In defense of any and all inaccuracies regarding the legal aspect of a proper working relationship between an investor and a private company—I'm a lazy writer who hasn't done her research/likes to make things up to stuff the plot wall. Cersei chapters are the best chapters to write because I don't have to be consistent with anything!
CERSEI
In which a funeral is fled, suspicion is raised, and there's a bit of a fire situation in the Ice Queen's backyard.
Tommen was sniffing a bit too inelegantly to be passed off as the adorable prince-child, now heartbreakingly fatherless. I swear to God if they catch sight of that snivel...
Cersei tried to conceal her disapproval as her only boy hiccupped awkwardly beside the corpse of a man that hadn't been anything at all to him. The nine-year-old was clinging to his mother's expensive black halter dress for dear life, making his meek sounds and scrunching the fabric in a way that caused the fashion figure in Cersei to cringe.
Just this once, Cersei decided to let her boy's disconcerting lack of spine slide. It was his supposed father's funeral, after all, and Tommen hadn't made it to that age where he would be learning enough about Robert to properly despise him.
Still, something had to be done about those feeble moans, before the crowd started whispering and her boy was turned into the thing of gossip.
Cersei caught her son's plump chin—he liked his cupcakes, certainly more than he liked to read or exercise or play with her rich friends' children—between her heavily jeweled fingers, preventing any attempts on her son's part to escape the sight of Robert's corpse.
"Don't look away, my love," she whispered tensely through a foil of tenderness and teeth, aware of all the eyes that were stitched to their backs, just waiting for something to go wrong. When her boy just kept whimpering in her palm, she gripped him harder and added, "Your brother would have looked, you know perfectly well that he would have. Now, are you going to be half the lion he was, or are you going to be a good little boy and not embarrass me in front of all these people?"
Her throat burned as always at the mention of her firstborn, closing around the name and refusing to let go, but at least her youngest didn't try to wiggle out of her grip anymore. He slumped against her without a fight and faced the decomposing pile of flesh dutifully. Cersei swore she heard him mumble a prayer.
She stared down at her son with growing concern. Joff would have fought me on this for hours.
Tommen just wept and wept. His tears might be the only genuine display of affection in this entire charade, misguided as they were. Cersei found it somewhat appropriate, that the only person to truly mourn Robert's death would be the child that had seen and heard the least of him.
Both Joff and Myrcella had become aware of their own insignificance in Robert's life early on. Joff had clawed for his father's praise like a starved pup but even that hadn't been enough to tear the senseless buffoon away from his beer and his sluts. Cersei had wanted to explain to her darling son that his so-called father had the attention span of a rut in heat, that he had no eyes whatsoever for what was happening beyond the tip of his overworked penis, but it would have done little good. Joff always idealized the man beyond good reason. Myrcella on the other hand had never sought the closeness of her father to begin with, preferring the company of her girlfriends over that of her family.
Not Tommen though. Tommen's situation had been different. Due to circumstances—Robert's growing neglect, mostly—her youngest had been spared the ugliest of what occurred under the Baratheon roof. Most of the time Robert seemed to forget he'd even knocked up his estranged wife a third time.
And now Tommen was crying for a father in name only. Cersei wondered what it was exactly that her son wailed for. Was it just the word of it, no more Daddy, or perhaps the ten hair rufflings he'd gotten from the fat oaf in his whole life? In any case she understood little of it, but tried not to judge her son too harshly. He wasn't like Joffrey and would always need more of her help, her love, her patience.
What mattered now was that the corpse was there, proof that life was finally starting to show its kinder face to Cersei again. She looked down at the dead idiot one final time before they had to move along to make room for the rest of the attendees to pay their synthetic respects.
She felt her chin automatically perk in defiance as she contemplated the sight of Robert's corpse with a cold, slow hatred.
Death had made him drabber, drinking the caddish redness from his cheeks, chin and nose so that he almost looked the businessmen the world had known him as. To Cersei, the woman who'd been forced to stare at his snoring mug for fourteen years, resisting the urge to gorge the muzzle of a gun and paint the walls with her misery, he looked funny, like an alien with an impeccable taste in fashion—hers, of course, because she might hate him but she would be damned if she let herself be linked to a poorly dressed corpse—even though that Richard James suit looked perilously absurd on him in spite of her best efforts. Those things were intended for men of Jaime's build and class, not a classical swine like Robert. They should outlaw tailoring these in such sizes.
The mascara on him was starting to give, almost streaming down his dully grinning face, self-righteous and unapologetic even in death. The sight of his bloated face did little to thrill Cersei. If anything, it filled her with a sort of bitter, long-overdue sense of relief. He should have died two years ago.
Nothing in her life had ever come close to the exquisite feel of cutting the fat bastard open, not the day she became Mrs. Editor-in-chief, not the day she held Myrcella for the first time, not ever. She couldn't believe it herself, the rightness of it.
Funny thing was, she hadn't even meant to stab him. But the debauched son of a bitch had been begging for it, making a pass at one of the waitresses at his son's fucking wake. All Robert'd had to do was keep it in his pants for three hours, at least pretend to feel something over the death of his first-born child. But no, of course not, otherwise he wouldn't be Robert. Cersei was still seeing red whenever she remembered how she'd discovered them in the closet on top of each other, like they were trying to rebuild the goddamn Sears Tower or something, right next to the room with the coffin. She'd had a knife for the whore too, if only they hadn't been so quick to call in the police.
And then what had come next... Cersei gritted her teeth. It was over, past her, she had to remind herself. It could have been much worse. It could have been prison, and then there would be no recovering from that, not even for a woman of her status. Especially for a woman of her status. Compared to that, a few months away at a madhouse—a mental wellness center, as they liked to pretty it up for the press—should be nothing. She'd been over it with Qyburn, and yet... And yet perhaps she'd served her time after all, not behind bars but behind maddening white walls, trading orange for yellow, and it didn't make any difference to her. It was still too much, her freedom snatched, and her father had been at the root of it. He'd settle for less, more, if it meant keeping the family name out of it.
