The Fixer Pt. 02

"Yeah, I'll tell you what, I want to discuss this further. How about I come over so errant ears aren't listening on the phone." Clementine offered.

"Um, OK." Badiha agreed.

"Good because I'm right outside now." Badiha rushed to look out of her window and saw Clementine wave to her as she got out of her huge black car.

Badiha was a whirlwind of activity hiding evidence of her perversion and throwing in clothes in the minute it took Clementine to make her way up to the penthouse apartment. She was surprisingly pleased how presentable her life was as Clementine strolled in.

"Badiha, such a pleasure to meet face to face again. My daughter sends her... urgh... regards." Clementine announced as she handed Badiha her coat. "You've managed to keep a clean house."

"Yeah, well it is also my office." Badiha replied.

"Good, good." Clementine mumbled, sensing the tense staleness of small talk when there was a clear agenda at play. "Wine?"

Clementine pulled a bottle of cabernet out of her handbag, she found the wine glasses in the first cupboard she opened and was pouring before Badiha even responded to her offer.

"You're supposed to let it breathe a bit first." Badiha said just to cut the silence.

"Any aeration you desire from a wine can be achieved by swirling it in the glass, that's why restaurants don't need to leave open bottles lying around." Clementine bluntly explained, sitting at Badiha's dining room table and pushing Badiha's glass into a space in front of the seat she wanted Badiha sat down in.

"How many times have you felt guilty about causing problems for someone else?" Badiha enquired, sitting down and swirling her wine.

"I'll admit you are part of a pretty exclusive club in that regard, don't make me regret putting you on the guest list."

"So what was the scheme that got the police to my door?" Badiha bluntly asked.

"In due time. First I want to know how you beat the wrap and how you've been doing since." Clementine countered, her stern facade giving way to a look of clear concern.

"Nicole Quinn owed me a favour and decided I would be interested in hearing about the tip her dad got." Badiha explained.

"You made arrangements for Nicole's fantasy after the raid, so I'm guessing she presumed a positive response."

"Or she knew doing the favour ahead of time would force my hand."

"Either way there's a lot of people operating on good faith in this series of events. I try not to have things go so... informally." Clementine thoughtfully analysed, while Badiha could clearly see she was desperately trying to get to grips with Badiha's outlook.

"You think Nicole and I are both idiots for trusting each other when we had never even met, but you are also impressed with the results." Badiha cockily noticed taking a sip of her wine.

"And then after making good with Nicole you dropped off the grid. At first I thought you were trying to disappear, a lot of people do that after a close run in with the police. It usually ends badly for them as it says some things about their character that make me believe they would be a liability if they got caught. But I saw how you had checked into a hotel and figured you had just decided to take a vacation. Maybe your good faith method of operating was catching because it was a huge risk for me to just let you do that."

"Lots of people take vacations, not a reason to start sending goons after them." Badiha interjected.

"I once gave the benefit of the doubt to a friend who was 'taking a vacation', I didn't realise witness protection was his travel agent until it was almost too late. That night I had to do some pretty distasteful things to not end up on a less voluntary vacation of my own." Clementine explained, "so you must know people like you are not normally given this much leeway."

"People like me?"

"Contacts of mine, people I do business with, people who are the 'need' in 'need to know.'" Clementine quickly explained.

"Fascinating, I'm eager to hear more but our bottle is empty, want me to fetch another?" Badiha asked, not waiting for an answer as she walked to her kitchen.

"Good call, although could it be that nice French Merlot you bought recently rather than that ghastly Australian Pinot Noir you've taken to?"

"Sure, but only because that was such a casual way to admit that you are spying on my grocery shopping." Badiha quipped as she returned with the Merlot.

"Everyone wants the loyalty card vouchers these days and system admins are so underpaid." Clementine acknowledged by way of explanation.

"So you were hoping something in my shopping habits would get your daughter out of owing me a favour and then just kept an eye on it?"

"It wasn't regular viewing but I did pick it back up when you started acting strange. Since the raid you have been buying way more alcohol, plus you've turned down plenty of better offers in favour of remote managing this Henrietta girl."

"Having an influencer owe me her success is useful, just in case I need something disseminated to a mass audience at the drop of a hat." Badiha explained, Clementine gave the prospect some thought.

"Fine, I suppose that is a good insurance policy. I'm just not certain why you turned down Angela with the three last names. You would have had her in your pocket and blackmail material on that father-in-law of hers as a bonus. That family has plenty of money and could give you a foothold in technology, believe me having tech on your side is the best asset a fixer could have."

"And the job would have required me to be a stripper and risk that pompous ass taking out his class issues on me." Badiha explained. As she expected Clementine took this to mean that Badiha was uncomfortable with being in that situation, she didn't know that Badiha had turned it down because she was worryingly excited by the prospect. "Was it him that called the police on me?"

"Oh no. That was a whole other thing. So what are you getting out of these fantasies?" Clementine asked, trying to change the subject.

"Nope, you can't fob this off any more. If you want to keep discussing my business, I'm going to need to know how your business washed up on my door." Badiha asserted, putting her foot down. Clementine drained her glass and poured again.

"Fine, so I hit upon a scheme, some small time trader who wanted to go big and was willing to cut me in more than the average big timer. He works profit split and has enough company cash behind him to make big plays. So he comes to me asking if I knew anyone who looks over company accounts and could see bad news coming ahead of time. I do my thing and before long I have a good awful annual report for Aeris PLC held up for a day while my guy shorts their stock."

"Sounds profitable, but how does it affect me?" Badiha interrupted, disrupting Clementine's pride at a plan well executed.

