Chapter Four: What the Raven Said
Talia drained her squat glass in one harsh swallow, the alcohol scalded her esophagus on the fleshy path down to her belly, mixing with her stomach acid.
"You've been a busy girl online Miss Leroux," Talia stated with a knowing smile.
Clara took a sip of the potent booze, carefully arranging her features into one of total neutrality, the DMZ of poker faces.
Talia tisked as she refilled her glass. "I don't make statements or ask questions unless I already have the truth or answers Miss Leroux," she purred.
"Security calls you 'The Raven.'" Talia stated.
Clara swallowed hard. "Yes."
"You like that nickname," Talia stated icily, close to accusatory.
"It's alright," Clara answered, her voice tight, tension slowly leeching inside to fill her core. "It's better than opossum," she couldn't help but add on a chuckle.
Thinking of her sister-in-law made Clara think of her brother.
"What would you have done if my father had picked my brother?"
"I would've snapped his neck on the tarmac," Bane said as Talia raised a glass, icily adding. "And you'd still be sitting here."
Talia pressed her lips together, still amused at Clara's naiveté before she nodded curtly at Bane.
Clara continued to steadily sip at her glass as Bane marched by and quickly returned to the table, handing Talia a tablet with an HD screen.
Clara felt her heart begin to gallop in her chest as Talia tapped the screen a few times.
Before she turned the tablet around, Clara flicked her eyes up to find Bane's already on her.
For just under five seconds, which felt like 4.5 billion years, Clara was temporarily paralyzed under the weight of Bane's piercing gaze.
Bane's roiling hazelnut orbs glimmered with bright copper swirls as he met her piercing sapphire eyes.
Talia turned the tablet around, breaking the palpable, confusing tension between Bane and Clara.
"Tell me everything you've seen and know," Talia hissed as Clara was suddenly face-to-face with her site on the dark web. A place where she published documents and intel that she poached from her father's clearance level access.
Clara Grace Leroux was a savvy businesswoman and shrewd operator of the digital underworld.
Despite her technological prowess, Clara wilted and drew inward managing person-to-person interactions, especially when there was a rise in the temperature.
Clara's website was suddenly staring back at her from the crystal-clear screen, the flowery font a must have as well as the deep purple background.
What the Raven Said.
Clara nearly dropped the heavy, cut crystal glass when her eyes saw her intricately created and operated site amongst the dark web.
She ran the site, quoting excerpts from classified documents and what she'd gleaned from eavesdropping on her father's phone calls, meetings and hacked email.
As Clara carefully set her features into that of complete political neutrality, having had to walk gauntlets of photographers and people shouting questions to her about her menstrual cycle and what team she played for, outside the room, Barsad's eyes widened as he stared through a nickel-sized hole in the sturdy wall.
Before the drug lord had seen the enigmatic Fabiana Fyre as she walked the runway in Milan, he used to host hedonistic parties and would stare through holes in the wall, jerking off as he caught glimpses of naked, undulating bodies engaged in all manner of bodily fluid exchange.
Barsad pressed his face closer to the wall, straining to see more as Talia continued once she had every bit of Clara's complete and total attention.
"I see you recognize your handiwork; I would add that it's brilliant," Talia cooed with genuine admiration as she added. "I would like you to tell me everything you've seen."
Clara blinked slowly as she carefully picked up her glass and took a slow sip. "I don't," she began before Talia leapt to her feet and violently slapped the heavy glass out of Clara's small hand.
The cut-crystal shattered into a million pieces upon contact with the unforgiving Tuscan tile floor.
Clara began to also rise to her feet, fear propelling her to stand when Bane's large hand landed on her sharp shoulder cap, encouraging her to stay seated as Talia remained on her feet, her lovely features contorted in anger as she narrowed her eyes at the political socialite who sang top secret stories behind a shroud of feathered anonymity.
Clara's fear of Talia was tempered with the veritable weight of Bane's large hand as it seared its imprint into the taut flesh of her shoulder.
From his peephole, Barsad's hands clenched into tight fists as he waited to see if Talia would further escalate. He let out a slow, relieved breath as Talia resumed sitting, deciding on a different approach before she directed Bane to begin breaking bones or crushing cartilage.
"Miss Leroux, I'm correct that you're intimately familiar with the soft spots of governmental firewalls and that you've planted yourself amidst your father's personal and professional correspondence and access."
Clara made a gesture that looked like it was close to shaking her head before Bane's hand tightened on her shoulder, slowing her movement until she pressed her lips together before speaking.
"I don't know of any national secrets, I'm sure you were somehow given false information."
Talia merely smiled as Clara continued denying the accusations she levied against her.
She picked up the tablet and tapped on the screen, the rounded tip of her manicured nail clicked on the HD screen before she turned the tablet back around to face Clara.