It wasn't like she'd expected him to shed tears like an actual human or anything but the coldness of it all, the treatment she'd received from him, still shocked her in a stupidly sentimental sort of way. Not a single eyelash was batted as his men dragged her away from Casterly Estate on a cold Sunday night approximately ten hours after the state of California had dubbed her mentally unstable. No hugs, no lectures. She hadn't gotten so much as a damn goodbye, or a stay strong, or even a we're Lannisters, how could you be so stupid. Nothing but that riling, unmovable look of passive disapproval.
It wasn't all bad though. She'd been forced to teach herself a few useful tricks in those hellholes. Between the relentless brain-poking and dull conversations that hardly went anywhere, she'd figured out how to pick locks, hide her liquor creatively and feign seizures just to get out of a painfully boring session with that ancient creature Pycelle. More importantly she'd learned how bide her time and store away her hatred. For all the humiliation that was forced on her, those places made her stronger, helped her realize she didn't just hate Tyrion for stealing Joff from her. It was everybody's fault, from the patrolmen to the paramedics, from Jaime's half-assed attempt at playing the hero to uncle Kevan's apathetic endeavor to console her. Even father had his fingers in it, yes, even the great Tywin Lannister was to blame. She'd never forget the way he had his men rend her stiff, bloodied fingers from Joff's rigid body before she'd even gotten to breathe him in one last time.
Cersei quaked, blocking out the memories of that day before they overtook her. That entire sequence was a danger zone, sometimes her mind handled it better, sometimes worse. Qyburn was nowhere around and she always needed him, his voice, his reassuring hands, his magical pills, when her moments came.
No, she would not think about that now. Today was about Robert and celebrating the end of his march over her pride. Today was about salvaging what little joy could be drawn from a marriage that had brought her nothing but pain and misery.
Where are your whores, Robert? Not one of them came to see you off? I rather expected not. Not even your brothers had the decency to wait for your corpse to air-condition before they started bickering over your will and pointing their impudent fingers at me.
Cersei snorted, remembering her recent exchange with Stannis. There would be trouble coming that way soon, no doubt, but she had other things to worry about right now.
For instance, getting someone on the board of directors who wouldn't be causing any problems for Tommen in due time when her boy was ready to come into his inheritance. It had to be someone obedient, but also shrewd, smart enough to defend her interest yet one who'd know better than to go rogue on her. Someone who can do as he's bid but will also act independently when I need him to, Cersei thought, yes, a dog and a wolf all at once.
Baelish, perhaps, though the slicker could prove to be a wild card in the long run...
A tug on her dress distracted her from her thoughts. "Mommy, it smells."
Robert stank more in life than in death, Cersei wished to tell her only boy, but Tommen was no Joff and didn't handle bluntness as well as his older brother had. Cersei bent over to wipe her son's leaking nose with a napkin. "Hush, my love. Death is never nice on the nose. Just bear with it for a bit and then we can go home, alright?"
Her cub blinked up at her with beady eyes that didn't suit a future business magnate at all. "Do you think Daddy's looking at us?"
Cersei laughed softly. "Take another look at him, my love. His eyes seem closed to me, don't they?"
Tommen shook his head. "No, I mean from up in the Heavens?"
Cersei nearly lost her cool at the ridiculous picture of Robert floating on puffy clouds with a halo over his head, fucking his way through a deck of winged tarts as he drank himself into a stupor.
She smiled down at her son thinly. "He's looking at us from somewhere alright."
The next few minutes were spent attending to her son's unstable nasal secretion and unpredictable bowels.
In the end Tommen did wind up vomiting on the floor but luckily there weren't any people around to see. Perhaps he was coming down with something, Cersei reasoned with herself, surely no child could not be that soft. After that Cersei didn't want to risk another bout of humiliation and called in Dorcas, her full-time sitter, the only one she could remotely stand lurking about in her house, instructing her to get in there and collect Tommen, drop him off at daycare over at Lioness.
"I'm sorry mommy, I'll try to be good next time," Tommen sniffed as he hugged her knee.
Cersei combed her fingers through her son's fine hair and told him it was alright, that he could stay longer at the funeral of the next uncle who died. That seemed to upset him but Cersei told herself he could use a small dose of harshness in his life. He'd thank her for it, later.
She watched after her boy longingly as he got ushered away by Dorcas.
How she envied him the easy escape.
~oOo~
Three hours later her cousin was waiting for her next to her personal luxury tinted limo, holding out her Armani fur coat for her. Cersei barely spared a look at the boy, too caught up in her fury to think at length about his potential uses. A single glance was more than enough to tell that the boy was a joke, anyway. The expensive fitted suit he was wearing made him look less like a man and more like daddy's wardrobe raider, only reaffirming her opinion that clothes should be tailored to fit a person's status and attitude as much as their measures.
Her distant relative had to struggle to keep the hem of her voluminous coat from licking the floor, with varying success. Those workout sessions at the gym that the boy had clearly been taking didn't seem to be paying off as it cost him some distinct physical effort not to let the costly garment drop on the slick tiles. Cersei deliberately slowed her step, just to prolong his torture. God knew she needed to vent. Not that she blamed her unhappiness on her teenage cousin. He was just an indirect victim, yet another one who had to suffer because of that creature, that homicidal, court-bribing little beast.
Cersei willed herself to respire deeply. Think of anything but that. What was calming, relaxing? Couture. Yes, she was in Milan, attending the latest Dior fashion show and weighing in on the dresses from the V.I.P. zone, flashing lights on her and microphones in her face. The Imp's low laughter still echoed over the chorus of the high society crowd, but at least it was a bit less unbearable than before.
Her cousin apparently took her actions to mean she'd be taking her time because he clumsily tried to throw her coat over his shoulder while stepping on his shoelace and tripping over backwards. Cersei hurried along, almost feeling bad for the boy that had been stuck with her precious possession. She was tall, taller than him, and even she dared not wear the thing unless she had a pair of ten-inch Louboutins to lean on.
A waitress ambushed her at the exit and Cersei had to dig her blood red nails into the palm of her hand to restrain herself from shoving the robotic thing to the side.
