“They’re beautiful.”
“Thank you. I possess many magnificent things, but they are, possibly, my favorite.”
In the distance, where the burning Malagan sun cast shimmering mirages over the stretch of white sand, two cheetahs sprinted up and down the beach after several jackrabbits that had been released as enrichment for the carnivorous felines. The cats, one fully grown, the other only slightly smaller and youthful, sprayed showers of sand into the air as their powerful legs propelled them after their prey.
“My grandmother owned cheetahs at her chateau in Paris. I always admired them as a young girl. It saddened me to hear of their death not too long ago, but inspired me to acquire a pair of my own.”
The tone of her faint English accent, acquired from an aristocratic upbringing on the Upper East Side, was cool and poised, never revealing the enigmatic two-sided meanings of her words. Her pale blue irises were shielded from the blinding sun by a black pair of Barton Perreira ‘Shirelle’ sunglasses as they gazed out at her prized felines from behind a pair of binoculars.
“Do you miss them?” he asked, intrigued by the enigmatic upbringing of the Huntington Heiress.
She waited, considering his words as she continued to enjoy the cheetahs’ performance as they hunted their prey at high-speed.
“I don’t think I miss things. I think to miss something is to hope that it will come back. But it’s not coming back.”
Her voice was leveled as she spoke, a veil of apathy never revealing insight as to whether she felt anger, sadness, or any emotion at all. She seemed to speak knowing only she could understand herself, but without doubting that on her lips all things were good.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit cold?” the Frenchman asked, his romantic nature, despite his history of immoral behavior, unable to resist questioning her frigid outlook.
“I think the truth has no temperature.”
With nothing more to say on the matter, Valerie Huntington-Whiteley rose from the white-cushioned outdoor chaise that her supple figure had rested on to stand at her full statuesque height. One of the Malagan Hellfire Club’s many unique amenities was its beachfront pool and spa area, which outrivaled that of any 5-star resort. The luxurious palapa the White Queen and her associated relaxed under provided her a picturesque visage of the expanse of white sand and crystalline ocean waters the estate was built beside.
The daze of Spanish heat caused a thin layer of sweat to glisten on the tantalizing mounds of cleavage displayed by the draped neckline of her white Versace top, its open-back exposing the gently-tanned skin of her unblemished back. A matching draped mini skirt revealed a stunning portion of her long, lithe legs, which were further elongated by the pair of python-print Louboutin ‘So Kate’ pumps. She was the visage of beauty and glamor incarnate, with an undeniable ambiance of lethal sex-appeal surrounding her.
“La voiture devrait être ici pour lui déposer une minute . Il est lié et bâillonné dans le dos , comme vous avez demandé (The car should be here to drop him off any minute. He’s tied and gagged in the back, as you requested),” he often subconsciously reverted to his native French tongue, the finesse of Valerie’s own mastered French convincing him that she shared in his nationality.
She did not respond to this information immediately, rather, watched with unsettling glee as the smaller of the cheetahs, a female named Selene, brought one of the jackrabbits to its death with a swift tackle followed by a bite to the neck that instantly shattered the quarry’s spinal cord.
Upon viewing this, the White Queen’s luscious lips spread apart in a faint smile. Catching the brilliant light of the Spanish sun were a pair of prosthetic fangs encased over her canines—made entirely out of flawlessly-cut and dazzling diamonds. The diamond fangs only furthered the unsettling nature of her beauty, painting her as the perfect predator—the fabled portrait of a vampire.
The hum of an approaching car engine broke her concentration, however she was equally pleased to see the black Cadillac Escalade driving across the sand toward Valerie and her Parisian associate. The cheetahs running up and down the beach paused to cast curious glances at the automobile, before returning, with disinterest in the humans’ affairs, to the hunting of their prey.
The black car rolled to a slow halt several yards from where the Malagan beach met the paved patio of the Hellfire Club’s luxurious pool area, before three muscularly-built men and one intimidating femme fatale emerged from the SUV. Finally, guided by the woman, who held an assault rifle to his back, a fifth figure presented himself.
Trudging through the sand, the man’s face, aged but without losing its attractive youth, appeared calm, tranquil, amid his clearly bleak situation and the trails of blood drying hideously around his eyes, nose, and mouth. His deep grey Hugo Boss two-piece suit appeared disheveled, clearly indicating a struggle leading up to his eventual binding. However, even with his appearance in disarray and his body restrained as that of a dead piece of game would be, his visage refused to abandon a semblance of unyielding pride.
Valerie’s heels clacked against the patio’s pavement as she approached her mercenaries and their capture, an unreadable coolness freezing over the irreproachable beauty of his face.
His body was thrown down, on his knees, in the sand in front of her—the pacifying sound of rolling ocean waves audible in the distance. He looked up at her with resolute serenity; while she looked down at him with a canvas of anger, indifference, and disgust swirling across her face. Reaching forward, she pulled the gag from his mouth, allowing him to cough up several spurts of blood.
“Valerie; always a pleasure,” he greeted her, never abandoning his good social graces.
