As Bane, Barsad and the handful of heavily armed mercenaries bounced along the unforgiving road through the jungle in the pair of sturdy vehicles, back at the vast estate, Clara sat in front of the marble-topped vanity, assessing her reflection.
"What do you think daddy is doing?" she asked her reflection.
Daddy. Governor Matthew Kingston Leroux, at that moment was on the phone with another billionaire brethren, Bruce Wayne.
Governor Leroux had a positively obscene amount of money wrapped up in Wayne Enterprise stocks.
If Governor Leroux had known at that moment that Bruce slipped into his black latex bodysuit and flew around the city in expensive gadgets and tactical gear when the sun went down, he would've told him all about the violence on the tarmac and armed abduction of Clara.
Governor Kingston would've told Bruce the real reason that he couldn't attend the Wayne Enterprise board meeting was because he had his knees heavily wrapped in gauze and paper tape, the post-surgical dressings each had a latex tube protruding through the swathed layers, draining blood and other fluids into a clear polyurethane bulb.
Governor Kingston had his personal physician arrange discrete surgical services to have the bullets removed and the hemorrhaging vessels tied off.
He was currently on the leather sofa of his penthouse, legs outstretched and elevated, fat bags of ice on top of the peak of each bandaged knee.
Bruce knew the Governor was being cagey, could hear the suppressed words he spoke with his patented, polished, and political vernacular.
"Is everything alright King Matty?" Bruce asked as he sat behind his desk, broader and heavier than that of The Resolute.
Governor Kingston despised the nickname he'd earned amongst his fraternity brothers in sustained hazing that would've been considered attempted murder in the current climate.
As Matthew and Bruce continued a casual conversation and Bruce's donation to his Super PAC and countdown to the start of his reelection campaign, inside her assigned quarters on the vast compound in the jungle, Clara ran a stiff bristled brush through her hair, each strand glossy as though it were dipped in an ink well.
Her gaze went soft as she thought back to watching her parents on the tarmac.
"Just not my son," Clara whispered, remembering the shape her mother's lips made as she formed each damning syllable.
Clara had been born in the shadow of Vesuvius.
She ran the brush through her smooth locks, the strands appearing wet.
Liquid.
Complete onyx saturation.
Clara knew her parents would've both gladly opened themselves from stem to stern if Sebastian's life had been in balance.
Clara blinked, startled from her fugue when a series of soft knocks landed on the closed, locked door.
"Yes?" she called, turning on the plush, padded stool when the door slowly opened.
Clara smiled but felt color threaten to blossom in her cheeks when Fabiana entered the room, softly closing the door behind her.
"I'm, uh, I'm sorr…," Clara began, embarrassed to articulate further before Fabiana held up a fine-boned hand with heavily lacquered, glossy nails.
"Sometimes passions cannot be ignored darling, and witnesses are expected," Fabiana purred, her tone warm and inviting as she walked across the room and settled on the richly upholstered chaise lounge.
Clara turned back towards the mirror and dragged the brush through her hair as Fabiana ran her hand over the supple fabric of her skirt, smoothing it into place before she continued, seeing the political socialite's embarrassment.
"Were you taken away from someone you loved?"
Clara squeezed her hand tighter around the handle of the brush.
"No," she murmured as she met Fabiana's eyes in the mirror's reflection.
Fabiana arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "No one?"
Clara shook her head as she set down the brush on the marble top, a cold click sounded from where the handle touched the cold, hard surface.
She shook her head as she shifted on the stool, until she could face Fabiana, "there's no one."
Fabiana found herself surprised that there wasn't someone the political heiress kept hidden along with everything else she concealed from her family and public.
Talia had told Fabiana a lot about Clara, foolishly had run her mouth, like close to everyone in Fabiana's life, they didn't see past her beauty.
She didn't register as a threat.
Fabiana Fyre had graced the covers of magazines across the entire globe, her exquisite features, above reproach beauty and supple flesh made people blind to anything else.
Talia didn't feel threatened because she thought she was smarter; she was not. She was just as blind as the men who only thought about what Fabiana tasted like.
Fabiana could remove a man's spleen while he stared at her tits and wondered what her cunt tasted like.
The Drug Lord was the first man that truly saw her.
The first man that listened to her over only looking at her.