"Would you like a drink to go, Mrs. Baratheon?"
Lannister, she itched to correct, now and always, but the glass that swirled in the girl's hand was far too tempting to pass on.
She snatched it without a word, kept the clicking of her stiletto heels against the pale hardwood floor uninterrupted as she paced towards her cousin, let him finally approach her with her coat and, somewhat gingerly, cover her bare shoulders with it.
She had picked the embellished coat specifically for the occasion as she knew how it complimented the strength in her shoulders, the grace and suppleness of her build. The fucking weather channel had messed up the forecast though, and instead of the promised Armageddon of rainstorms and thunder, there was only an overcast that did little to keep the heat safely up high. Therefore she'd been forced to discard the coat at the entrance of the Peninsula or else she risked to look overdone and pretentious in front of the press, two things the editor-in-chief of a prime fashion magazine wasn't allowed to be. Theatricality had to be done subtly, not rubbed all over the place.
Cersei seethed. Yet another thing taken from her. She understood the concept of good days and bad days but the past year and a half had been a constant string of blood and losses. Most of it had been thoroughly documented by the press so that she was forced to dab a plastic smile on her face as she witnessed her life falling out of place.
As the daughter of Tywin Lannister, she'd learned all about maintaining appearances very early on in her life. It was a basic means of survival in the high society circles. It didn't make it any easier to swallow the blows as they came.
Take today, for instance. It had been one of those days that would leave a particularly sour dent in her pride. First she'd had to circle about Robert's coffin and pretend to deplore the loss of him, then she'd had to listen to Stannis' ridiculous accusations regarding the death of that useless head of communications Jon Arryn, and then on top of everything that hideous monster who should have never been allowed near a car in his miserable little life had the audacity to show his face to her…
Qyburn had advised her not to mix her pills with wine. Strongly suggested that she fucking didn't, in fact.
But here was the thing: without the pills she was the train wreck that had to be dragged out of an asylum by Jaime approximately six months ago, and without the wine she was that deranged person that had to be yanked into a sanatorium by her father's men another half a year back. It was something none of her shrinks seemed to understand with their calm, condescending demeanor and clinical brains.
What did they know. All they knew was how to take what little words she gave them and twist them around so they made her situation seem ten times worse than it really was, so they could have something to hold over her head. They just wanted to make her feel crazy and old so they could keep milking more money from father's bank account. Let them have at it. She'd help herself in any way she saw fit, and she took great pleasure in knowing that there wasn't a single thing they could do about it. Whenever they questioned her about her drinking habits at the compulsory weekly sessions she simply brushed off the tirades with her finest mockery of an innocent voice and a rare smirk on her face. Past that, what could they do? Technically she was out of the clinic and she'd sue their asses off before they had her take a sobriety test.
At least Qyburn seemed to get some of her frustration. Sometimes. But even he had counseled her to renounce alcohol for a while. The betrayal still stung, low and ticklish.
Today she'd decided to choose life over Qyburn's charlatan wisdom, and she'd started drinking from her secret stash of house vintage almost as soon as she'd woken up.
(Or perhaps he knew better. Perhaps that's why he only ever advised her, lipped suggestions, never firmly instructed her, lectured her, attempted to remake her into a docile little thing or tried to take away what was hers, like all the other shrinks around him.)
In any case, Cersei admitted there was some merit to Qyburn's word of warning, because quite frankly she was all over the place, had started regretting not bringing some relaxants as Taena had advised almost as soon as the whole thing started. Her head was swimming a good three inches above the rest of her, making the world tilt on its axis so that she felt the periodic urge to retch all over her dress, her matching mini bag and the rest of the adjacent jewelry.
In her condition she'd handled everything as well as she could.
She'd put up a show of weeping around Robert's corpse, tears ignited by the frustration of knowing that something as trivial as a kidney failure had finished him off where she could not (having Lancel sip the antifreeze in his drink had been the best she could come up with considering her circumstances, seeing as her father had made sure she and Robert be kept apart at all times except for social events, but it was nowhere near as satisfying as plunging that knife deep into his odious flesh). All I do, I do for father. So she could find her way back in Tywin Lannister's good graces and her former life be returned to her. She had even resisted the desire to spit in the coffin just before they'd shut it close like a dutiful daughter, concealing her disgust behind a glass of champagne.
She'd nodded and smiled indulgently at Stannis and brushed off his allegations as the mere lapse of judgment of a grief-stricken brother. She had even politely dissuaded his claims to Robert's seat on her father's company, dancing around the fact that she'd rather set herself on fire than see him or his nancy brother on the board of directors. She'd ignored the fact that Jaime still insisted on being impossible, once again refusing to meet her demands, as uncooperative as ever when it came to matters that didn't entail the direct involvement of his dick. And finally, somehow, by some unknown miracle, she'd been able to walk away from the murderous dwarf without stabbing him in the eye with her fucking nail file.
Cersei would have to crack open another bottle of chardonnay in the limo to commend herself on the effort. It felt like a much deserved prize, for all the crap she'd been forced to take from what felt like every member of society's upper class today.
She sighed in potent frustration. What was a woman to do when surrounded by dangerous enemies and borderline useless friends?
She focused her attention on the boy-hanger standing awkwardly in front of her and tried to think of something cheerful, like telling the driver to slam the limo into the hotel's glass doors at full speed. Perhaps they'd take out at least some of the obnoxious staff as they cut through stacks of expensive furnishing, Stannis, if they were lucky.
Her cousin mumbled his greetings to his shoes and offered her her coat as if he was prepared to lose an arm along with it. Somewhere between the perfunctory smile she tossed his way—just the hint of it poking at the corner of her lips—and the faint nod the teenager gave her back, she realized she couldn't remember his name.
