Page 41 of Isle of Seduction
SEVENTEEN
TIME FOR SEDUCTION
Campaigns kick off even more in the six weeks before Christmas, and mine is no exception. Mike and I are in my office downtown, trying to wrap our heads around how we’ll be able to attend a fundraiser, a charity dinner, and plan my attendance to company parties for my legal businesses. All in the same week while investigating both a murder and a crooked politician at the same time.
In the absence of any hints for Xan’s murder, Giulia and Nico have refocused their efforts, trying to locate the missing maid and nanny that were in Addams’s employ until they disappeared from the face of this earth.
One person I haven’t talked to yet is Amber. My PR Manager is busy booking a table at the Holiday charity dinner organised by the West Hill University when I find her, cross-legged on her rolling chair, paper pen holding her long blonde hair together. She beams at me.
“If your good looks weren’t enough, the students’ votes should help you greatly, Andrea.”
“I thought I was supposed to convince the old teachers and Dean and whatnot.”
She often jokes that a politician shouldn’t have long hair and tattoos, and conservative journals have certainly made it clear I don’t have the pedigree, as Lewis also told me before.
“Why not both?” she laughs.
“I’m glad I have you, polishing that image everyone tried to give me. I’m grateful for your hard work, Amber.”
“Your wife is a great help, too,” she says with a sly smile. It isn’t hard to see that any occasion I have to touch my wife in public, I take it with gusto. It’s the only time she can’t retaliate with her sharp tongue or block me out of her high and thick mental walls. She’s a fortress, but I’m determined to break in.
“That she is. But I’m glad you’re not on Addams’s team anymore. He didn’t know what an asset you were.”
It’s a dick move to compliment her just to lay a trap to invite her to talk to me about him, but she’s a smart woman. She knows I want to know what her experience was with him.
“I would have left, anyway.” Her voice is sharp, the words sounding like a bell of doom.
I remain silent, but our eyes collide and I’m not making a move to leave her office. Leaning on the door frame, I cross my arms over my chest and wait. I won’t move until I know the story. What I want is a kernel of it, not the details of what an awful piece of shit he is. Just enough to guide me to the right place.
“He was a slimy boss. I’m glad you’re not like that.”
My body unfurls, going from casual to predatory in seconds. “What did he do?”
“Nothing to me, Andrea. He didn’t have time. But I used to be good friends with Serena, the nanny that used to work for him. She told me he invited her to a party. After that, she was weird and then she disappeared.”
“Did she leave town?”
“I don’t know.” She stares out the window, her expression empty of the usual brightness she carries around—just like Giulia. The city is bustling underneath us, traffic heavy with the five o’clock rush hour, but she doesn’t seem to notice any of it. “She used to love the sea. Said she wanted to move into a house where the waves would lull her to sleep when she’d have enough money.”
That will help reduce our search greatly. Without meaning to, Amber gave us the golden nugget we’ve been chasing.
“I’m sorry about your friend, Amber. I hope wherever she is, the waves are the soundtrack of her nights.”
She gives me a sad smile and a nod, then shakes her head and gets back to her planning.
Combining my resources with Giulia’s and this new piece of information, I’m confident we’ll get more answers. I can’t wait to go home and tell her all about it, strategise. See what her brilliant brain will come up with. A strange sensation I don’t know what to call starts in my chest and blooms with heat all over my body. Fucking weird, but I think I like it.
The cocky smile I wear can’t be erased by Addams’s voice as Mike and I enter the Town Hall for my next meeting.
The asshole’s here as well as Lewis and his team, and the councillors. They’re talking about the plan to build a new school on the outskirts of town. I submitted the project months ago, and it needs to be approved as well as built. It could be a minimum of three years until it can receive kids. Kids who need it because it serves a community of people who can’t afford to drive into the city traffic or take the lacking public transports to get their kids to the closest school, twenty minutes away from the area.
Addams is against the project and wants the city to invest in a new spa. Who fucking needs a spa? The area is populated with people with low income. That shit will irrevocably increase the value of the houses around, making it even more difficult for them to keep their homes. He’s team gentrification in all its splendour and I want to drive my fist into his face for being such a cunt.
“Education should be a priority for the city,” I say, a bite to my tone.
“We already have tons of schools, Capaldi. What we need to do is make sure resources are there for all citizens.”
“The nearest school to that area is twenty minutes away by bus. A bus line which only comes three times per hour. It’s not enough. This is something else we should focus on, by the way.”