“Bartholomew. I must accredit you. Of all my Inner Circle members, I had never foreseen disloyalty from you,” she responded coolly, her blue gaze icy.
“I was offered a higher position within the cartel than I have here—granted I provided enough information on you and the Hellfire Club. You know the power of greed better than anyone, Valerie,” he answered her with an almost entertained causality, as though he had lost simply a round of cards. “Give me another chance, please. I made a mistake I won’t make again.”
She had nothing more to say to him as she looked down on his pathetic position with haughty disgust, her pillowy lips turning downward in an expression amalgamated from both repulsion and steely detachment.
Letting silence fill the space between them, she turned her back on his bound figure, taking several languid steps back the chaise lounge that she had previously rested on where an opulent Hermes Himalayan crocodile Birkin bag waited for her. Reaching inside the bag, adorned with white gold, diamonds, and priced at nearly $500,000, not a single man or woman watching the scene broke the suspended silence hanging delicately in the air. Pulling her hand out, a silver pistol caught the sun’s light against its metallic surface.
Pacing back in front of her prey, his gaze shifted, slightly more nervous for his fate than before, back and forth between her artic blue eyes and the handgun she held at her side; equally unsettled by both.
“I would urge you to see the truth of the situation you're in, Bartholomew. The world in which you seek to undo the mistakes that you made is different from the world where the mistakes were made. You are now at the crossing. And you want to choose, but there is no choosing there. There's only accepting. The choosing was done a long time ago.”
Unhurriedly she brought the handgun level to his face, which finally broke out in a desperate last attempt at saving his life.
“Valerie please!—“
His voice was suddenly cut off as she entered his mind, forcefully and brutally. Charging her mental presence with as much electrifying pain as possible, she tore through every memory he had from the start of his life to now. A scene of his father, cold and distant, never accepting his work as anything but a failure. Of his graduation from Harvard and his first successful business endeavor, which cemented him as one of the most prominent businessmen of his time. Of the moment he laid eyes on his wife and never loved another woman after, until, the birth of his firstborn daughter. Of all the times he shared beside his family, which, despite his heinous existence, proved to be the one thing he truly loved. She forced him to experience all the brightest, happiness moments of his personal timeline—she watched with him all the memories of what made his life worth living.
Then, in a single instant, a gunshot exploded in the air around them.
Her cheetahs, previously enraptured by their game of cat and mouse, turned their heads furiously to identify the piercing sound.
In front of her cold, unmoved eyes, his body slumped lifeless in the sand—a single bullet hole centered between his eyes where blood trickled morbidly from. The men and women around her were as equally undisturbed by the gory scene as the stoic White Queen.
As she looked down apathetically at his body, the color slowly draining from his skin, she ran her tongue slowly across the surface of her pearly teeth and the glistening diamond exterior of her prosthetic fangs. Revenge tasted sweet.
Casting her unwavering gaze at the quad of mercenaries who had delivered the traitor, she commanded them with an indomitable presence of authority.
“Separate the body parts that Perseus and Selene will enjoy feasting on. Spread the rest into as many pieces as possible across the Atlantic. I trust in your work—no one will find him. The Hellfire Club will handle the press to ensure no one will miss him.”
With silent nods of understanding, the three men and single woman carried his pale, cold figure back into the Escalade before driving away from the Hellfire Club estate to follow out their orders.
With her business attended to, the White Queen returned to sitting causally on the lavish chaise lounge under the shade provided by the palapa. As she raised the pair of binoculars back to her eyes, she reassumed the activity of watching her felines hunt as if the previous scene had never taken place. This indifference toward her business of cruelty and murder both impressed and terrified her French associate—who had taken part in his own fair share of merciless acts, but was still infinitely awed by the White Queen’s talent for assassination and apathy. He held an appreciation for the knowledge that killing people was easy. Making them suffer was an art.
“You truly enjoy watching them, don’t you?” he commented, filling the pockets of his traditional black and white tuxedo with his hands while following her gaze out to the stretch of white sand where the cheetahs had hunted down all but one jackrabbit. Together the felines managed to rundown the frantic creature, bringing its life to a quick end as they previously had its counterparts.
“To see quarry, killed with elegance, it’s just moving to me.”
“Is it sexual?”
“Yes, of course. A thing like that is always sexual. The hunter has grace, beauty, and purity of heart to be found nowhere else. You can make no distinction between what they are and what they do. And what they do is kill. We, of course, are another matter. It is our faintness of heart that has driven us to the edge of ruin. Perhaps you won't agree, but nothing is crueler than a coward. And the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining.”
He considered her response, turning his gaze from the felines to look at her with slight confusion and moderate distaste.
“I think you’ve told me more than I wish to know.”
“Then I’ll say no more. Shall we discuss business?” she said coolly, pulling a cigarette from her sumptuous purse, lighting it, and placing the stick with a glamorous casualness between her luscious, rosy lips. Her cheetahs suddenly appeared next to her, nudging their heads affectionately against her and purring as she expelled a plume of smoke from between her pillowy lips; the sun’s light reflecting brilliantly against the surface of her diamond fangs. “I’m ready to sell some diamonds.”
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