Flying first class to Bali from New York had been an experience in it’s own right. Piper had never flown first class before. Sure, her parents had money and they had traveled so that hadn’t been a big deal, but this was something different all together. It was..thrilling. And Piper was living right now to experience the thrill. But when they got there and to the hotel it was hitting her that she would be thrown into a world tonight that she had no notion of. She smoothed hands over the black cocktail dress that she had on and she had done away with the layered perm look. She had gone for the more feathered look instead and just studied herself in the mirror.
Tonight was the sort of night she’d been trained as a WASP for. The sort that, aside from Alex being a woman, her mother had told her ( okay maybe not with the drug dealing underworld) but tonight was..different. Tonight she had to be presentable. And she had to make Alex look good. All of these things were in her head from the time she could walk. Only the fact that Alex was the non-exhistant woman in her life made it any different.
The party was at Kubra’s beach house in Bali and it was amazing. She had been on Alex’s arm most of the night but it was the impending introduction to Kubra that made her nervous. Flirt. Make him think he’s worthy of her attention. These were the kinds of things Piper told herself. And soon she found herself laughing about some horrible joke about a retarded penguine. And it wasn’t even that it was funny but that if she didn’t, it would be a bad sign.
If running with Alex and her cartel hadn’t made her feel dirty, she had felt even more so when Kubra had given her the diamond necklace during over the course of the evening that felt a lot heavier than it really was. Currently she was library of the estate, having managed to catch Alex’s eye before she went in and was currently just waiting. Waiting and staring at herself in the mirror. The diamond was amazing but at the same time she knew it was an African blood diamond and that made the situation all the worse for her and had her on the edge of panic.
Bali was one of the few visions of the world she had laid eyes on more than once.
Even the flight was nothing new, veins of cities drawn up in the microscopic.
Light hazed to create a blur of a nation as they covered miles in mere moments.
The company was the only thing that made the journey
anything more than an over repetitive bore.
The blonde had sat positively bursting with a palatable wanderlust the entire journey.
This party was no different to the dozens of others she’d graced while in service to Kubra.
They were all the same, every surface spoke unvolumed decadence.
The kind you expected more in a novel of Fitzgrerald, or even Thackeray.
It was all for show,
Kubra had always been the type to preen under anyone’s gaze.
This was never a world she’d known before his foot prints had entered her life.
It was a world in which all her knowledge of had appeared in books.
But since she wasn’t born in to such a world,
she’d quickly learn to camouflage herself in it.
A person could so easily be brought with a few pretty words and the right smile,
it was almost too easy.
She spoke their words,
told their stories and dressed in their clothes,
tonight an emerald silk dress that skimmed her knees,
then she was brought in as one of their own.
She lingered under the eyes of Fahri, meeting and greeting her counterparts.
The words came easily, as they always did.
Her empire was built on such,
the right word in the right sentence and you could compel anyone to fall under your thumb.
When the man of the evening finally arrived she allowed his men to shallow him in their words,
before they drifted off to their own corners before she approached.
She greeted him with a smile and a few words.
Before she glanced to the beautiful blonde on her arm,
introducing the other in words she’d palmed off all night.
He quirked an eyebrow, swept her figure before the jokes began.
Kubra’s almost trademark greeting.
The jokes would change but the response would not,
she’d force a laugh tilt her head back as curls bounced lethargically.
His jokes continued as did the lingering looks.
He’d always seen women in the same way,
the thought made her stomach turn unpleasantly.
But the worry was stolen away,
as a hand curled around her own and she was whisked off to meet more runners.
Immeasurable moments later she trailed off the end of another story of another night,
a story she’d cast numerous times over this evening.
She’s reached the pinnacle as singular individual eyes caught her attention.
Her eyes lingered following the wondering back of the other,
as words trailed off to their natural ending.
She hashed out brisk goodbyes, promises of later words,
before following the receding back of Piper as she ducked in to the library.
She sauntered in beyond first edition after first edition,
until her own visage was caught in the lower edge of the mirror.
“ You know parties don’t generally happen inside libraries, right?”
The words are light,
their amusement forced as she captures the eyes of the other in her mirror image.
A dark eyebrow steeples as she schools her face in to the same faux
charming smile she’d tried on earlier and not quite parted with yet.