Not that it mattered how she'd address the fool. He'd lap up anything she had to give, any implication she threw his way. They were all Lancels to her, pretty young things wrapped up in her father's last name. Their gold wasn't like Jaime's. Where his was thick and smooth and right, theirs rang hollow. They were eager to please her in words only but when it was time to man up and do some actual work for her, they all chickened out and only did as they were told after she either blew them in a dark hallway or had Clegane nudge a gun to their temples. In the end it was more trouble than it was worth as they remained too unreliable even after she'd had her persuasive ways with them. She'd had enough of shallow playthings. The stakes were too high for her now and it was Jaime she needed, not them. And Jaime was stubbornly refusing to be the man she needed him to be.
Cersei let her cousin cover her in her furs, hold the door open for her as she slinked in the luxury sedan car, reclining on the door as she tried not to show just how impatient she was get away from the fucking hotel.
Her cousin's farewell was cut short by the upside down guillotine of the raising side window so that the poor teenager was forced to crane his neck and stammer out as many words as he could before the imminent snap. Cersei wasn't in a generous mood, not in the least bit. She kept pressing down the button with her manicured finger, almost clipping a nail in her frustration, while giving the chauffeur instructions over the distraught chunter of her cousin's voice.
Only after she'd felt the rumble of the engine and heard the satisfying screeching of wheels did she allow herself to fractionally relax.
Breathe in, out, in, out, just like Qyburn had urged her. She felt the pressure in her wrist building and releasing as her fingers clutched and unclutched to a strange rhythm.
Cersei closed her eyes, trying to relax the tense muscles in her neck. She needed to recover her strength and only had this drive to do so. After all, her day was far from over.
She had a magazine empire to manage, and she would not be seen with a creased skirt and an exhausted face peering from under her half-a-day-old makeup. There was power to the way one dressed and groomed, and Cersei Lannister always dressed to attract attention. Appearances could be an influential tool when wielded properly, a way of controlling the crowd through a combination of the right looks and the right demeanor. That's why Cersei considered her sense of fashion to be her most valuable and notorious asset, up there with her last name and her beauty, a means to remind the idiots around her that she was the upper class, the woman who required things to go the way she wanted them and nothing less. And to promote her partner brands of course, that was also a part of it, part of the show, the show that started when you signed your first contract and ended when you were either dead or not news anymore.
Cersei wasn't planning on quitting the show anytime soon. She was an editor-in-chief after all, and as such she was always making sure her name made the headlines next to the likes of Prada and Louis Vuitton, and a lot of Versace too, lately.
Even so, work at Lioness wasn't going as smoothly as it once had and she wanted to live things up, try something fresh. She had grand plans for this month's issue, and she had the perfect stage for it. She had a good feeling about it, even though her plans may have run a bit ostentatious. They were overbudget and father had refused to back her so she'd had to kiss Renly Baratheon's ass last minute in order to get his investment company to fund most of her key shoots.
Renly Baratheon and Cersei Lannister, partners in crime on the runway and beyond. She'd liked the sound of that as she skimmed through the yellow press, yes, even though it was funny, funny and bitter, considering how she could barely stand the fucker through all of the joined press they'd been doing lately. They were constantly at odds with each other, from the lighting and decor to the post-production processing of the negatives. Cersei had summoned all of her patience and tried to make it work, she truly had. She'd even offered the shirt lifter joint creative direction but no, he'd wanted a say in it all. When she refused to meet his ridiculous demands, Renly had just followed behind her, contradicting every order she gave, so their employees had to redo the concepts four times.
In the end Cersei had to concede to at least half of her brother-in-law's insolent requests, on account of Taena, who'd insisted that any more meetings that went nowhere would surely kill the collaboration for good. Ugh. She supposed half the joke was on her.
In any case, the photo shoots were about to kick off and Cersei prayed to God they wrapped things up quickly, before she lost it and went hell-bent for leather on her employees.
While her mind paged through her schedule Cersei watched absently as fancy buildings gave way to more fancy buildings. Skyscrapers reached for the clouds like the greedy ambitions of the bureaucrats that conducted their little schemes from the upper floor office departments, while expensive cafés and famed designer shops sparkled and dazzled below.
Cersei didn't have to roll down the window or even actively observe the flow of scenes to take in L.A. It was with her, in her, had been for a long time. Ever since it was decided that the Lannisters would be taking their business overseas to relocate from London back in the '90s, L.A. had been her central stage. The City of Angels was chaotic, alluring, hazardous and a quicksand for the unwary. It was made for her. It was where she felt truly at the center of it all, attended by floodlights on all sides, connected. She needed to be surrounded by the noises, all those little things beneath her, to feel secure and assured of her positions.
Perhaps that's why she generally didn't enjoy business trips, unless they were an excuse for a quick getaway with Jaime of course, but it had been years since they'd last taken one of those. She mostly left the traveling to Taena as her creative director. The Spanish woman often complained about wanting to go on an adventure together but Cersei was of the firm opinion that they didn't need the surroundings of an exotic island or—God forbid—umbrellas in their drinks in order to work, talk or fuck.
As if on cue, Cersei heard her iPhone buzz and saw a familiar name light up the screen as she swiped across the sleek surface with her manicured nail.
Are you coming today, dear?
Cersei drummed her fingers on the side of the door, then typed in a yes.
Her phone quivered again almost instantly. Taena spent more time typing on social media than Cersei, and it showed.
How was the funeral?
Cersei hesitated. She didn't like to be interrogated about her day, Taena of all people should know that. She decided to give the woman a free pass just this one time. She didn't have the energy to be mad at Taena too.
Overdue.
I figured you'd say something like that. Your knife hand still itching?
Cersei rolled her eyes.
Go fuck yourself.
I'd rather you did.
Cersei tolerated these types of blatant come-ons only from Jaime.
Never text me like that again. Or you're fired.
A pause. Good. Her friend had better reconsider her strategy for the day.
Sorry. You know I hired a new assistant for you.
Cersei crinkled her nose. She hated new girls. They were always there at her hip when she turned, trailing too closely behind her, taking up too much of her time, her space, her air. Cersei was a busy woman. She hardly had it in her to endure a sequence of endless questions, and to make it worse most of the dull creatures apparently had a hard time grasping the difference between being an invisible shadow and a nosy stalker.
What was wrong with the old one?
Senelle? Senelle quit.
