Page 23 of The Princess and the P.I.
As advertised, the party at the Lower Decks was one of those where people didn’t actually dance—just stood together grinding. They all stood around and watched the DJ, who was living his best life in a dance party of one. Maurice scanned the room.
The food was pointy, beautifully displayed but unappetizing. No one touched it. The table had fruit cut into shapes, a vodka ice sculpture, and heaping trays of Peruvian grilled chicken.
“Now, there are plenty of approaches we can take here,” Maurice said as Fiona sidled up next to him. “We can be really wide-eyed or curious. We can be blunt and sharp. What do you think he’d respond to?”
“Flattery—a lot of focusing on his intelligence. He gets a lot of pleasure from that,” she said.
“What’s my in?” he said.
“You don’t need an in, you have the thrall.” She wiggled her fingers.
“Okay, after I hypnotize him. What are his vulnerabilities?”
“Okay, Mark is obsessed with money.” She sounded confident. “He attaches it to security. Probably grew up poor. He likes a lot of posts of luxury brands, men in mansions and Lamborghinis. I think if you flash enough cash, he’ll find you. I’m going to run and fix my dress.”
Maurice nodded, though he was unsure what she could fix about the vaguely body-shaped comforter she was in. He wouldn’t begrudge her her style—thick impenetrable body armor made to resemble dresses—if he thought it was actually her own.
When she came back from the bathroom, the upholstery she had been wearing was gone.
Maurice squinted into the dark to make out her form. Something fast, dark, and primitive shot through him.
She had removed the overlay of a dress and kept the soft slip underneath.
He could see the rough ripped string at her hips and shoulders where she had pulled the garment apart.
Upon closer examination, her slip was translucent in the strobing lights of the club.
He saw the triangle of her plain cotton underwear and the heaping wobbling cups of an unreliable bra as if he had X-ray vision.
At the bottom, colorful triangles of kente gave the slip volume.
She moved toward him—hips on a metronome—and a shot of paranoia had him looking around to face-check anyone watching her walk in. Good God, not him sympathizing with Papa Kofi. Of course this man kept her dressed in theater curtains.
She was too much. Everything. All over. A candy shop he would gorge himself sick inside of if he were a lesser man.
“I should get you mic’ed up.” His voice cracked like a pubescent boy’s.
Maurice guided Fiona into a darkened corner, the throbbing music and milling bodies making the club feel hot and cloying.
He scanned the area, ensuring they were concealed from prying eyes before turning his full attention to her.
“Put this on.” He handed her a mess of wires and squares, and she looked like he was handing her a box of snakes.
“What do…I…?”
Maurice sighed again. “Hold still,” he murmured, barely audible above the heavy beat.
He reached behind her, letting his fingers graze the soft fabric of her slip, then down her back.
When he clipped the slim battery pack to the back of her bra, Fiona remained motionless.
Her big soft eyes were the only thing that moved—locking on him.
He could feel the slight tremor in her breath, though.
He began feeding the wire down her back. His touch was light, tracing the curve of her spine.
“Almost done,” he whispered. “Can you reach?”
“Oh.” Fiona’s breath hitched like she just realized she was supposed to be doing something.
“Do you feel it? I’m going to feed it to you slowly,” Maurice said.
A soft gasp escaped her lips as his fingers brushed against her skin.
“Cold,” she said.
It was a lie. Maurice happened to know he was about 104 degrees right now.
“Sorry,” he rasped.
Fiona searched for the edge end of the cord as Maurice pushed it up under the hard underwire of her bra. Fiona’s eyes fluttered closed, her lips parting slightly. Maurice struggled to keep his movements steady and focus on the task at hand, but the softness was almost unbearable.
Fiona opened her eyes, meeting his gaze with an intensity that made his pulse race.
She looked like she trusted him with her life.
So had Tameka.
“Done,” he said, rougher than he intended. He stepped back.
“Thank you,” Fiona whispered, slipping the earpiece in her ear.
Maurice reached for something to say as they emerged from the dark corner.
But he was saved when Mark darted through the crowd, grabbed shrimp with his fingers, and popped them into his mouth, dropping ice on the club floor.
“You are staying low and listening to audio. If you think of questions, feed them to me.”
“Got it.” She nodded.
He separated from her in the now cramped club.
People moved in bored patterns, meandering to the beat like programmed clones on the dance floor.
He moved his body to the rhythm as he surreptitiously watched Mark stuff his face with crustaceans, do a line of cocaine, and aggressively grind on a blond dude who scrolled on his phone.
