Chapter 45: All Change

A couple of years after she took over, when Jacqui was firmly ensconced as the Madame of Jacqui's House of Joy with Sarah still as her Top Girl, Jacqui heard of the death of Hugo late one afternoon. She thought back on the day she had started as Madame, when he had beaten her and used her cunt, arse and mouth before covering her in his jism. He had bedded her since, but only a few times, and had never publicly punished her as he threatened. All in all, he had been a good boss to work for, and not demanding.

She pondered on what would come next for a while, and decided that it would be a very black day for her if, as she expected, Jason took over. He had been a regular sadist customer at Jacqui's Place and she had had a lot of problems restraining him from half killing the girls he hired in Jacqui's House of Joy. He threatened them even worse than Karl had when he was revolting against Sarah's domination of him.

A little later, one of the younger regulars, Ronnie, came in looking very cheerful and asked for two girls for his usual straight sex, but for the whole night.

"A celebration?" asked Jacqui.

"It's confidential," said Ronnie, "but I could say yes to that, since Hubert has just promoted me to be his number two."

"But," asked Jacqui perplexed, "I thought you were already his number two?"

"Ah, but that was when Hubert worked for Hugo," came the enigmatic reply.

Jacqui came straight to the point, "Well, I know Hugo died this afternoon, so who does Hubert work for now?"

"That's the big secret," said Ronnie, clearly bursting to tell someone, "but, confidentially, he doesn't work for anyone. He's the new boss of Csadia."

"What about Jason?" asked Jacqui, "I expected him to take over."

"There was a meeting of all the top people and Hubert told them that if he didn't get the job, the planet's systems would collapse in days, because he had been running the planet for Hugo for years and the computers were all booby-trapped, When Jason tried to check on this all the computers said he had no bank account and had just been demoted to miner."

"And has he?" asked Jacqui.

"Of course not; it was only a demonstration of Hubert's power since he started a bank going and nobody has much coin money any more. Karl's out on his ear though, and Frank will take over from him."

Jacqui shrugged and thought, 'Well that could have been worse. We might have had civil war.'

"Right," she said, "Who do you fancy for your celebration?"

"I'll have a parade and choose then, I think," said Ronnie.

"Fair enough," said Jacqui and summoned all the available girls.

Karl arrived hammering on the door the next afternoon, long before opening time.

Jacqui let him in and quite a few of the girls rushed into the Choosing Room, because although he was not a nice "john", he did tip very well. The scene that met their eyes was one of the strangest ever seen before or since. Karl was sitting in a client chair crying like a baby and Jacqui was looking very embarrassed.

"You mean you knew yesterday, and you didn't warn me?" sobbed Karl.

"I couldn't say a word," said Jacqui softly, "You know that anything a client tells me here is confidential. We wouldn't last a week otherwise."

Karl sobbed even louder.

"But now I've got nothing left," he moaned, "I might have saved something if I had known."

'That's why I couldn't tell you, ' thought Jacqui, 'the others would have killed me and you are nothing now and couldn't have protected me, even if you had wanted to.'

Aloud she said, "Where will you go, and what will you do?" although she knew there were very few options.

Basically for a fallen boss there was a choice of a quick death if someone hated him enough, suicide on a space ship, or a slow death by starvation.

"I don't know," he said, brokenly, "I just don't know."

One of the girls chimed in, "We'll take him in, Madame, and we'll pay for the privilege. Just let us have him for three hours in an Entertaining Room and we'll pay whatever you ask. Please?"

Jacqui stared at her, and it suddenly dawned on her that the girl meant to torture Karl to death. She looked round the others.

One of the newer, youngest ones said, "I only have about a hundred credits saved, but you can have them all for ten minutes with him strapped down the way he strapped me down, Madame."

"Do you all hate him that much?" asked Jacqui.

"Oh yes, Madame," they chorused, and the little one said, "We would all enjoy whipping him as he whipped us. If he can't take it it won't matter to us any more than we mattered to him."