Cersei raised an eyebrow. That was a first. She was yet to meet a girl stupid enough to throw away her best shot at a glamorous career in the fashion business as Cersei Lannister's very own protégé, under her wing.
They never quit.
This one did. After I threatened to leak some pretty juicy stills from her latest, uh, movie endeavor, that is.
Why?
Turns out our little missy was a mole for Vogue. Fed them info about our upcoming shoots. Our employees. You.
Cersei took a slow breath, suppressing the snarl that threatened to knock her teeth together. The ungrateful bitch. Cersei had trained her, had patience for her missteps and her clumsiness. She'd had her suspicions that the girl might be straying but to think the little trash would take her good will and spit all over it…
It's not enough. I want her ruined.
Took care of that too, don't worry.
How?
She could hear Taena's sultry laugh through the message.
Leaked the stills anyway. Sent the whole tape to her parents. Crapped all over her CV. Relax.
Cersei felt the pressure in her cheekbones ease a little as she read through her friend's text.
You're getting good at this.
It pleases me to please you. Hmm... Did it just get incredibly hot in here or are you smirking?
Cersei hadn't been smirking but reading Taena's easy flirting made her hum lightly to herself. She appreciated her friend reverting back to her usual breezy, no-strings-attached tone. This was less forced, more her.
I never smirk. Destroys my foundation.
Pooh.
You should've waited for me before you picked a new girl.
Nah, this one you'll like.
This got Cersei's interest.
And you're so sure because…?
I know you, C. See you when you get here.
Her friend should know better than to taunt her with that ridiculous nickname. Cersei cleared her screen without providing further response. She stuffed her phone back in her leather purse, careful not to ruin her nails on the zipper. She leaned back in her seat and finally popped open that bottle of chardonnay she'd promised herself earlier.
She had a long afternoon ahead of her.
~oOo~
The building of Lioness Publications was all a queen might want from a castle. Central location, right in the middle of Beverly Hills, a mere few intersections away from Rodeo Drive and right next to father's main office building. People couldn't help but make comparisons, always taking note of how both buildings stood out in their own right.
Cersei agreed. Where father's glass-paneled edifice was tall and grey, all business and no decoration, hers was of a less conventional architecture, with arches reaching for walls over one another, fancy electronic billboards and lucent headings girthing the sleek granite, and a number of glass terraces jutting out in the air directly above the bustling streets.
Cersei liked looking at her building. It gave her this deep gut feeling of power and ownership, a kind of high she could never get enough of. It was the history of how she'd gotten where she was that held the whole thing together, the sweet memories, those were the things she drew from in place of the cigarettes she'd quit over a decade ago, whenever she felt a crack running across her exterior. She was greedy for the past, the glamour, the wealth, wearing her old conquests like Prada and surrounding herself with them in her moments of doubt.
She'd been the editor-in-chief for the past nine years, inheriting the position from the retired Rhaella Targaryen after her husband's crimes had ruined the family's reputation for good. Father had wanted to expand his working collaborations to the publishing circles and Cersei had finally been given a chance to prove herself. She'd never fallen out of love with fashion, even after she'd been forced to terminate her modeling career for good (her catwalk beauty had faded, they said, not even a woman of her caliber had any business on the covers of Elle and Marie Claire at twenty-five) and was married off to Robert Baratheon like a milked cow. She'd never stopped missing the runway though. So when she'd spotted a chance for herself to claw her way back in, she'd gone for it without a second thought. She'd taken over the magazine through a deadly combination of influence and cunning, despite the older Targaryen bitch's strong and stubborn opposition. Cersei had taken hold of the sinking magazine and made it anew. Before her time, Lioness used to be called Targ. Monthly and it was nothing more than a one-note periodical, more of a bulletin, really. Cersei had brought in her vision and her ideas and together with Baelish and father's funding they'd managed to kick-start a new major player on the fashion press playground.
Lioness was her life. In the terrible lapse between it and the decline of her modeling days, in those horrible few years she'd spent out of the public eye, it was like she'd dropped off the face of the earth. All of a sudden none of the invitations to cocktail parties, yacht club gatherings and charity ball events were addressed to her anymore. She'd been Robert's plus one and it drove her crazy with outrage and jealousy. It wasn't fair. She was more than a wife to some prominent CEO, ex-model daughter to one of the most renowned business mogul in the city. Lioness brought that back in her life, that being someone she'd been missing so sourly. Here, now, she was equal parts Cersei and Lannister, and she liked it, the recognition and that sense of importance it gave her. Somewhere along her miserable marriage with Robert, as the years stretched and only took from her, she'd figured that kind of attention was the missing piece of her soul just as Jaime was the missing piece of her body. Being able to seize it was her second biggest pride after surviving her sixteen-hour labor to push Joff out into the world.
Cersei stepped into the premises of Lioness Publications with her head held high and even her headache fled momentarily as people's heads snapped up towards her and she allowed herself a moment to bask in the acknowledgment, the authority.
Almost immediately she knew something was not right. Their faces, it always was the faces that gave it away first. They were all looking at her but not respectfully, no, they were all frightened, as if a storm had swept the place and no one dared to tell her about the damages. Almost as if…
Her blood chilled. Tommen?
Cersei strode like a tigress to the cowed receptionist—Sheila, she recalled vaguely—who shrunk back in her chair like an accordion and immediately started apologizing for some small and insignificant error from two years ago.
"Tommen," Cersei spoke hoarsely over the young woman's stutter, "my son. Where is he? Is he safe? Is he hurt?"
Sheila blinked. "What? N-No, Mrs. Lannister, I think, I mean, your son is upstairs at daycare as you left him. I mean, as your sitter left him. Should he be somewhere else?"
Cersei flared her nostrils, giving the woman a long, appraising look, a predator deciding the fate of its pray. "What's going on here?"
Sheila paled, then shrugged. It was the worst fake shrug Cersei had ever seen in her life. "The usual. Uh… People coming in to work, or looking for work. Everyone's very grateful." The woman's eyeglasses seemed like they were about to pop. Cersei dared one fucking shard to hit her in the eye and mess up her liner, she just dared it. "We've had to make a few cuts recently…"
Cersei frowned. "Senelle?"