The screen was sectioned into four moving frames, like watching the security cameras at a department store.
The top right screen showed Clara in a heavy coat and scarf at a coffee shop, uploading images of documentation about illegal funding to a current presidential nominee's Super PAC.
The bottom right screen showed Clara as she snuck out of her father's office and off the estate through a complicated maze of freight elevators and keycards.
The bottom left screen showed Clara at another coffee shop, exchanging messages with a fellow traverser of the dark web that was trying to coax The Raven into spilling more secrets with a lucrative offer of untraceable cash.
The top left screen was Clara as she purchased electronic equipment with cash, dressed up to look like a completely different person, having ditched security.
Clara couldn't hide her small smile from watching the footage. She'd been eating a frozen yogurt that she'd waterboarded with caramel sauce by the time her security team had found her.
The equipment she'd purchased that day with stolen cash was now in various electronic devices in her father's office, she knew his thoughts each time he typed or spoke them aloud in real-time.
Clara dropped her head and stared down at her lap, 4.5 billion thoughts bombarded her at once and she didn't know how to begin pulling them apart.
"May I have another?" she finally asked Talia, pointing to the cut-crystal glass.
Talia smiled broadly, nodding at Bane as she continued to sip at her own glass.
Clara felt immense pressure lift both literally and metaphorically when Bane removed his hand from her shoulder and crossed the room to fetch a new glass for her.
Bane brought the squat glass back to the table and after Talia filled it more than halfway, held it out towards Clara.
Clara felt an electrical jolt when the tip of her fingers brushed against Bane's before she pulled the glass from his massive grip.
"Thank you," she murmured, always polite, anything else was just optically poor.
"What is it you want?" Clara finally asked after taking a few big, burning gulps from the glass of potent booze, the alcohol scorching a path down to mix with her acidic stomach acid.
"Your skillset dear," Talia purred as she added. "My intention is not to flatter but I truly admire what you've done to infiltrate your father's administration, the totality of your reach is impressive."
Clara felt her cheeks glow at the praise and took another long swallow from the glass.
Bane moved to the flank of Talia, watching Clara lower the glass, her lipstick staining the clear glass.
Talia expounded before Clara had to ask.
"You'll stay in the adjoining living space and work with me during the day," Talia flatly stated.
Clara shook her head automatically, parroting her father, "I'm not going to help you with your terrorism."
Talia smiled as she refilled her glass, the alcohol making her tongue sharpen her cruel words.
"You can spend your days alive, protected and well paid," Talia hissed, her eyes flashing as she added. "Or you can spend your days amongst the men that are paid to protect, I don't know how long you'll last but you'll die with a clear conscience."
Clara suppressed a flinch. "What is it exactly you want me to do?"
She drained her glass as Talia outlined duties that ranged from basic clerical tasks all the way up to hacking into the FAA and several other organizations that were known by three letters.
"If you fall in line, you'll be awarded certain freedoms and the worst injury you'll incur will be a papercut."
Talia wouldn't really have sent Clara to live amongst the primitive, gun-toting mouth-breathers, she knew the intrinsic value of the political heiress, she also knew Clara knew what the dirty underbelly of politics looked like and how much was grossly underreported.
Outside the room, Barsad pressed himself as close to the wall as he could. If the wall had been a person, he would have been inside them as much as humanly possible.
He held his breath as he waited for Clara to speak.
Barsad didn't know that Talia wouldn't have followed through on her threat.
Inside the room, Bane also watched Clara as she set her glass on the table.
Clara cleared her throat, "you make a compelling point as to why I should help you. It would be foolish of me to claim patriotism when I'm sure it has been spun in the news cycle that I'm in rehab for whatever the trending drug is."
She was accurate. The news was all about posting the worst photos taken of Clara Grace Leroux, photos from angles that would make Venus De Milo look like a cloven-hooved, soft-bellied beast.
For all intents and purposes, Clara would be at the top of the news a few days longer before she slowly dropped and slid away to nothingness and obscurity.
The pregnant opossum, her sister-in-law, would soon give birth to the male twins, two phallic, political warriors, future gods who would launch a coup on Mt. Olympus, drowning Poseidon in the surf before slitting Zeus's throat.
From his coin-sized, circular peephole, Barsad felt his heart quiver in its opaque pericardial sac in the small space of silence before Clara nodded slowly. As Barsad watched Clara reach out and pick up her glass, he felt a palpable shift in his future, laurels would now be possible to fall at his feet instead of dying on scorched earth.
Inside the room, Talia smiled wide, pleased as punch with herself, her ego always made her feel that she was the smartest in the room. She gladly refilled Clara's glass before her own and shared a toast with the political socialite.
Bane crossed his arms over his broad chest, regarding the Governor's daughter as she sipped demurely at her glass, his visible features were rigidly neutral.