Chapter 18 The Only Wake Up Call I’d Accept MUST Be Money
The first time Maeve got her consciousness back, the first thing she realized was there was something resting on her body. It was… cold, and long… and had red ruby eyes. They looked like gems— and a part of her couldn’t help but wonder if she could profit out of it somehow but she slipped back into nothingness.
She liked the nothingness. It meant rest, it meant peace— but for some reason, it felt like this peace of hers lasted only a few seconds. She literally remembered just floating in space before voices started speaking over her head.
Naturally, she wasn’t going to respond— why would she? Or at least that was what she thought until she heard a voice say from above her, “We cannot keep up with the demands of the shop anymore. She only sewed about ten dresses and now, there’s such a high request for it but no one to make more which means lower pro—”
Maeve suddenly shot from the bed.
Now, the people in the room were Lucien, Guinevere and Leander— and see, the first two prided themselves over the fact that they could stand their ground when the need arose but it seemed the ground in questions abandoned them as they all screamed, each of them scurrying to the door as they stared at the woman in front of them.
Maeve looked like she had just crawled out of the grave. Big dark eye circles, a dead look in her eyes, her hair greasy and wet and her lips dry and pale as her skin as she asked, “Lower profit? How dare you utter such… such evil words in my sleep? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?! Profit is never supposed to be lower!”
Leander whispered to his wife, “I believe I see what the others say. About her being possessed,”
Guinevere, who would never play along with this farce didn’t know when her lips started moving, “Quieter, my love. Spirits can sense fear. They feed on it. Lucien. Go to her. She is your best friend,”
The man in question turned to her. “She is your daughter,”
“People say the bond between a mother and a child will shorten when they grow older as they meet other men in their lives, and slowly move away from their parents grasps,”
Lucien’s face instantly went blank. “No one says that, my Lady,”
“I see. You want to lose your job for calling me a liar?”
Lucien found himself slowly walking towards the woman in question, the hair on his neck standing as he felt like a prey being watched by a predator as he started, “R-Remember the… the silk you used for the dresses? We were on a time limit so we were able to make ten? And you said that was good for the business. Rare products make good money?”
She did not try to respond but the look in her eyes turned into flames.
He bowed his head. “I did as you said. The woman asked for each dress in secret so we held… we held a secret auction, that was what you called it, yes? To— to avoid tax, yes. It was the first time we were holding something like that so we were a bit confused but it went… It went really well. The elites kept mentioning higher prices so that was good. It worked… well,”
When she spoke, Lucien could swear he heard thunder rumbling. “And?”
“Well, you see… the people who we… took some money from… they have come to the estate to collect—”
Maeve did not wait for him to finish his sentence.
All it took were seconds. Seconds for her to shoot from bed, wear a bathing robe over her body and a hair net before she demanded in a voice that could move mountains, “Take me to these money thieves,”
Now, ‘these people’, in question were called Vane and Seeks, a literal mercantile guild that lends money to the high nobles, mostly in secret and were usually terrible people to do business with who had never had a reason to fear for their lives. They were mercenaries. And naturally, people were terrified of them.
That was until they met this… swamp creature right in front of them.
Noble women weren’t supposed to sit in such a thing, with a net over their hair and a stick in their mouth while they spread their legs and place their hands on the back of their seat spread as well with a glare that rivaled their boss’s.
“Miss Montague,” Vane started, a small chuckle leaving his lips. “There is… there is no need for hostility—”
“Hostility?” It suddenly felt like tiny bugs crawled over their skin as she leaned in, resting both her elbows on her thighs as she said, “Hostility would be all of you dead— yes, do not look surprised, I play with very little. Extremely little. Money being the little in question. I hear you have my money,”
In this world, there was nothing like the term ‘mafia’ and why would there be? It’s a fantasy universe, but right now, these men are getting a vision. A glimpse to another dimension wherein a world of scary and dangerous men with metal long things they called bats, another thing called motorcycles existed and they went around terrorizing people.
And their leader was this woman.
Vane shook his head, placing a paper down. “Look—”
It took only a second. Just one second of Maeve taking the paper and shredding it into the tiniest pieces that it practically disappeared into thin air before she returned to her previous position, “Where?”
They would have missed that action and genuinely thought the paper disappeared if they weren’t obsessed with money themselves. They let out a scoff, shock and anger filtering through every pore in their body as Seeks said, “That’s not how legal documents work—”
“Legal? You want to call those documents legal?” She cut in. Her words seemed to slash through the air, sending the loan sharks backwards as she started to ramble words that no noble should know, “A compound interest rate that will make a loan shark in hell blush. Collateral clauses so vague you could claim my left kidney if I sneezed wrong, ‘processing fees’, ‘security fees’ that do not make the littlest of senses. You also add in a security clause, threatening to make the public column aware of the nature of your agreement with your nobles to scare them, and then of course, since none of this is enough. When they eventually pay you all of these cruel penalties, you pretend it never happened. You lose documents. You ‘misplace’ ledgers. You show up with revised numbers and that pathetic look of regret you practice in mirrors.”
Now, that was a truck load of information, wasn’t it? Far too much for a human mind to comprehend.
But Maeve wasn’t just a human mind.
In the company she worked in, they dealt with things like this too, and for someone like her with great ambition, she did constant training at different sections of her company, and her favorite then had been the insurance aspect.
People always made the mistake of taking insurance, forgetting that it was a capitalistic economy and you were literally selling your soul out for comfort in hell. Insurance divisions had no desire to take you out of your suffering. Only to abate you so much you believe your suffering has lessened.
That was Maeve’s favorite department.
“That’s… that’s impossible,” Vane felt like he was in front of a judge for the first time in his life, his heart racing with a speed he didn’t think was possible. “No one can know about something like that,”
“You have been banking on the pride of the nobles who believe that they can repay the measly interest and the stupidity of the commoners who do not know the madness of what they are getting into,” Maeve crossed her legs, “But I am neither one of them. I am something far, far worse. I am someone, without shame. And I have far too much greed to willingly part with my hard earned money,”
Then she tilted her head, her eyes narrowing, “Do you still wish to mention the word legal around me or would you like me to make a deal with you? A better deal? One that will benefit us both in the long run and prevent me from reporting the Queen to you in claims of dismantling the royal hierarchy and trying to start a rebellion?”
Instantly, they went on their knees, begging for their lives, “MADAM! HAVE MERCY ON US!”
“Mercy?” And then that smug smile returned. Then ever so slowly, she pulled out a paper from her robe, slowly sliding it to the table. “Now, whatever do you mean? We are businessmen. Now, come sit. And sign this contract like the good boys you are so we can all benefit from this happily,”