I Need Your Help

It seemed the best, and frankly, anyone who ended up with Scarecrow as a boyfriend clearly needed someone else to run their personal life. Plus, it would give her a reason to come to me and give me more chances to gain SP, rather than me constantly having to chase her.

I headed back and the tables were all breaking up as folks moved back into the other rooms for more drinks and little deserts. Jasmine seemed a little off, though that was no surprise with all the investigation and embezzlement talk, but she pulled me and Penelope along without difficulty, resuming her pitches.

Penelope was not drinking, as she was driving herself home. I considered pushing that, to test it and see if I could put her in a position where I’d drive her home and get more chances to get SP, but decided not to, especially with Kate watching and Gotham’s rich in attendance.

Between Jasmine and Penelope, they got a surprising amount of donations, despite Alyce’s poor showing. If the intent was to avoid donations, it had failed. I did manage to push a few extra deserts on her, but that only gave me a +1 SP (Penelope: +61), which was the best I managed for the rest of the evening. And I’d never even managed to speak to Alyce, but I’d still made more progress in an evening than I had in weeks and given her cause to come to me, or, more likely summon me.

Speaking of summoning, or dismissing, the fundraiser was over and folks were leaving. Max and his wife had only come back long enough for us to notice that he looked like she was literally draining the life out of him, before they bailed. We stuck around almost until closing, then headed down to the car.

Where we found a valet and, lurching out of the shadows, a very drunk, very stoned, Chloe Schreck. How the fuck she’d made it back here was unclear, as her driver was nowhere to be found.

Diamond and Jasmine had the same ‘mom’ reaction, but Jasmine moved behind me as Diamond moved to intercept and help the idiot, but even as she caught her staggering advance (not helped by the extremely high stiletto heels she was wearing) and mostly managed to keep her from flashing anyone, she pointed right at me, and yelled, drunkenly, “You bastard!”

This wasn’t exactly a place for this, even if there weren’t many people around. Before I could respond with anything, she continued, dispelling any concerns I might have had.

“You laughed at me!”

“You were funny,” I said calmly, pulling out my phone. “Anyone know Max’s phone number?”

Diamond rattled it off as Chloe argued something that was devolving into incomprehensible accusations about not taking her seriously and threats about what her father would do. Somewhat to my surprise, he actually answered his phone to an unknown number, I sort of expected he’d send me to voicemail. “Yes?”

“Max, it’s Eli, we just met at the fundraiser. Sorry to call you out of the blue like this, but your daughter’s here and she’s...making a bit of a scene,” I concluded, though he could probably hear her complaining in the background about who she was and her desire for us to know her identity.

“Thank god! Her driver lost her at the party. He’ll be there soon. I hate to ask, but can you wait with her?”

“Of course, of course,” I agreed.

“Wait, you are still at the fundraiser, right? She didn’t track you down somewhere else?”

“We’re still at the fundraiser.”

“Thank goodness.” Good security procedures were clearly drilled into him, even if he hadn’t managed to do that to his daughter, so he provided me the driver’s contact info and photo, so I could confirm their identity and not just hand her over to the first muscled man who asked.

So we spent a good ten minutes listening to a stoned, spoiled brat complain about being laughed at rather than spanked, like she deserved. It was mostly amusing, because the alternative was for it to be depressing, or insulting and I was determined not to take it that way, not after a quite productive night.

But at about the five minute mark, she focused enough that she actually pulled free of Diamond, mostly by surprise, and spun, “Let me go, you bitch! I am Chloe Schreck and you’re just some DEI cow brought in to fill my dad’s shoes when you aren’t worthy to kiss them,” she raised a hand to slap Diamond’s face. I was moving fast, but Diamond was closer and caught her wrist, easily overpowering her.

“Strength is strength, little girl. And you lack the strength for this confrontation, little girl.”

“I am not a little girl! I’m a grown woman!” always a convincing statement. She stomped her feet, then tried to actually stomp on Diamond’s feet, but I was there by then and calmly restrained her.

“That’s enough out of you,” I said as I pinned her against the wall. We were drawing a little bit of attention, but everyone here knew who she was and these weren’t folks who recorded stuff and posted it online. I thought they were too fancy for that, but actually, as Diamond explained to me later, they just prefer to make cutting comments that only those ‘in the know’ understand.

I made sure to keep my groinal distance and note the security cameras to get copies for self protection. “You will apologize to Diamond when you sober up,” I said quietly, but she didn’t respond in any way...because she started snoring, even as I held her there.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered, carefully guiding her mostly **** self onto a bench. Her driver finally arrived as Diamond was chiding Andre for not involving himself, while he muttered about us having it handled. I asked him to get copies of the security footage, to protect us if she complained about how we handled it and he did.

Jasmine looked a little ashamed of herself for not participating, and a lot impressed by Diamond and my handling the problem. I belatedly realized that Diamond was doing to her what I’d done to Diamond, helping her, protecting her, dominating her...but Diamond had moved to handle Chloe even before I had. Was she better at being a dom than me?

Well, maybe...that idea certainly wasn’t weakened by the way she sent Andre off to start the work he’d agreed to do as soon as we got home. Jasmine and I had spent the trip back talking and congratulating her on all her efforts and her work. She’d been clearly planning to invite me back to her place and I had no reason to say no. I was a little nervous as fucking her without any target around would throw me back onto my old skills...which was fine, probably.

But Diamond was a step ahead of me. Actually, she was two steps ahead of me. She grabbed Jasmine and kissed her firmly. “Go upstairs, Jas, we’ll join you in a moment.”

“Your bedroom, but…” Jasmine glanced at the door Andre had just headed out through, then to me, then upstairs.

“Don’t you want to be rewarded?”

“But...Andre—”

“Will be working.”

“Your kids—”

“Are out all evening.”

“I should—”

“We’ve talked about this. What do you want, Jas?”

She glanced back and forth between the two of us, then stepped out of the dress and began to walk upstairs, revealing she’d been wearing nothing underneath.

“You. I want both of you,” she said at the top of the stairs.

I was damn near drooling and started to step forward, only for Diamond to catch me.

“What’s up?”

“There’s something you need to know.”

“What?”

“Jasmine planned to sabotage us.”

“What?” I was genuinely shocked, that wasn’t what I expected at all.

“It wasn’t malicious. She wanted you fired, so you’d be safe and would take the Foundation job.”

I was confused. “When did—what happened?”

“When you and Andre went off, she started in on that little blonde. It wasn’t too obvious and that doctor is pretty oblivious, she didn’t notice. I did. We talked it out and she aborted, but I can’t promise she won’t change her mind later.”

I had a moment of fury, then felt absurd about it given the things I’d done to protect people against their will…

“Well...I think she must have. She didn’t wrong me. Not like the Schreck’s wronged you,” I left it at that, given Jasmine might have been listening.

“That’s the question...should I have stopped her?” she asked.

I almost said ‘yes’ immediately, as I very much didn’t want to be fired. But if she’d done enough to ‘wrong me’ I think I could have gotten her fully under control...quickly. Which would mean that her siblings came under my control, which would give me massive influence over Jackson LTD...it would have really supercharged our resources…