She stared at herself in the mirror while the stylists used another one to show her the back of her head. A return to her own chocolate brown, with choppy layers cut into the length. Bye bye blonde and clumsy, hello Arietta Cappella, and a whole new level of hustle. She would’ve liked to have shaved it all the way off, but a shaved head was easier to remember and these were her anonymous days. She snapped a selfie and sent it to Pari with the caption, “Still hungry.”
Then she checked her new hair into a new hotel with a new name.
After that she shopped, quite literally until her feet started to ache and she was forced to stop for afternoon tea of scones with jam and cream. No one forced her to be a pig and have a double helping, but seriously, starving. Pari got a picture of the second set of scones and then Aria dumped the burner cell and picked up two more, staggered back to the hotel laden down with bags of wonderful new clothes bought in a size up that Arietta Cappella would eventually enjoy wearing.
In her room at the Berkeley, she designated one of the two phones as her yakuza hotline and used it to dial Shoma’s personal line.
“Ittai nani ga shitaidesu ka?” Shoma’s traditional greeting, which translated to something like, “what the hell do you want?”
“Shoma, I have collected the conductor. The orchestra is ready for your enjoyment.”
“Oh, it’s you. And what’s this conductor going to cost me?”
“The price is as we agreed.”
“And if I wish to negotiate?”
Aria wasn’t dumb enough to think Shoma would stick to only one round of negotiation. “Of course we can negotiate, but I do have other buyers interested.” Or naive enough to show that scared her.
“Cut the crap. You pinched that diamond for me and I want it, but I’m not a fool. How do I know you have it?”
“Hold just one minute.” Aria rummaged in her suitcase and pulled out the shoe, popped the diamond free of its casing and used the phone to snap a selfie, making sure to keep most of her face hidden by her new haircut, and the Sweet Celestia prominent.
“This could be anything,” said Shoma a few moments later.
She was right. Aria could just have easily been showing off another fake. “What reason do you have to doubt me?”
“You are new to this. I only do business with people I trust, and I don’t trust you.”
The connection went dead. This was bad. Not unexpected, but not what Aria had schemed and dieted for. Fencing a stone as famous as the Sweet Celestia wasn’t a simple matter. She needed to think through her next move carefully. She’d have to offer to meet with Shoma in person, and there were risks associated with walking into yakuza territory. The kind of risks that had led her father to take on an expendable protégé, one who’d managed to make himself permanently indispensable.
“You’d better have been worth all the trouble,” she said to Celestia, and popped the stone back into the casing in the broken shoe and then stuffed it in the bottom of her suitcase. Not even housekeeping would steal a single broken shoe. She’d ditched the unbroken one, along with Melody’s clothing, back in Geneva.
Done with scheming for the day but not with eating, she rang room service and ordered a snack, took a nap, showered, dressed, changed her mind about where she’d put Celestia, snipped the labels off a new coat, and went out to show her haircut a good time. She intended to party in the manner in which she rightly deserved, triumphant and horny, not teary-eyed and alone.
Club Nocturne, with its slick funk beats and transparent furniture, was a very classy meat market and Aria was a choice cut of meat. She had eyes on her that under other circumstances would’ve made her uncomfortable. Under the guise of needing to blow off steam in a very physical way, she welcomed the attention along with a steady flow of cocktails with idiotic names. She had an Applebottom Pimp, a Piece of Arse, a Sally Fudpacker, and was holding a Fainting Goat when she saw him.
Rugby player physique, a sleeve of tattoos, a high and tight haircut, a brooding expression, a WAG hanging off his arm, who had to be the girlfriend part of that acronym and not the wife part, because Rugby Hunk was eye-fucking Aria across the room.
She raised her Fainting Goat in salute. He acknowledged by wiping the girlfriend off as if she was a wet towel and made his way to her. He was bigger and meaner looking than everyone else in the room, and there was nothing ambiguous about what he intended to do when he got to her. It wouldn’t extend to more than a few words of conversation, maybe they’d even be inarticulate grunts. The idea made Aria cross her legs as a pleasant hum started in her lower body.
Rugby was exactly what she needed, a single shot of hot sex, with very little modesty, no unnecessary talking and the maximum amount of thrusting, followed by a glazed look as he drifted away.
Rugby would make her forget whatever it was that was making her feel low. He’d also hopefully make her come so hard her brain rattled. A pair of big hands, a dick to match, the easy strength to hold her up against a wall—a fitting celebration for the score of the century. And like the best short con, one and done, and no complications.
“Hi,” he said, eyes going straight to her legs perfectly displayed by her short, flirty skirt and tall boots. From the stool she occupied, he towered over her.
“Hi yourself.”
“You up for it or what?”
She laughed. No messing around if he was saying what she thought he was. “Are you asking if I’m down to fuck?”
He grinned. “Yeah, how about it?”
“Are you someone famous?” Because that might be more trouble than it was worth.
“You a Yank?”