Chapter Seventeen
In which Fee helps Alec discover the joy of animals.
Fee…
As the old ones would say, I took a fiddle laugh over the business with the server farm. Of course it was the bloody American! No wonder there had been so much wild shooting on the farm.
It's a wonder they hadn’t brought a rocket launcher.Or a tank.
Hard as I laughed at that, it was even more so over the fact that Davies seemed ignorant of exactly how many crimes, old-fashioned murder being the least of them, could be laid at the door of ‘legitimate’ corporations and especially one run by a piece of shit like his buddy Leevil.
I liked the name.
“Why would you think that someone who was willing to destroy small communities, tribal lands, and wildlife around the world would hesitate to kill one billionaire? There is no such thing as protected status where money is involved,” I asked after he explained the contract shenanigans. “Also, you might be needing some new lawyers.”
“You think?” he said, “And I am fully aware of what allegedly legal companies get up to in the name of profit. In this case, I am a bit surprised because in the long run he would be better off doing business with me.”
“People like him don’t have a long run, they only want what they can get their filthy little hands on now. That’s why they don’t care about saving the planet. Not if it means more for them now. I swear if I had your resources- no, if I had a fucking tiny, iota of your resources, your fucking money, your contacts, your everything, I’d make them regret every day they woke up.Every day they didn’t look at the earth with gratitude for it being their mother.”
The idea of Leevil doing all he had done - shooting up the farm, almost killing my family, almost killing Alec, all so he could rape the land in Lancashire by himself - blotted reason out of me for the moment. No matter how good the night before had been, far more than passable if I was being more honest than I wanted to be with myself, the stress of the last few days, and the constant state of fury I had lived with since I was a girl boiled over. “You wasting, ruining fuckers!”
Before I could stop myself I had picked up one of a pair of blue glass paperweights shaped like hippos and whipped it full force at the back of the currently cold fireplace.
Shards of marble and powdered glass flew everywhere.
In less than a blink Davies was up, had slid over his desk, sending important papers and expensive pens and the blotter flying, and had an arm around my waist from behind, taking the second paperweight from my hand.
“Woah, woah there. I know you don’t like me but those are Tiffany. Well, this one is, the other one is rubble.”
Two of his guards - Roger and Kyle - banged into the room with guns drawn, doing a quick, efficient scoping of the space. The day before I’d had a quiet word with both of them about how lazy they were at checking corners on the estate, and that whilst my family was there they needed to get their shit straight or we’d have more than words.
I wasn’t in the mood to admire their renewed work ethic, so when they looked at the two of us I hissed at them, sounding for all the world like one of Grandad’s geese.
They were back out of the door that quick.
“As if they weren't scared enough of you already,” Alec murmured, one of his broad, warm palms rubbing circles on my back.
I pulled around so we were face to face and for want of anything sensible to say I kissed him.
Despite the mood I was in, and the destruction I had wrought on one of his antiques, the kiss wasn’t wild. Wasn’t angry. At least not after that first, hard contact.Working its way quickly backward from close to biting each other to slow and curious, taking the time that we hadn’t had in the basement or allowed ourselves the night before, it was soothing, a leisurely kindling rather than a burn everything down inferno.
Languidly, his tongue toyed with mine, and I teased his lips. We played, and I let him angle me so it would be little effort to bend myself over that desk and let him fuck both of us raw. Though that seemed like a grand idea, Davies slowly disengaged from the knot we had made ourselves.
“I can’t believe I am saying this, but right now at this very second only, mind you, I think I want, or rather I need, your mind more than your body.”
“Well,” I ran my fingers through my now messy bangs, putting them in order, “Mr. Davies, I’ll be giving you double points for originality if not for timing. What do you mean?”
Stepping back around his desk, he adjusted his jeans indiscreetly, probably sensing I would find his still obvious erection more arousing than amusing.
Before sitting himself, he gestured for me to take a seat, “Please,” and then waited until I had. It occurred to me that he’d had all of the training of a proper English gentleman and that no matter how improper our relationship had been so far it was ingrained in him the way the love of the soil was with me .
“Something you said before you had your tantrum-”
“My what?”
“What else would you call it?” he asked, a brow raised, he gave a significant look towards his wounded fireplace.
He wasn’t wrong. “Ah, fair play, go on.”
“You said something about if you had my resources. My money.What you could do with them. What if I gave you the resources?The money. Not all of them, but that iota you were talking about.”
He leaned forward, green eyes wolfish and avid, “Specifically, what would you do to your friend and mine, Mr. Leevil?”