By the time he was making out with the blond, Maurice had put his camera away.
Maurice raised a hand, catching the attention of a server gliding by in a tight black dress with a white cotton tail on her backside.
“Take me to the VIP section, Bunny Rabbit.” He palmed a hundred-dollar bill in her hand. “And I’ll take a bottle. Make it loud,” he said.
“What kind?” she asked, leaning in.
Maurice smiled. “Whatever costs the most.”
The server returned moments later with a bottle gleaming under the club’s strobe lights, followed by a trail of sparklers that announced Maurice’s purchase to the entire club.
Heads turned. The man Mark had been grinding on slowed mid-step, his eyes narrowing as they locked on to Maurice.
The server walked him to the VIP room with outrageous fanfare.
But his focus wasn’t on the bottle or the spectacle—it was on Fiona, visible across the room, her figure half-lit by the pulsing lights of the club. She looked like one of those fine-ass muses in that Hercules cartoon.
She was working the room, though. First, a casual exchange with a server. Then a bartender. She had a gift for finding the right people in a room like this, the ones who would talk.
Zero to Hero.
Her voice crackled in his earpiece, whispering half lies about him. “Maurice Bennett… Scrooge McDuck money…Looking for some investments.”
He huffed out a quiet laugh. He’d told her to exaggerate, but Scrooge McDuck ? Her improv needed work.
—
Mark tapped the server. The hook was set, the bait too shiny to ignore.
After a few minutes of asking around, Mark turned to him.
“Got him.” Fiona’s voice crackled in his ear.
“Good,” Maurice said, pouring himself a glass of champagne and lifting it lazily to his lips. He caught Mark’s gaze, then tilted his glass in a silent toast before taking a slow sip.
Mark hesitated, but it didn’t last long. He weaved through the crowd, and Maurice waited. He palmed a cigar from his pocket and clipped the end with a practiced flick, the blade snapping shut like punctuation. The flare of his lighter lit his face in brief, golden bursts like a camera flash.
He took two slow puffs, then let the cigar smolder in the ashtray beside him.
Cigars were terrible for his asthma— stupid, really —but they never failed to attract the right kind of attention: men who thought they were powerful and women who thought power was worth catching.
Maurice wanted Mark to see him, to feel the weight of his presence.
“You always make an entrance like that, or just tonight?” Mark purred. Mark’s eyebrows rose with anticipation, which was quite a feat with the amount of Botox he must have had shot into his forehead.
Maurice smiled, slow and easy, and exhaled a plume of smoke, his attention lazily focused on the room beyond. “Only when it counts.”
Fiona whispered, “Thrall.”
Over by the bar, Fiona danced in his periphery, a small, proud tilt to her chin. Her confidence in him was a surprising comfort. But it wasn’t magic. Fiona had been dead right about what Mark would respond to.
The way Mark’s gaze lingered on Maurice’s Cartier, on the Louboutin dress shoes, the flashy displays of wealth.
“Can I sit?” Mark asked, already lowering himself into the velvet booth.
“Be my guest,” Maurice said, gesturing with his glass. This close Maurice could make out a double-tied strand of pearls at Mark’s neck.
“Your mother’s pearls?” Maurice raised his eyebrow.
“You like?” Mark pulled them off his neck and handed then to Maurice. “I have thousands of them.”
Maurice quelled his impulse to whip out a latex glove. “A collector?”
“God no. A work project. Your name?” Mark asked, crossing his legs.
The world had been too kind to Mark. His face looked like he’d had too many yeses in his life.
Lips injected with fat, cheek and chin implants, tattooed eyebrows, and unnaturally green eyes.
Or perhaps it was the opposite. Maybe Mark had grown up with body issues and a mean dad.
The result was the same, though—a man who expected and demanded everyone to desire him.
If you told Maurice that Mark looked like Jackson 5–era Michael Jackson or Macaulay Culkin as a boy, he would believe it, so altered were his looks from whoever he might have been.
Maurice pocketed the pearls.
“I’m in the market for some real estate,” Maurice said, ignoring Mark’s question.
Mark was caught off guard by Maurice’s approach, but he still bit. “I happen to be selling a four-million-dollar property,” he said. He’d hoped to shock Maurice with the number.
Maurice leaned closer so that his words slipped across Mark’s ears; he could see the man’s heart pounding at his pulse points. “Is that how much you need to get out of the country?”