Chapter 8: Powerful Friends
TWO YEARS AGO
Claudette Deveraux
I scroll throw more items on the clothing website. Several things have caught my eye, but I don't add anything to cart, I know that I'll be bored of them in two days of owning them. I've recently discovered that beyond impulse buying, I have no attachment to objects. I wonder if it's a rich kid problem. We buy whatever we want with no limitations, so that has to influence our ability or perhaps inability, to value things, right? I'm not entirely sure what the source of my distasteful behaviour is, but I know that I shouldn't carry this blasé attitude into my 30s.
"You're being rude." My mother's accusatory tone sliced through the loud music. I'm standing at the indoor balcony while her guests mingle and dance on the floor below us. I excused myself a little over half an hour ago when one of her donors got inappropriate. I may no longer be a minor but he's old enough to be my grandfather. His wife, who looked fresh out of high school and 80 percent plastic, tried to explain it away as drunken gibberish but I honestly did not care for her excuses.
"Rude is Mr. Finnigan trying to grab my ass." I retort, knowing full well my mother would take my side. Donor or not, it would be hypocritical of her to let sexual harassment towards her daughter slide when her job is tracking and rescuing human trafficked slaves. She won the Nobel Prize for her outstanding strides as a humanitarian. In some ways I looked up to her, in most ways though, I felt I could out do her. I don't what it is about her, but I always feel like she isn't doing enough. Maybe I'm no better than a spoilt brat, never satisfied with the efforts my parent makes despite having the world handed to me on a silver platter but sometimes, I feel like my mother is undeserving of the recognition and respect she gets and that I can do a better job. I know I sound jealous and I might very well be.
She lets out a heavy breath, clearly fighting to keep her calm over what she just learned but I hear something crack behind me. Turning, I see blood dripping from her hand and champagne glass. I don't move to help though, one of her ever-present bodyguards hands her a handkerchief and takes away the now shattered object.
"I'm sorry you had to deal with that. I will speak to him. Have you been introduced to Marcus Fayed?" I follow her line of sight into the crowd below and reach a young man standing next to Adnan Fayed.
"I walked past him on my way up but I we didn't speak."
"He's Adnan's son. Recently graduated from Brown. Marcus is from the third wife and his only son. I believe he's being groomed to take over after his father." My mother's keen eye for potential investors was unmatched and her dedication to the craft was almost clinical. It made me wonder, how does someone so detached and calculating do the compassionate deeds she's risen so high for doing?
"Good for him." I wait for her to explain why she's telling me this.
"I want you to form a friendship with him. Powerful friends are always an advantage, Claudette. People would kill to be exposed to the connections you could make in this room." She's not wrong, these days it's less about what you know and more about who you know.
My mother isn't stupid, she wouldn't tell me to date any of these men. It would make me reliant upon their generosity and strip me of my power in several ways. A lot of women attached themselves to men of power, foolishly thinking that love would ensure financial, social and familial security, they didn't find out until it was too late just how wrong they were. The rags to riches story doesn't have a happy ending when the riches aren't yours. Influential men have a revolving door of young beautiful women offering the same thing, and therefore none of them stand out. They get desecrated when offering their most precious of attributes to people who didn't value any of it. However, being friends with these people gave one the advantage of being close and the protection of being just far enough.
Something the tabloids don't tell you is that the rich don't know how to treat the people closest to them well. They get into the habit of buying affection and lose their ability to show it, if they ever knew how to in the first place.
It isn't that I'm not important myself as the daughter of Celeste Deveraux, it's that my rank in society is heavily dependant on these people. These are successful entrepreneurs, actors and actresses, politicians, inventors, royals and everything that screams self-sustained. I, unlike the rest, would not inherit something tangible and I wasn't swimming in money like the rest. I was a rich kid, but they were old money, the kind that lasted generations without a dent.
I'm about to tell my mother to introduce us when I spot an unexpected face in the crowd. Kai. I check to see where my mother's attention is and when I look back, he's gone. Did I imagine that? I hadn't had much to drink tonight but why would he be here? I'm familiar with most people in attendance and I had never seen him in one of these events before.
"What's wrong?" my mother asks, noticing the frown on my face.
"Nothing." I say quickly. "Introduce me to Marcus." I'm already turning away from the balcony, hoping she doesn't question my sudden show of interest.
***
Marcus is well written with an air of arrogance. He knows he's going places and he doesn't bother to hide it. Something about him, however, doesn't sit right with me and I can't put my finger on it. I can tell that he's pampered, protected and dominated by his father. But I wonder, does he take his frustrations with that relationship out on outsiders? And if so, how? He does not seem like a man of action so I don't think he would get his hands dirty. He'd get someone to do it for him. Daddy would clean up his mess.
"How come you don't have an Arab name?" I ask him.
"My mother named me. It makes me stand out among my cousins. Even though many of them are mixed like me their names don't give it away." He explains. The Swiss model on his arm got bored of this conversation and I way hot on her tail. I was about to excuse myself to head back upstairs when I spotted him again. Kai.
Convinced now that I was not, in fact, imaging things I decided to confront him. He was not a regular hanger on or a donor. What was a university Aikido instructor doing at an charity event hosted by my mother?
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone