What were his lawyers going to do? Annul her marriage to Danica Moreau without their consent? Find a way to terminate all her pregnancies? Take away their inheritance?I could deal with that. I’m not sure Danica could.The woman had never known anything but millions and billions of dollars. The thought of her living it up in a two-bedroom house out in the suburbs gave Alicia hives. She didn’t even want to think about what it would do to her wife.She needs money. She needs power. I’ve got to make sure we never lose either.Yay. More pressure.
Alicia didn’t want to admit it, but a baby would certainly cement her place in the family.
“Take a look at what I’ve given you, Ms. Colbert. You’ll see my full offer. It’s quite generous. Oh, and…” he grinned. “Some evidence that you’re not long for my daughter.”
Alicia waited until he showed himself out of her office before addressing anything else. “Don’t tell my wife,” she said to Dee, sitting in her chair and putting together the last of her papers for the day. “Pretend you didn’t hear any of that.”
“If I may be so bold, ma’am,” Dee began, with little trepidation, “but I’m not about to pretend that I didn’t hear him threaten you. Again.”
“Unless he actually moves to hurt me in your presence, you will pretend.”
Dee sighed. “So, where are we going?” She pointed to the papers amassing on Alicia’s otherwise pristine desk.
The manila folder disappeared into the drawer. “To my latest hot property. Let’s grab Abby and go.”
Alicia faced a sea of incredulous faces, each one more disbelieving than the last.
“Fancy fucking that,” said Sid, the one man Alicia had to thank for her new position the most. Wasn’t it because of him that she ever met Danica?If Sid hadn’t hired me to work at Midnight, I wouldn’t be Mrs. Moreau right now. Fancy that, indeed. “From one-night hostess to our new owner.”
He was the only one not outright bothered by this turn of events. The news that Alicia had bought out one of the owners’ shares in Midnight had been released over the weekend. This Monday meeting was meant to answer a few questions before the new week at the club started.
Susan was the most surprised out of the bunch. The dancers, the servers, the bouncers, the bartenders, and the coat check girls? None of them cared as much as Susan did. Alicia had been Susan’s responsibility the one night the former Ms. Colbert worked there.Is she kicking herself for trying to keep me from Danica? For letting me near her?Every time they made eye contact, Susan averted her gaze.
Abby handed out stapled stacks of paper to everyone at the meeting. The papers went over the minimal changes Alicia was pushing through the club, starting with a small renovation project to create better VIP areas for business-oriented meetings. Otherwise, she wasn’t in the mood to make big changes to a club that already brought in millions of dollars likeit was nothing.Don’t fuck with billion-dollar clientele. Besides, she did not doubt that her wife would rein her in if she started replacing the upholstery with leopard print and hanging lion heads from the ceiling.
“There are no immediate changes planned that will affect any of your employment. If anything, our focus will be on improving the customer experience and making you even more money.” Alicia knew how much each of these people made now. Some of the more decent employees hadn’t seen raises in nearly two years.I’ll be having meetings with management about that. Alicia appreciated having real work to distract herself from personal matters. Why did she care about being pregnant when she had a business to run? Russell? Who was that? He had nothing to do with Alicia’s new properties. Nor did he have anything to do with the millions of dollars coming in and out of her new bank account. She was spending millions to make millions more. It had only been a couple of weeks, but already her investments were giving returns. This was what it meant to be in power.
Even so, Alicia was not blind to some of the faces around the room. More than one person was disgusted. Another looked so bored that he wanted to take a nap. Who was the dancer Danica had favored (and probably never would again, as long as the wife was with her?) That was probably the woman glaring at Alicia right now. So many tips she would no longer get.
Joke was on her. If Alicia was in the right mood, she might want a dance up in the VIP room, too.I’m really turning into a Moreau over here. First, she married one, then she started wearing black all the time, then she started wearing the Jean Patou…
She was either the greatest imposter ever, or something was definitely changing.It’s all the fucking. Gonna blame it on mywife fucking it all into me.It was the only explanation that made any sense, hilariously enough.
“Question,” asked Destiny. Oh, right,shewas the dancer. Hm. She looked nothing like Alicia. That was both good and concerning. “Is Danica still controlling anything around here? No offense…” she swallowed. “Ma’am.”
“My wife,” Alicia let that sink in some more, “is still co-owner of the club. But, as you may have noticed, instead of being directly beneath Moreau Industries, Midnight will transition to the Colbert Hospitality Holdings subdivision posthaste. The only thing that will change around here is some letterheads and what goes on your pay stubs. That’s all boring stuff for me to do behind the scenes. Oh, and I will be much more involved than my wife has been. In the business side of things, that is.”
Someone snickered. Alicia didn’t hold it against them.My wife is the horny animal. Yup.“Mr. Sidney and I will be reviewing some of the policies around here, but I want to reaffirm that there are no plans to downsize or lower pay. This meeting is mostly a formal announcement, and to answer questions you have. Ask them. I don’t want to see needless speculation in the press.” Sid had already told the Moreaus that the tabloids had come knocking once they heard about the sale.
The rest of the meeting was boring on both ends, but necessary. There was grumbling that out of all the employees to move up this far in rank, it had to be the girl who got fired on her first night. For the most part, however, the employees were smart enough to keep it to themselves. Susan was the only one who kept looking askance at Alicia.
She didn’t care. So what if someone didn’t like her? Susan would not be the last.
“Who’s Clarissa?” Alicia asked her wife when she stopped by her office after she returned from Midnight. The name had popped up multiple times in the family history tracks, but there was never any real explanation. Just constant references to some woman named Clarissa. Clarissa who? Clarissa Moreau? No Google or internal searches of the files had so far turned up anyone by that name, alive or dead.
Danica swung one leg over the other as she relaxed in one of the black chairs before her wife’s desk. “Clarissa Livingston?”
“I have not seen a last name. She certainly isn’t a Moreau.” Alicia closed the window on her computer and matched her wife’s posture. “It’s driving me a bit crazy.”
“If it’s Livingston, that was my great-grandmother. She raised my father after my grandparents passed away. Died of cancer before I was born, though.”
“…Huh.” Alicia knew that Danica’s paternal grandparents had died in a boating accident, but she hadn’t figured out what happened to young Russell afterward.I assumed he grew up with a trust the size of Texas and had random guardians looking after him.Would’ve explained his antisocialism.“Your father was raised by a single woman?”
“My great-grandfather, George Moreau, died, and she remarried a Livingston. They divorced before the accident.” Danica shrugged. “Why? Is that strange?”
Alicia didn’t directly answer that. “Was she the one who brokered the marriage between your parents?”
“Don’t think so. My grandparents had laid that groundwork before they died. They wasted no time after my father was born.”