I crossed my ankle onto my thigh and tented my fingers, evil-genius like, “I’d have to give that some thought, Mr. Davies. I’d have to look into his activities, his holdings, most importantly his projects. Not the project in the Lancashire wetlands, even though that would be my first choice. I am sure the security there is tighter than a virgin’s arsehole after everything that’s gone on.”
Davies barked with laughter. “Before the protest you investigated me. I refuse to believe you didn’t do the same with Leevil. I am convinced that you have a whole, long list of shit about him either in that impressively violent brain, or in your mobile.”
“If it's in my mobile, why not just have your people rustle it up for you? I know they have been trying to crack it when I’m asleep.”
“Trying, not succeeding. Well done, by the way.”
I shrugged. “I am a corporate security expert. And a good one.Also, if they did get into anything other than my Spotify account or my Call of Duty app the phone will slag itself, so tell them to be careful. I have a lot of photos in there I want to keep. And you’re right, most of it is in my head, apart from specific numbers and addresses.”
“If not the server farm then where would you start?”
I pretended to think about it for a while, but from the moment I had first turned my eye to Leevil’s filthy corporate interests there was one side-hustle of his that I particularly hated.
“Do you remember that his second wife is a clothing designer?”
“Leonora? Yeah. Her clothes are vulgar as hell, but expensive and exclusive. Very popular with the wives and mistresses of certain kinds of military junta leaders and cartel bosses. Despite that, she’s quite lovely. We were introduced at the Met Gala a few years ago.”
“Of course you were. Yes, she was smart enough to end things with him which on the surface ol’ Lee took with a shrug and a smile before moving on to that really young, failed starlet who was in that movie that time. Something with teddy bears and bazookas.But secretly Leevil was pissed as all fuck that she left him before he could dump her and decided on a little, petty revenge.
“Using a few corporate spies that poor Leonora’s security hadn’t been able to winnow out - she should have hired me - Leevil had stolen all of her designs for the last five seasons before they could be shown. Then, through several shell companies and a few friends, he started a fast fashion company in China. They all but own a town in the north, in inner Mongolia near the border with Mongolia proper.
"The old people and kids who work there are all but enslaved. None of them are permitted to quit by contract. He uses the factory to make shitty- well, shittier- cheap copies of her designs that he then floods the market with every season on the day she releases her line. She’s humiliated, the employees are worked nearly to death for no money, they dye the fabrics they use on-site which poisons the local water, and he makes another fortune.”
The look on Davies’ face, a cold anger rising, made him even more attractive than he already was. Which was a considerable amount.
“I am assuming because of the workers you don’t have an explosion in mind?”
“Yeah. And they have a lot of security. But they do need to get in supplies, and one of the things they use the most of that they don’t make there are those dyes I was talking about. China produces a lot of dyes and normally it would be cheaper to buy them locally. But Leevil also owns, more directly, a dye plant in Canada and do you know what there are a lot of in the part of Canada his factory is in?”
“Canadians?”
“Smart arse. It's pretty isolated, so there are only a few Canadians who don’t like that factory being there at all. A number of them would be happy for it to be gone so they can start fishing in the river again. The plant is also very low security. Why wouldn’t it be? No, what there are a lot of in that part of Canada is Mephitis mephitis , the common striped skunk. They trap them there, you know? Even breed them for fur in a few places.
“The stink, though. You’d be amazed at how little of their spray is needed to ruin a whole batch of dye. Of course, people working in dye plants wear a lot of protective gear to keep from inhaling too many fumes so it's entirely possible vast amounts of it could be shipped out without quality control even noticing. Especially if the person in charge of filling the order was paid to look the other way at the right time. It would permeate all of the cloth, all of the dye, ruin any machines they went through or at least cause a very long, costly shutdown, all without causing anyone more than some discomfort and nausea. Or at least I think it would.” I admitted the last.
“Based on her usual timing Leonora should be finishing up the final details of her winter collection and Ol’ Lee should be having his people also finishing their cheap versions.There will still be some waste when they have to dispose of the tainted fabric, but the end result will make it so worthwhile.”
While I had been talking I had pulled the enormous leather chair I was sitting in closer to the desk and Davies had leaned in as well.
“Do you have connections in Canada?” He sounded not just pleased, but aroused.
“In China, too. They are really suffering over there from the fashion industry, and there are a lot of people who would be happy to help the workers as well.”
Now we were both leaning over the desk on our forearms, our hands all but touching.
“Even if it doesn’t cause a big breakdown it is going to be expensive as fuck to clean up and will take him a while to set up elsewhere.”
He snarl-smiled at me and stood up. “We need a dr- Tea.I am going to have Magda make us some tea and you are going to list exactly what you need in detail.”