Sheila seemed surprised. "Oh, you've heard about that."
Cersei snorted. "Of course I've heard about that. Taena told me." She made sure her voice dropped down a few extra degrees as she spoke around her pressed teeth, "I make it a point to keep myself informed about the state of my own company." So don't think to slack off, little bitch, hailed the unspoken message. There are ten replacements of you waiting in line to be thrown a bone.
Sheila's eyes were big and nervous. "So... you've spoken with Mrs. Merryweather already?"
"As I said," Cersei hissed as she pulled out her pocket mirror and started applying a fresh line of crimson to her lips, slightly annoyed that she had to repeat herself twice, "I keep track of things around here."
Sheila gave a sharp exhale. "That's a relief, I mean, it's great that you're so calm about it, the whole Renly thing."
Cersei's heart leapt up in her throat. She whipped her head up, only marginally registering the long red line she'd accidentally dragged down her chin with the lipstick. "What Renly thing?"
Sheila trembled as if her superior's voice was inflicting physical abuse on her. "Well, you know, the account… Renly was here today, you see..." The girl swallowed noisily, changing tactics midway. "I thought you said you'd spoken to Mrs. Merryweather?"
No, Cersei thought wildly even as the girl spoke. No no no. At some point she realized she must've started whispering it out loud because the next thing she knew Sheila was offering her a chair and some water to calm down.
"Would you, uh, like me to fetch you some aspirin or something?"
Cersei grabbed the girl's wrist and squeezed, pouring out all of her distress into that single contact. "You little liar. It's not true." Taena would have told me.
"It's true, I swear, ask everyone around. Please don't fire me, I really need the job." Cersei peered over her shoulder to see that most of the people in the lobby had ceased whatever work they had occupied themselves with and were now staring at the escalating scene with a barely concealed thirst for gossip in their eyes.
"Mrs. Lannister?" Sheila's small voice drew back her attention. "Could you… My wrist…"
Cersei pried her stiff fingers open to see bloodless flowers already blooming across the skin underneath. The sight of it was too familiar, too constricting, referencing back to a single event Cersei was not allowed to remember in public. She was reminded of the marks on Joff's body and the way she'd held on to him with her hands until she was urged to—made to—let go, forcefully dragged away so the paramedics could wrap her boy in a sickening white sheet—
"Where is she?" Cersei's voice was velvet and acid, flattery and command.
Sheila looked up at her dully. "Who?"
"Mrs. Merryweather." The name was spoken like a winter curse.
"I-In your office, I think. She informed us she would be working on the new…"
Cersei didn't wait for the girl's rambling to finish. She swept past her staring employees, charged into the elevator and sharpened her impeccable nails for a battle.
~oOo~
"Bitch. You're fired." Cersei barely waited for the sliding door to click shut before she hissed out the words in the most venomous tone she could muster.
Taena Merryweather was sitting in her chair, surrounded by stacks of her paperwork, fingers skating across a laptop that was sat in the middle of her desk. The woman was wearing a white cotton shirt and a pencil black mini skirt, businesslike even without the glasses that mounted the steep bridge of her nose. The shirt covered only a small portion of her shoulders and flowed down into a delicate scoop neckline. It was a tight fit which put the focus on her breasts, but without making it look sloppy. Her arms were only covered down to the elbow, which not only helped accentuate her smooth olive skin but also kept the line of her clothes perfectly neat.
Six or seven years ago, it wouldn't have stung Cersei so much to see a woman wear her clothes and her late youth so well.
"Calm down my love," Taena purred in that deep Hispanic accent that made men weak at the knees. Cersei was no man and she made sure to remind Taena of it as she cracked her heels against the floor so that her steps could be heard even though the floor was carpeted and soft.
"Don't tell me to calm down. Renly pulls out and you don't fucking tell me? I was made to look like a fool in front of half my employees downstairs. Now I advise you start collecting your things before I throw them out the window along with your contract."
Taena slid out of the rolling chair and rounded the wide desk, almost but not quite stepping into Cersei's personal space. Her perfume today was sweet, heavy, and had a bit too much sex in it. Donna Karan, no doubt. Europeans were obsessed with that for some reason.
"Cersei, relax. Renly came in earlier today with no desire to negotiate. No one could've persuaded him to stay, not even you. I think it was always their intention to pull out last minute. I didn't tell you over the phone because I didn't want to upset you after your exhausting day at the funeral."
Cersei caught Taena's wrist before the other woman could touch her face. "Don't presume to tell me what I could and couldn't have done. I would've made him stay. We needed him."
Taena sighed. "I know we did. I tried to appeal to him, he wouldn't listen."
"So you're an incompetent cunt as well as a liar."
Taena took Cersei's hand in hers, rubbing soothing circles before lightly pressing her dark lips to the soft skin. "You're upset. I get that. But you have to understand, Renly came here with the clear purpose of insulting us. It may be a good thing that you weren't here, C. I was afraid you might've killed him for the way he spoke about this magazine, your family, you. He..." Taena looked away. "He said you should tell your father to buy you another pastime."
"He had no right!" Cersei screamed, hating the effrontery, the hypocrisy—like Renly was one to talk. She yanked her hand from Taena and slammed it on the desk. Papers flew up, orderly files and hours' worth of work blighted in a single second, then snowed down like it was fucking Christmas, except Santa had swung by earlier and snaffled all the gifts. "We were on contract. He can't pull out, how did he even—he must know I'd hire a lawyer and see him ruined."
Taena sighed ruefully. "He claimed that we'd committed a breach of the confidentiality agreement by disclosing the state of our common funds and transaction details to Vogue representatives." Taena made an almost inelegant sound as she leaned against the ravaged desk. "We have our dear Senelle to thank for it. We thought Renly was just going off on rumors at first but he'd done his homework and marched in here with solid proof of her conversations with them. We weren't a safe place for his money, he said. Instead of launching costly shoots we should allocate more funds to keeping track of our employees, that's what he advised us, then gathered his drag queen skirts and took off."
