Mimi's Demons

Chapter 34: Just Business

In Duke's perspective, his empire could be cut into two halves. The first half was the seedy underbelly, carved out by streets, alleys, and seedy places of business. It was where the footmen of the organization, the drug dealers, the launderers, the mules, the transportation, and the sex workers roamed. Most evil was dealt in the little corners of the average human's heart, hidden and secretive: the housewife seeking to get high, the businessman looking to satisfy his kink, the bored teen trying to pawn some poorly acquired loot, or the captive whore just working to survive another day.

The other half he didn't experience until after his adoption, and it was where he did all his business nowadays. It was deals in high-end clubs, secret meetings with the powerful, such as politicians and CEOs, and bribes done under the guise of elaborate galas. He'd seen the most glamorous star and most upright progressive leader slide into the seat opposite of him. Even religious leaders somehow found their way to him.

Though the payout and setting changed, the tang of filthy human desire never did. The shades of desperation and greed were the same in a beautiful, million-dollar face as they were in the hollow, bloodshot eyes of street scamp.

Which was why he was completely unmoved when the Secretary of State slid into his booth.

Shapely women in little more than luminescent tape undulated in glowing tanks, petting all the places a man may wish to touch. Music pounded in a low thrum through the floor and the air. Other patrons were left fuzzy or hidden by the tall booth walls and fog.

Duke took a slow drag of his Irish whiskey. The burn brought him back from the scowling little girl back home to the suit and toupe-wearing man across from him.

He didn't want to be here.

"I haven't been in a place like this since I was in my thirties," said the Secretary.

Duke took another drink, waiting.

The Secretary took out a card from the inside of his gray suit coat and passed it across the table. Duke pulled it towards him with a finger and flipped it over to see the word 'sweetcone' printed in Courier format on the back.

Duke sighed.

"I'll make this short," he said. "We can give you coordinates and ensure privacy, but it's not my job to manage intel at DC. You come to us."

The Secretary stiffened. "Do you know who I am?"

"Do you know who I am? No, you don't, otherwise you wouldn't have said that."

Duke slid out his phone and sent a pre-typed text.

The Secretary took a precious moment of their finite time together to sit in quiet indignation before smoothing his mouth and clearing his throat.

"Very well. Coordinates will do. The date is August fifteenth--"

"And there you are mistaken yet again," Duke loved cutting off the self-important. They always had the most interesting reactions. "I'll tell you the date. You'll work around it."

"That's too much! I work the schedule of the nation!"

"And yet you're working with me. The devil takes no masters. He masters you."

"The devil," the Secretary spluttered. "Ridiculous. It's simply business."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night." Duke certainly had no delusions about what he did and who he was.

A man stood up from one of the neighboring benches and walked by a particularly well-endowed brunette pleasuring herself against the glass walls of her cage. He came to a stop at their table and set down a plain manila folder.