17. Time for seduction
Campaigns kick off even more in the six weeks before Christmas, and mine is no exception. Mike and I are in my office downtown, trying to wrap our heads around how we’ll be able to attend a fundraiser, a charity dinner, and plan my attendance to company parties for my legal businesses. All in the same week while investigating both a murder and a crooked politician at the same time.
In the absence of any hints for Xan’s murder, Giulia and Nico have refocused their efforts, trying to locate the missing maid and nanny that were in Addams’s employ until they disappeared from the face of this earth.
One person I haven’t talked to yet is Amber. My PR Manager is busy booking a table at the Holiday charity dinner organised by the West Hill University when I find her, cross-legged on her rolling chair, paper pen holding her long blonde hair together. She beams at me.
“If your good looks weren’t enough, the students’ votes should help you greatly, Andrea.”
“I thought I was supposed to convince the old teachers and Dean and whatnot.”
She often jokes that a politician shouldn’t have long hair and tattoos, and conservative journals have certainly made it clear I don’t have the pedigree, as Lewis also told me before.
“Why not both?” she laughs.
“I’m glad I have you, polishing that image everyone tried to give me. I’m grateful for your hard work, Amber.”
“Your wife is a great help, too,” she says with a sly smile. It isn’t hard to see that any occasion I have to touch my wife in public, I take it with gusto. It’s the only time she can’t retaliate with her sharp tongue or block me out of her high and thick mental walls. She’s a fortress, but I’m determined to break in.
“That she is. But I’m glad you’re not on Addams’s team anymore. He didn’t know what an asset you were.”
It’s a dick move to compliment her just to lay a trap to invite her to talk to me about him, but she’s a smart woman. She knows I want to know what her experience was with him.
“I would have left, anyway.” Her voice is sharp, the words sounding like a bell of doom.
I remain silent, but our eyes collide and I’m not making a move to leave her office. Leaning on the door frame, I cross my arms over my chest and wait. I won’t move until I know the story. What I want is a kernel of it, not the details of what an awful piece of shit he is. Just enough to guide me to the right place.
“He was a slimy boss. I’m glad you’re not like that.”
My body unfurls, going from casual to predatory in seconds. “What did he do?”
“Nothing to me, Andrea. He didn’t have time. But I used to be good friends with Serena, the nanny that used to work for him. She told me he invited her to a party. After that, she was weird and then she disappeared.”
“Did she leave town?”
“I don’t know.” She stares out the window, her expression empty of the usual brightness she carries around—just like Giulia. The city is bustling underneath us, traffic heavy with the five o’clock rush hour, but she doesn’t seem to notice any of it. “She used to love the sea. Said she wanted to move into a house where the waves would lull her to sleep when she’d have enough money.”
That will help reduce our search greatly. Without meaning to, Amber gave us the golden nugget we’ve been chasing.
“I’m sorry about your friend, Amber. I hope wherever she is, the waves are the soundtrack of her nights.”
She gives me a sad smile and a nod, then shakes her head and gets back to her planning.
Combining my resources with Giulia’s and this new piece of information, I’m confident we’ll get more answers. I can’t wait to go home and tell her all about it, strategise. See what her brilliant brain will come up with. A strange sensation I don’t know what to call starts in my chest and blooms with heat all over my body. Fucking weird, but I think I like it.
The cocky smile I wear can’t be erased by Addams’s voice as Mike and I enter the Town Hall for my next meeting.
The asshole’s here as well as Lewis and his team, and the councillors. They’re talking about the plan to build a new school on the outskirts of town. I submitted the project months ago, and it needs to be approved as well as built. It could be a minimum of three years until it can receive kids. Kids who need it because it serves a community of people who can’t afford to drive into the city traffic or take the lacking public transports to get their kids to the closest school, twenty minutes away from the area.
Addams is against the project and wants the city to invest in a new spa. Who fucking needs a spa? The area is populated with people with low income. That shit will irrevocably increase the value of the houses around, making it even more difficult for them to keep their homes. He’s team gentrification in all its splendour and I want to drive my fist into his face for being such a cunt.
“Education should be a priority for the city,” I say, a bite to my tone.
“We already have tons of schools, Capaldi. What we need to do is make sure resources are there for all citizens.”
“The nearest school to that area is twenty minutes away by bus. A bus line which only comes three times per hour. It’s not enough. This is something else we should focus on, by the way.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Capaldi, you’re not a councillor. I’m not even sure what you’re doing here. Same goes to you, Mr. Addams,” councillor Louise McGregor says.