Cersei hissed like a wounded cat. The smug, back-stabbing dick. I should've been here. But if it was as bad as Taena said, what could she have done, really? At least now she could pin some of it on her friend and keep a portion of her reputation unscathed. Although everyone knew it was the face of the outlet who always got the worst of these things in front of the press, regardless of whose fuck-up it really was. Cersei snorted. It was all Senelle's fault anyway.
"But that was Senelle," she argued. She knew she was grasping at straws but she would never capitulate and wave a white flag to that complacent fool Renly. "And we fired her." How had he found out about that anyway? He knew about it before I did. Apparently Senelle wasn't the only rotten apple working under her. The thought of others having their ways into the inner circles of her dominion, of people that were not her friends having current knowledge about all those creases just out of her field of vision, made her blood curdle.
"True, but she was still our employee at the time she leaked the information, and apparently that's what counts, juridically. Renly could sue us, C."
Cersei was at a loss for words. "Can he do that?"
Taena bit her full lip as if to lessen the impact of her own words. "I've consulted with Varys' law firm and they, uh... thought it would be best for us not press official charges. Apparently Renly has enough legal ground for breaking off the contract to hold in court."
"Why?" Cersei raked her brain with this single question. Why would Renly Baratheon double-cross her at the last moment, what gain was there for him? If this is about father refusing to make him CEO in Robert's place… No, not even Renly was that vain, that featherbrained.
Cersei was beside herself with rage. No one would've thought to treat me like this a year ago.
She wasn't an idiot—she knew the kind of stain a madhouse left on your name. Spend six months locked away in an asylum and suddenly people assumed you were out of fashion. Just look at this debacle that was forced on her. To have to demean herself and tremble at the face of the press. Cersei Lannister from one year ago would've had enough support to bounce back from a prospective scandal at any given time. But now, now her good name was hanging by a thread. Now she had to sit tight and behave.
Even her father, her main shareholder, had started withdrawing some of his financial support for her magazine, and she hated it, how she had to grovel at his office for every cent and prove her reliability to him twice a week. What was even worse was that he hadn't lifted a finger to publicly endorse her return at the helm of Lioness, and of course the tabloids sensed that. Tywin Lannister might have saved her from serving jail time but he'd left her to deal with the vultures creeping around her magazine as she saw fit. It was one of the many things which kept Cersei awake at night, listening to Taena's even breathing and envying the other woman, hating her for it. Because without the power of a successful business behind the name, you were just stripped bare for all to laugh at, notorious, fodder for tabloids, and that wouldn't do.
Everyone thought they could walk all over her these days, presumed that she'd be giving up what was hers without a fight. They'd damn well guess again. She'd have to figure out a way to show them that she wasn't broken just yet, that it would take a lot more than a bit of bad publicity to cause the downfall of Cersei Lannister…
Taena cleared her throat. "I think…"
She paused, and it came across too forced, too fake for Cersei's liking. She was in no mood to wait and be kept waiting. "What? Out with it."
"I think someone may have worked with Renly from the start. Orchestrated this whole thing to make us look bad in front of the press."
Cersei narrowed her eyes. "Who?" Vogue seemed like a logical answer, though Cersei had no valid evidence in support of that theory.
"I don't know." Taena moved closer. "I'm telling you though, Renly Baratheon might be the spokesman but those sure weren't his words." The Spanish woman averted her gaze. "I hear Rose Trend have been trying to score a deal with Baratheon Fundings for months."
Cersei's eyes darkened, everything becoming clear in one instant. "Not those fucking Tyrells."
Rose Trend was a fashion magazine, a rather distinguished fashion magazine in fact, property to that wretched hag Olenna Tyrell, and it was a direct competition to Lioness. From what Cersei had heard the wrinkled old cunt ruled her little kingdom with an iron fist, even now refusing to die despite her years qualifying her for a museum exposé. They were always neck to neck, she and Olenna, jockeying for power, clientele, press coverage, awards and prestige in an old and hard-fought battle.
Cersei should've known sooner. The sneaky bitch was always on the lookout to screw her over.
She nibbled at her nail, her manicure be damned.
"I'm told their next issue will feature a rather high-budget cover shoot with the editor-in-chief's own granddaughter," Taena went on. "Margaery. The young rose."
Cersei paced the room like a lioness in a cage, heels biting into the carpet, nails biting into her palm.
"So the little harlot's trying to ride her granny's doomed train, never mind the missing rails ahead when the hag croaks."
Taena lifted up a champagne coupe full of margarita and delicately offered it to Cersei. Cersei shook her head. "Perhaps the train isn't as doomed as we thought. Maybe this wasteful shoot is meant to draw more attention to the granddaughter as a potential successor for when the crone eventually bites the dirt."
Cersei took her time measuring the degrees of shit they were potentially in. She caught her lip between her teeth and pressed down until she tasted iron. It had never occurred to her that the old bitch would be entrusting the quest of pushing Lioness out of the publishing business to her vile spawn.
"We were fools to think Olenna Tyrell wouldn't secure her legacy."
Taena nodded regretfully. "We only looked at her idiot grandson, I admit that was an oversight. What will you do?"
Cersei seethed. Her fingers itched to wrap themselves around the margarita glass, Taena's throat, her fleeting power.
"What can I do? Olenna Tyrell got what she wanted. We have no funding to do the Valentine's Day issue justice. It'll be mediocre, at best. If we're creative with what little we have. Our issue is ruined and theirs will sparkle like never before. They killed two birds with a single stone."
"Should I call Petyr?"
Cersei snorted, cursing her fate. "Don't bother. Not even he is in a position to get us out of this mess, I'm afraid," she lied. The truth of it was, Baelish was out of the country, negotiating something for her father with the Starks up in Canada, something she wasn't even informed about, and she wasn't allowed to interrupt Tywin Lannister's work no matter what, never mind the negligible fact that Baelish was technically her employee. Father had stolen him right from under her just when she needed him.
