She's saved from further awkward conversation by Lowen, who's looking for Jax. Her radar pinging, Gemma sends Unser out of her office. Once Gemma and Lowen are alone and Gemma has failed to pry the message for Jax out of his legal counsel, Gemma goes on the offensive with, "Here's a message for you, Lady Law: Remember who you work for." Lowen actually rolls her eyes as she scoffs at Gemma, then says drily, "You're right. Helping Tara and the MC might be a conflict of interest. Guess I'll have to figure out which innocent is in need of a good defense."
But because this is Gemma, that can't stand unchallenged. So she obliquely threatens Lowen's life. While this gives Gemma a short-term win -- Lowen's gaping in disbelief at how this conversation ended -- it probably does not bode well in the long run. Oh, Gemma. I swear, the woman who regards a Pyrrhic victory as a total win because at least she can light her cigarette off the flames from the ruins that are now hers.
Tig wheels the bondage cage off the pier. The Ghanezi brother he just drowned is still inside. Once the cage sinks out of sight, Tig drops to the edge of the dock and begins singing brokenly, "I left my home in Georgia/ headed for the 'Frisco Bay/ 'Cause I got nothing to live for/ and nothing is coming my way …" and then half-sobs, "All the way, baby." Bizarrely, this makes me think of Louisa May Alcott.
No, no, no, hear me out. She wrote a duo of books, Eight Cousins and its sequel, Rose in Bloom. In the latter one, the heroine has a dating pool that is confined to her first cousins, because, oh, let's just wave our hands around and say, "Olden times." ANYWAY, our girl Rose and her charming but aimless alcoholic cousin Charlie are bonkers about one another, except her survival sense kicks in and she tells Charlie she won't wear his promise bracelet until he's lived up to her ideal of a high-minded, idealistic reformer who is also not a horrible drunk. So Charlie decides to head off to India because how else does a nice New England family make its money in the 1800s if not by embracing imperialist exploitation, but before he does, he and his horse go out and get drunk. (Well, Charlie does. And maybe the horse. Olden times!) To make a long story short, he has a very dramatic deathbed scene with Rose one chapter later, and then we get to the mourning. And there's a line in there about Rose finally putting on the bracelet: "She had worn the trinket hidden under her black sleeve for a long time after his death, with the regretful constancy one sometimes shows in doing some little kindness all too late."









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