Fantasy So Night Follows Day by TMaskedWriter

[Ramesh_Rocky]

"Everyone made it to the consulate safely." She told her oldest friends. "They're shutting down the airport, so it looks like Susan, Velasquez, and Mander will be bringing Rita back here in a cab, instead of a consular car, since I can't send her home. You're right that this is the safest place for her. We'll send someone for the other car. I'd been planning to hand all the titles over to you when we left, anyway, Troy. I figured you'd know some good local groups to donate them to."

Troy nodded.

"I can think of a few. But please, put them in some long-term parking until I sort it out. Having them take up both sides of our street seems to be dangerous."

Helen stuck her tongue out at him as she grabbed her cocoa and took a seat on his other side, since he'd taken hers to sit with Julie.

"How are you doing with the team upstairs?" Helen asked, referring to her Ministry of Intelligence's team of hackers that she'd put Troy in charge of earlier, and whom he'd been working with via Skype on his library computer when Julie's question earlier brought him out to talk to them.

"We've got one dirty transaction to work with: His payment to Morgan's widow. We're not going to touch it or risk her losing it; and it's a damn short trail, however, it's something to start from. Not a Rosetta Stone, more like I've learned one letter of his alphabet. I had them checking into vice funds when I left." Julie looked confused, so Troy continued. "The kind of investments that I don't touch, hon: Arms, drugs, prostitution; in the places where they're legal. Plenty of money to be made if you don't give a fuck about having to live on this planet with other human beings. He also said he'd acquired a couple of your works recently." He turned back to Helen. "Her last showing was right before all this happened, but since we presume he was telling the truth about not knowing who we were until we came to see you, it would've had to be a private sale aftwerwards."

"I didn't see him in Spokane." Julie said. "I can see if he signed the guestbook, and you've got all the receipts for all the sales, Master."

"He wasn't there," Helen commented. "If he had been, someone would have introduced you. An old technology billionaire doesn't go to an art showing to NOT get photos of himself with the beautiful, talented young artist. Fuck, I've probably been to parties with this prick! Or at least, Rita has."

"No!" Julie sat up as the thought hit her. "It would've been you. I'm sure he was another handshake and that phony 'delighted to meet you' smile you use on talk shows to you. But if he saw you Do What We Do and effortlessly seduce someone completely unattainable; or if it was one of your 'working parties,' and he overheard you negotiate some impossible business deal over the course of a dance, maybe he starts thinking about those 'silly rumors about you.'"

"He likes to profit from misery." Troy closed his eyes and thought. "But what's the point of fucking the world over if you can't rub it's nose in it?"

"True." Helen agreed. "But there's so many ways to do that... hell, he could just provide the phones and still claim to be 'profiting,' but that's not the kind of 'vast criminal empire' to 'need protecting' with something like Springheel; much less kill me over it, or risk The Elders' wrath."

"Come to think of it, yeah." Julie said, finishing her cocoa, and taking Troy's empty cup to the kitchen with hers; raising her voice as she went, to continue the conversation. "I mean, I know my fears are weird and all."

Troy opened his eyes. Helen looked directly at him before answering.

"Losing your husband? Losing TROY? Not a weird fear at all, Sunflower. Completely relatable."

Troy looked away, remembering the conversation he'd overheard earlier about her wanting him to be the father of her child. One of several important subjects of conversation that needed to stay on hold until Whyte could be dealt with.

"Stop making him blush in there!" Julie shouted from the kitchen over the faucet as she rinsed out the cups. "But, yeah, you know what sounds to me like a perfectly good fear to have?" She returned from the kitchen. "Pissing off a bunch of guys that Contessa Helena de San Finzione calls 'The Elders,' and whom she respects enough that she hasn't said anything particularly insulting about them since they first came up."

Troy took in his wife's words.

"You have to respect someone to fear them. Whyte doesn't respect People, Mistress; he respects Money. You two heard him talking about Trans-Universal. Did no one else get a 'gay come-on' vibe? For everyone's jokes about money turning me on, I could practically feel the creep undressing me with his eyes over the phone while he talked about it. Everything was about me being a multi-millionaire, you being a trillionaire; he's shooting for quadrillion. If he looked into my money, he certainly looked into Julie's, too. Her 'on paper' worth didn't even merit a mention. I'm sure he's nowhere near you, though. If he had La Familia de San Finzione money, he wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to brag."

Julie's phone rang. She recognized the tone.

"Oh, damn, Denise! I should've called her first!"

Denise Cole was a young friend of theirs, still in high college, whom Julie had met one day when she and Troy were walking around Wright Park in Tacoma. Julie had helped Denise with some personal issues, learned that the girl had an interest in art, and started mentoring her. After prank-calling Helen, Julie learned that Her First Girlfriend had been someone whom Denise admired before knowing of their relationship.