"Patience, you'll be happy to know these sorts of schemes when my plan to get John Dobson promoted to treasury minister kicks in and he starts feeding us bad news for the currency markets."

"And you're stalling because you know I'm not going to like a detail of this story."

"Good insight." Clementine begrudgingly admitted. "Aeris PLC's accounts are signed off by Grace's father. The leverage I used to hold things up by a day was your activities with Grace."

"Jesus Christ Clementine. If word gets out my clients are being blackmailed there would be a lot of influential people who suddenly see me as a threat." Badiha yelled.

"Well I've made sure that it can't be linked back to you... now." Clementine admitted, Badiha had never seen her look guilty before, but this did not assuage her rage. "When I first made contact with Grace's father I did it anonymously. And since Grace seems to have made it her mission to find every person with higher than five figures in their bank account and tell them what great deviant fantasies you fixed for her, he assumed the blackmailer was you and called the police. I've now made him aware that I was the contact and you had nothing to do with it. I have also let it be known that I have made my tech available to keep your emails secure."

"Reassuring my clients while also providing an explanation next time you want to blackmail someone." Badiha raged.

"I'm sorry, OK. I figured you were already blackmailing them so I might as well join in. I had no idea my actions would be such an outlier." Clementine apologised, rummaging through her purse for a cheque. "Here's your cut of the scheme, with a bit extra by way of apology."

"I don't want your money." Badiha stated, ripping up the cheque. "I'll tell you what, you now owe me a favour."

"Jesus Christ you really do have a brand don't you? I just confirmed that I cannot be trusted and your response is to trust me to be honourable in the future?"

"A favour from Clementine Maximus is nothing to be sniffed at." Badiha explained.

"Alright then." Replied Clementine. "But now we have that settled. I need to know what you are getting out of these fantasies. You're earning your money elsewhere and hoarding enough favours to make people wonder if you're plotting a coup. What's the end game?"

"I'm just doing what I'm good at."

"But you're clearly not into it, you won't get your hands dirty and you've yet to even meet face to face with Henrietta. I'm not sure why you're drinking and isolating more but I'm worried doing this type of work is starting to get to you." Clementine explained, Badiha looked into her eyes and saw beyond the concern, she read the subtext of the situation and said words she probably shouldn't have said unless she was 100% sure of them.

"It's starting to get to you isn't it? You've been reading through all these emails and it's planted some pretty dark seeds in your mind." Badiha observed. Clementine shuffled in her seat, awkwardly looking around.

"How could it not? So many women actually wanting to be humiliated and put at risk, you never wonder what it would be like to be in that situation?"

"All the time. It's what makes me good at what I do. Hell, my offer's still open if you want a fantasy of your own."

"Don't push your luck." Clementine snapped, which Badiha took as an overreaction to genuine consideration. "But what are your insights from this? Is it different reading idle fantasies to watching them come to life?"

"It is. I've always been fascinated by power, what it means to have it and what it can do for you. When the women come to me, they are powerful and I have them on their knees. But over time I have learned they aren't surrendering their power, they are testing it. They get to see that even when stripped of all possessions, liberty, and dignity, others will still act according to their demands. Every time I have released a slave back into their former life, I have confirmed they are more powerful than me."

"Fucking hell Badiha, when I wanted to know about power I just read Foucault, I didn't start a business providing next level sexual experiences." Clementine baulked.

"I think if you ever take me up on my offer, you'll understand."

...

Epilogue

...

Badiha sat at home, scrolling through the photos of Henrietta posing naked in the men's toilets at the offices of a marketing corporation with an extensive online talent liaison department. Badiha had told her it was about demystifying the organisation before her meeting but they both knew it was about changing her headspace to one that was willing to sell her body.

Badiha's doorbell rang. Badiha sighed as she closed down the laptop so that if her guest was not friendly at least her clients would be protected. Good business sense but annoying to re-login through afterwards.

Badiha opened the door and a familiar girl stood on the other side, head bowed and bags packed.

"Grace, what's going on?" Badiha asked.

"My parents cut me off, cut me out of their life entirely. They stopped paying my rent so I've been evicted and need somewhere to stay." Grace explained.

"You don't have any friends willing to put you up?"

"I'm sorry, I probably do, but the last time I was in crisis I was on a boat surrounded by friends. Yet you were the only one who actually stepped up to help me. I trust you." Grace explained, her eyes never leaving her feet.

Badiha knew that Grace was not acting rationally, she also felt a similar irrationality in her reaction. Grace was cut off, a favour from her was no longer worth anything, Badiha had nothing to gain from taking her in.

In that moment Badiha felt a rage well up inside of her, she had always harboured a low level anger at the women born into privilege, it fuelled her deviant designs in the days before her own mind was broken. But now, as she stared at this scared girl she felt a far larger fury at the world.

Grace's parents, her own mother and father had tossed her to one side. Not because she had turned on them, just because her behaviour had left them open to becoming pawns in games of the powerful. Holding up Aeris PLC's accounts had not cost her father a penny, but it had damaged his ego and reduced him to the position of being at the behest of someone else, a fate shared by 99% of the country who aren't disowning their daughters.

And when this horrible situation landed on someone, and she needed help, she couldn't even trust her own friends. The game of social status already having turned on her in the past.

Badiha's fury then turned to herself, her first thought when faced by someone in genuine need was to ask what was in it for her. This whole system of the powerful playing these games with one another had gotten to her as well and in her anger, she saw only one route to redemption.

"Absolutely, come on in and we can discuss what comes next for you." Badiha welcomed, opening her door wide for Grace.