He was the first man that she'd allowed to see her, she wanted his hands on her body.
Fabiana's basal bodily response had been so strong that she'd nearly walked off the runway and fallen into his arms.
He had saved her; she had decided to wake up and live the moment that they had locked eyes.
Talia had told Fabiana how she'd had men who could infiltrate technological data as fast as they could assemble a rifle, had found Clara lurking in the dark web, how Clara had always been the chosen Leroux child she was going to pluck from the tarmac, make her sing everything she knew from her silk swathed gilded cage.
"Where have you put all of that money darling?" Fabiana asked in a purr.
Talia had spilled so much about Clara's illicit activities amongst the filth and scum that corroded the ether of the dark web.
Clara had stolen so much money.
She had a close-knit group of friends, a gaggle of elitists, all mentally unbalanced in their own way from passive or direct abuse.
They all traded what they pilfered what they could from mom and dad, all had different commodities and products to trade.
Clara only wanted money or information, whether it was hijacked from the cloud or tangible surveillance photos, color and glossy or mysterious in sepia tones.
She was paid through electronic information on paper, videos, burner phones and information crammed onto thumb drives. Some in her small circle would hijack the stratosphere of the interwebs for a few spoonful's of ketamine or oxy tablets in every color of the rainbow.
Clara couldn't help but smile to herself, as she did every time she thought about the collection of black and white photos she'd collected from a friend in trade for an IV bag of morphine.
"It's safe," Clara said after a long pause as she rose and walked over the glass bar in the corner of the room.
Fabiana nodded when Clara held up a cut-crystal decanter of scotch.
Clara passed Fabiana a squat glass with a single ice cube before settling on the loveseat across from her, the accent shade landing in the appropriate part of the color wheel.
"What were you going to do with all that money?" Fabiana asked before she took a sip of the alcohol.
"I was going to buy a new life."
Clara was in possession of enough cryptocurrency that she could probably have bought an entire country, a small country, but still a hell of a lot of land mass.
"What did this new life look like?"
Clara shrugged, "honestly, it was just going to not be where I was."
"So this could be a new life," Fabiana stated.
"You mean here?" Clara asked, a smile teasing at her lips as she tried not to appear rude.
Fabiana smiled widely, "surely I have not frightened you that much dear, is it all so terribly primitive here?"
Clara laughed, "your home is so beautiful, I just don't know if a life working for that woman is all so appealing, it feels very prison-like," she added in a honey-thick, hesitatingly slow tone, feeling like she was being offensive.
Fabiana was insightful enough to read what Clara was feeling. "Talia won't always have you under such lock and key if you are compliant, in fact you might end up finding her agreeable. With time of course," she added and winked, her beautiful eyes made camera lenses turn in her direction.
Clara drained her glass, not even realizing how much she drank sometimes, just like mommy and daddy but it was a socially accepted coping mechanism.
"So I should just help her and that's my life?"
Fabiana considered her answer. In a way, Clara was bluntly accurate.
"If you could find a degree of happiness in your work, Talia can be quite reciprocal. No matter her mood, I promise you, that I will keep you shielded from her wrath, you will be quite comfortable."
Clara stood abruptly and refilled her glass, forgoing ice so she could feel the alcohol's warm, soothing path through her chest and belly faster.
Fabiana drained her own glass before rising and joining Clara at the glass-topped bar.
"Do not be afraid of radical change darling," she started as she laid a hand over Clara's, continuing when she had the entirety of the young woman's attention. "You don't face easy decisions but there are some choices you'll need to make, and your acceptance will end the struggle."
Before Fabiana left Clara to her thoughts, regretfully locking the door behind her, turned and spoke to Clara.
"I'm going to have some gowns sent over, when the men return from town I'm hosting a dinner for you."
Clara blushed, "that's too much," she protested.
Fabiana held up a hand, "I don't get to celebrate as often as I'd like, and my husband will be home. Besides, you're worth the fuss darling, you've brought a spark of life here, it was getting a bit dismal around here."
As Clara continued to steadily fill, sip, and refill her squat glass, hours away from the military-grade compound, Bane, Barsad and the parcel of armed men arrived at the bustling market.
The men had each been charged with specific acquisitions from sacks of flour, rice and sugar to tactile firearms and RPG's.