprotected like this. She ran a hand over the woman’s upper back in a way she hoped would be soothing. “Please. We will figure things out but I don’t want you to worry about anything. You and the little one will be okay. I swear it on my life, okay?” 

“Do both you and Sebastian really think I’m that stupid? I can put two and two together, mother. Marcel Costello is dead and Bash is keeping something from me. I can tell when he’s lying. It can never reach his eyes.”

Paityn shook her head defiantly and moved to sit on her couch. She buried her face in her palms as she suppressed the urge to scream. Paityn sat up and brought her eyes to her mother then. “Did he lie to you too or did you get the courtesy of honesty?”

She bit her lip. More than anything, Paityn wanted to pop a few Xanax and dose off into black, drink warm vodka or take a fucking bong hit. She couldn’t. Her arms wouldn’t move. The dread of being judged loomed over. Even in her own apartment, when her mother was around Paityn fell prisoner to habits of hiding herself. 

“I don’t know anything. Sebastian made it damn easy to assume the worst.”

Penelope bit down on the tip of her tongue. If there was one thing she knew, it was the way their blood heated quickly with even the smallest amount of pressure added. “No one is calling you stupid, Paityn. You’re acting like a child but you’re by no means stupid.” 

She watched as her youngest moved to sit on her couch, more than willing to break bread but she was tiring of the constant fighting and back talk from her daughters. “If you act like family then you get honesty. Does that answer your question?” There was love, and there was loyalty. Their family was built on both but without loyalty, everything could crumble. 

Sebastian: We are moving him. He's serving his time, but not in /that/ prison and not where /they/ know where he's at. I'm not keeping him there. Even if it only buys us some time. He's a sitting duck, especially if we have our own family members working against him.

As happy as Charlie was, this pregnancy came with a lot of mixed feelings and emotions. There was so much going on around her, around them, that it came with stress and pain. And now with the blackout and Marcel being dead, even more changes were coming. It had been an intense 12hours and she had barely eaten since yesterday or slept. And now she was feeling faint in front of Penny.

“Mhm,” she hummed, holding a hand, trying to calm the upset stomach that was treating to empty itself. A few deep breaths later and she was starting to steady herself. “Just forgot to ate.” Charlie was unconvincing and she knew it, but it was the best she could do in the situation. “I just need to breath a bit and then we can go outside.”

Penelope moved to rest a hand on Charlotte’s back, immediately falling into the role that she’d spent most of her life perfecting, worry. “You forgot to eat.” She repeated, looking over her sister in law’s face slowly. There was a paleness to her face that said something more was going on than just skipping a meal. “Do you find that you’re short of breath?” 

Having been pregnant many times herself, the wheels began to turn in her head. While her and Morgan were well past having any more children, Jack and Charlie were still young, still building their family. Would they be foolish enough to have a child in the midst of this chaos? “Charlie I need you to be straight with me. I can’t do what I need to do to keep this family safe if I don’t have all of the details. Are you pregnant?” 

“I’d say it’s a solid maybe.” The wedding had definitely destabilized whatever tentative truce that had been reached between the two families but there could’ve been some conversations that Mateo hadn’t been privy to. Still, as he said, there was no real truce for him, not personally. The apology did nothing to calm him. “Are you? I find that hard to believe when you don’t know who she was.” It seemed like she was just saying it to say it and he of course didn’t believe her about whatever direction she might be thinking of taking the Sinclairs in. It wasn’t likely that he was really going to talk about Maria with a Sinclair, of all people, but he’d already let his anger take over and it didn’t seem like it was going to subside any time soon. 

This man was so angry. Penelope could feel it in every inch of their conversation. His words were tense and filled with a hate that was probably well-deserved when it came to her last name, though she was finding more these days that she was less and less attached to the darn thing. “You say that as though I should know everything my husband chose to do. Things would have been very different if I’d been the one running things. Families would have been so far beyond any limits.” That was the only comfort she could offer on the topic of his sister as she truly didn’t know who she had been or even that the Sinclairs had anything to do with her. Whatever that conversation, she hadn’t been privy. “I do hope you can learn to see past your blind hate one day, Mateo. You might find you were shooting in the wrong direction.” 

Sebastian: That's not what Priya said. She said he was being offered up -- that he was gonna die in there anyway and that they were gonna attack anyway, so us /handing/ him over would allow us to prepare better. He's not staying in that prison. I'm making sure of it. We're moving him. ASAP.

It was money well spent.

The Sinclair matriarch looked like she’d been clothed from a greenhouse, teeming with life and toxicity in equal measure, undisputedly eye catching. Undisputedly beautiful.

“I imagine Uma is jealous.” 

Zoey smiles at the compliment, though she knows she can’t wholly relax. It didn’t matter if the woman didn’t seem to know her. She worked for the Costellos now, technically, and it wasn’t wise to make a habit of talking with Sinclairs— innocuous party, or no.

“I had a thing about her in college– female rage, and beauty, and all that. I ended up writing a paper about it. How she reemerged in feminist art and literature in the 70s.” 

Medusa, Zoey thinks, was complex. Powerful. Demonized. It made sense, the affinity modern women had for her, the desire to flesh her out beyond the character society had made. Zoey never saw herself as particularly powerful. Or particularly full of rage. But she could appreciate the art behind it.

“Men made her a monster, and women turned her into a symbol.”

The very idea of the actress who’d donned the outfit first being envious of her was an interesting one and did everything to feed the matriarch’s ego. Not that she needed any more but with all that had been happening lately, it didn’t hurt. 

Who was this girl, Penny wondered. Her face wasn’t a familiar one but she was intelligent and wistful all wrapped up into a pretty package. Where did her loyalties lie? 

“I think you’ve done well in representing her, then. The costume is obviously well thought out and its always nice to see someone willing to jump head first into becoming one of their heroes.” Not to mention when the costume is someone so hard to cross as Medusa would be. One look and any man would be turned to stone instantly. “I agree completely but feel there’s a message to be heard here.” 

She brought the drink to her lips to create a pause in the conversation before continuing. “Whom is it that you’re trying to turn to stone tonight?”