“I’m here because I submitted the project you’re voting on and will be the one building that school.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Capaldi. Not everyone in this town is at your beck and call,” Addams sneers. “And shouldn’t you be at home playing house with your new wife Giulia.”
My voice is stone-cold, steel and a promise of pain all wrapped in one, my focus sharpened to my prey.
“Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth.”
Mike elbows me in the ribs to distract me and snap me out of the murderous rage I’m descending into. With Giulia receiving weird fucking notes about the company she keeps and Addams bringing her name up everywhere he goes, I’m even more determined to uncover who he really is.
“Remember the end goal, Andrea,” Mike whispers.
We keep arguing for another two hours before the councillors agree to put the project to a vote in the coming week where neither Addams nor I will be invited. I’m fuming when I get out of the town hall and straddle my bike, which is back from the repair shop, riding too fast back to the cottage. The thatched roof comes into my line of vision and the tension in my shoulders immediately dissolves. I drive into the garage and walk into the house, finding Giulia on the couch, papers all around her, hunched over something as per usual.
I come behind her and peek over her shoulders. More plans for Rouge come into view. It’s a 3D mock up of the inside of the building. Red and black and gold accents on the walls make it look like a rococo house of pleasure. In a way, it’s what it will be. She zooms in on the corner of the ground floor and I can see smaller stages with poles and a couple of seats for a maximum of four people.
I kiss the top of her head and I’m sure she doesn’t realise the little sigh that she lets out. I want to drown in that sound.
“It’s looking good, sweetheart.”
Now she tenses. I thought we were past that bullshit defensiveness, but I brace as I prepare to go into sparring with my little wife.
“Of course, it is; it’s not my first rodeo,” she retorts.
She needs to fight. Since it’s how she deals with her emotions, I’ll be there for her. Might not be the smartest choice, but I don’t give a shit. I know where I stand with her, I’ll give her the fight she thinks she’s in for and hold her down by the neck when she needs submission. The way she let me do it just a few days before speaks volumes when it comes to what she craves. What I crave though? To give her anything she wants and desires. Five years is becoming too short of a time to have with her.
“Run me through it, guerrieritta. Show me what my money paid for.”
“Your shit town lacks a place of sin. With this club, you can get anything money can buy, consensually, no matter how depraved. I’ve talked to Lana about supplying it with Y, so it would be the only club in the whole of the UK to do so, bringing in people and cash. We can make it exclusive, but open it widely on certain nights to avoid being the source of jealousy and retaliation. Sex workers can provide services based on tech sheets.”
I look at her like it’s the first time I see her. Sex work and entertainment are businesses my father never wanted to set a foot in, saying it was too messy when you deal with sex and people. “You’ve thought about this a lot.”
It’s not a question. The vision is clear. Some of it is illegal as shit but for the most part, it’s legitimate and good for business. Only a mafia princess who’s been deep into it before could come up with a scheme like this. It might not mix well with my political career, but it wouldn’t be the first time I have to buy the silence of powerful men. And if they come to the club, they won’t want to snitch, anyway.
Not with what Giulia will offer them.
“Of course, I’ve built two clubs like this on Kalliste alone in three years. This is just a walk in the park.” She gloats, and I can’t help but grab her face in my hands and kiss her passionately.
It’s like coming home. Merely stepping inside my cottage in the woods isn’t enough anymore.
This.
Her sweet lips and little mewl of protest before she melts on my tongue, that’s what I need.
Our tongues tangle until she manages to push me away by standing up from the couch. “You can’t keep kissing me when you want to shut me up.”
I frown. “Do you think this is what’s happening here, guerrieritta?”
“Why would you do it otherwise?”
I close the inch of distance between us. I know she wants to flee, but her stubbornness refuses to yield and she stays planted with both feet on the ground, like she always does when she fights, looking up at me through her lashes and making me drown in the green of her irises.
“I think you’re fucking brilliant.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffs and turns her head to the side.
I grab her chin with my fingers and turn her gaze back to mine. “You’re brilliant, Giulia. This club, it’s a great idea. You don’t need me to tell you that, you already know it. I don’t know who told you that you don’t have good ideas or what other bullshit. But I see the potential of your plan. It’s good.”
We stay silent, exchanging a look that I’m not sure how to interpret, and I decide to change tactics and go to her bathroom to draw her a bath. It’s time I properly seduce my wife.