Taena scuttled closer, caution in her voice. "You could always ask your father for a short-term loan—"
Cersei swatted the Spanish woman away. "I'm not kissing his ass again. Not in this life. I will not be giving him an excuse to toss me back in a creep house, thank you very much."
Her head began to spin as her headache swooped back on her, worse, stronger, and she felt Taena's hands fly to support her moments later. "Shh, there's another investor," her friend was whispering soothingly in her hair. Her breath was warm and moist, and had the faintest traces of vanilla in it. "A better one."
"We might hate their guts, but who's richer than the Baratheons? Except my father, that is..." Cersei sobbed a little as she let Taena cradle her like a child.
"They're a new brand, C, but they're ready to have their big break-through, just like you were nine years ago, remember?" The Spanish woman caressed Cersei's hair with one hand and brought the margarita to her swollen lips with the other. Cersei drank tiredly. "I've invited one of their high-ups over for lunch, he should be here any minute now. Just hear him out, ok? Just listen to what he has to say. I'm sure you'll be feeling a great deal better about this whole thing once you've met him and seen just how alike you two are."
Cersei let herself be reassured by Taena's words, the clever glint in her eye, if just for a minute. Jaime always knew how to make the impossible, even ludicrous ideas seem plausible, almost logical. She never felt unsafe with him, even when he ranted on about running away together and living under a bridge.
Even if it was just for a second, she wanted this kind of security back in her life. She let Taena stroke her cheeks and kiss the corners of her lips, trace the red mark of her lipstick with her hot breath, just the hint of her tongue drifting on her skin. Cersei's fingers nestled in those heavy cocoa curls, traveled up the Spanish woman's scalp, pulled sharply. Taena's vein was thrumming in her throat, buried under a thin layer of obstructive, tedious skin. Cersei's teeth scratched at the base of her friend's neck, demanding a bloody and violent entrance.
She remembered the first time they did this and Taena let her take full charge of things, it being something so unfamiliar, harder work than she'd imagined but oh so worth it.
Cersei bit down hard into Taena's flesh, felt the other woman squirm against her, but with no denial. She felt her up and Taena moaned, too loudly for the thickness of the wooden door that separated them from the scandalmonger beehive they'd employed. Jaime would've pushed her off by now, trapping her underneath his muscular body to repay her teasing in kind. Taena just wrapped her lithe limbs around Cersei's body and whispered encouragement. Cersei groaned in frustration. Her friend was too submissive sometimes, making it an all too easy fight, an all too easy victory.
This wasn't what she needed, not with Taena, at least.
Reality came crashing back on her like a fucking boomerang, and she roughly shoved Taena off. "Who's this representative? Do I know him?" she asked, flipping back to her usual, passive aggressive tone as she strode over to the long wall mirror to fix her makeup.
Taena didn't seem to mind being treated like a call girl and a business partner all in the span of three seconds, and smoothed her skirt over as she rose elegantly to her feet. "Kind of. Not personally. You ought to know his last name, I think."
Cersei paused to apply her blush, pierced Taena with her arctic eyes through the mirror. "What were you doing in my office when I came in?"
Taena's thick lips pulled into a devilish grin. "Not playing around with your dildos, don't worry." Cersei rolled her eyes at the poor joke. "I was hoping to take care of the inventory before you came in. I know how much you hate doing these."
Cersei took a moment to examine whether she was annoyed or grateful that someone paid so much attention to her actions. She wondered if she should thank Taena for all the times she'd covered for her while she was busy with her family drama, her lawyers, or simply decided to roll down the blinds and let the wine take everything away. Through all the rough patches over the past year Taena had proved to be a valuable assistant. She'd even served as a temporary editor-in-chief while Cersei was away at a psychiatric hospital. Taena was the only one Cersei dared leave things to around here.
"You do know me, I suppose," Cersei susurrated, a bit bashful, and even that felt like too much.
Her phone rang. Taena knew better than to ask who it was.
That took you long enough, Cersei wanted to hiss into the phone but instead she just kept staring at it, frustrated. She had expected her brother to be angry about her leaving the funeral without telling him but she had zero fucks and apologies to give.
She needed from Jaime what Taena was giving her—an active support in her struggles to uproot her enemies before their claws scratched too close. But her brother preferred to do nothing, like he usually did. She wanted him to kill Tyrion, take Robert's place, give her and his fucking children the leverage they needed. He wanted her to quit her job, be his, all that romantic nonsense, blabbering about how this city sucked her dry or some such idiocy.
As if he ever understood the effort she had put into building a reputation around herself. The price it tolled against her to keep it all moving. He'd never done anything by himself in his entire life, aside from his ridiculous venture into the state police department that father disapproved of. Being a cop had been the only thing her brother remotely cared for aside from her, them. He'd seemed to find some misplaced purpose amidst the bullets but even that had ended as soon as he'd lost his gun hand.
Now all he cared about was fucking her and spending time with her, their stolen moments intense, overwhelming and inescapably fleeting. While it felt good to immerse in those fantasies from time to time, to feel him inside her like the first time they had each other when they were teenagers, Cersei needed him to be more than that, something her brother had a problem with. Because deep down Jaime was still the hopeless teenager who'd dropped down on one knee before her during senior prom and asked her to run away with him and marry him. Cersei had no use for that teenager anymore.
They hadn't even fucked in ages. Ironically, Taena had seen more of her naked ass these past couple of months than her brother. Cersei wondered if her twin would ever grasp that one thing led to the other with her and he couldn't simply ask to be in her life with one foot and out with the other. It wasn't on the menu, not anymore, that wasn't how things worked now. Ever since Joff's death, the rules had changed. Taena seemed to get it. And if her brother refused to follow suit then he could get a castration for all she cared.
Cersei cleared her screen without answering.
She arched an expectant, sharply trimmed eyebrow as she looked at her friend over the paper town sprawled on her desk, the particularly massive pile she'd started sorting through in her fury, a bit mindlessly. "Well? Who is this mystery man we're meeting or do I have to really fire you before you get around to telling me?"
Taena smirked knowingly as she made the announcement.
"Greyjoy. We'll be having lunch with Mr. Euron Greyjoy."
