3: I will Seduce Him

Carmen’s POV

I called Mirabel at seven in the morning, three days after she left my apartment. Elena's surgeon had already called twice about the outstanding balance on her post-op care, politely the first time, less so the second. Mateo's academy fees were due at the end of the month and I had already moved money around twice to cover the last one. There were no more corners to cut. There was no freelance job I could pick up in time, no loan I could qualify for without a cosigner, no version of the next six weeks where I looked at all three of those things at once and found a way through without help.

I sat on the edge of my bed with my phone in my hand for ten minutes before I dialled. I thought about every single thing I hated about Mirabel's proposal and what it would mean to say yes to it, and then I thought about Mateo being told his placement had been pulled, and I pressed the call button.

Mirabel picked the call on the second ring.

"I'll do it," I said. 

A beat of silence. Then: "I knew you'd come around."

"I have conditions."

"Of course you do." I could hear the smile in it, the warmth she reserved for moments when she had already won. "Tell me your conditions, Carmen."

"Everything you promised. Tuition, Elena's bills, Mateo's fees. All of it confirmed before Friday, not after. I'm not walking into that nightclub on the assumption that you'll follow through."

"Done."

"And you don't contact me again after this. Whatever comes next for your career, you handle it without involving me."

Another beat. "Agreed."

She told me to come to her apartment Friday afternoon so she could prepare me for the club in the evening. She would handle everything else in the meantime, which I understood to mean she would verify the payments and I would verify the receipts before I put on a single item she handed me. We said goodbye without warmth and I put the phone down on the bed beside me and sat there for a while, looking at nothing in particular, listening to the building settle around me. I had said yes. That was the thing I had to live with now.

I told Antonia that afternoon because I could not afford to not involve her. She was the only person whose reaction I could take honestly without it making everything worse, and sitting alone with what I had agreed to felt like a slow erosion. She listened to all of it without interrupting, which was unusual for Antonia, who was not typically a silent listener.

When I finished she didn't put her coffee cup down gently. She set it on the table hard enough that the liquid sloshed over the rim.

"Absolutely not!" She said.

"Antonia..."

"No. Carmen, no. Are you hearing yourself right now? Your half-sister, who shares a father with you and has never once done a single thing for you out of kindness, is asking you to go to a nightclub and seduce a stranger and sleep with him so she can steal his professional connection? And she threatened your mother's surgery to make you agree? She threatened Mateo?"

"Yes."

"That's blackmail. That is actual blackmail. You need to go to the police."

"And tell them what? My half-sister said she wouldn't help pay for my mother's medical bills unless I did her a favour? That's not how it works. She's not withholding something she's legally obligated to give. She offered money and attached conditions. The police will tell me it's a family dispute."

"Then we go to the university. We explain the situation with your fees. We ask for an extension, a payment plan, something."

"I've already asked. Twice. The deadline is the deadline. They've been clear about it."

"What about a loan?"

"I can't qualify without a cosigner and Elena's credit is destroyed from the medical bills."

"Crowdfunding. I'll put it on my I*******m. My followers..."

"Antonia, your followers are fashion students and emerging designers. I love them. They are not going to crowdfund thirty thousand euros in six weeks."

She went quiet. I watched her cycling through options the same way I had cycled through them for seventy-two hours, watching each one arrive and collapse.

"What about Mateo's coach?" she said. "If Mirabel tries to pull his academy funding, his coach could advocate for him. Get a scholarship, a sponsorship, something."

"Maybe. Eventually. But not by the end of the month, which is when the fees are due. And if the fees aren't paid, the placement is gone. There's a waiting list. They'll give his spot to someone else the same week."

"This is insane, Carmen."

"I know it's insane."

"Mirabel is such a bitch for involving you in this. She is manipulative, scheming, selfish..." Antonia said several more things about Mirabel in rapid Spanish that were all accurate. She pulled out her phone like she was about to call someone, thought better of it, put it down, picked up her coffee, put it down again.

"Damn it," she said.

The silence that followed was different from the angry silence before it. This one was heavy with the weight of two people arriving at the same conclusion from opposite directions. There was no other option. We both knew it. Antonia had just needed to walk through every alternative herself before she could accept it.

She sighed and looked at me for a long time.

"I am sorry this is happening to you," she said quietly. "If you change your mind before Friday, at any point, please do. I mean that. But if you go through with it, then you need to walk in there and be completely sure of yourself. Not performing, you need to actually be sure."

I thought about that for the rest of the day. 

Mirabel's apartment was in Salamanca, on a street where the buildings were old and the lobbies were very clean. Everything about the exterior was designed to communicate an arrival of a kind. I rang the buzzer and she let me up.

She opened the door already dressed, hair up, her own makeup done to something approaching perfection. She looked me over once and stepped back to let me through. Her bedroom had been converted into a staging area, the way she had laid things out across the bed with a precision that told me she had been planning this for longer than three days. A dress in deep emerald green, cut in a completely simple design. Shoes beside it. A small clutch. A velvet bag on the side table that I assumed held jewellery. Everything arranged with the focused attention she brought to things she cared about enough to do properly.

"Sit," she said, and directed me to the vanity.

I sat.

What happened over the next two hours was Mirabel being more thorough than I had expected. She did my hair herself, which surprised me, and she did it well. She did my makeup with the focus of someone who knew exactly what she was trying to achieve, which was to make me look like the best version of a face she had decided was workable.

I watched my reflection change over those two hours and tried to stay neutral about what I was seeing. She was good at this. The woman looking back at me from the mirror when she finished was still me, but she was a version of me that the last year of early mornings and deliberate choices had been building toward. The figure the dress revealed when I put it on was the figure I had worked for without ever letting myself fully acknowledge what I was working toward.

The emerald green sat against my skin exactly as Mirabel had known it would.

I looked in the full-length mirror on the back of her wardrobe door and thought, briefly and despite everything I felt about this situation, that Russell James had been wrong about a lot of things.

Mirabel came to stand beside me in the reflection. Neither of us spoke for a moment.

"Connor Vega," she said, and held out her phone.

The photograph was a man in his mid-thirties with brown hair worn slightly longer than most, a jawline well defined. He was caught mid-turn toward the camera. I stared at it long enough to be sure I had it.

"He'll be in the VVIP section," Mirabel said. "He goes to Noche every other Friday and always takes the same section because he's known the club manager for years. Dark brown hair, always wears something dark, talks to people like he's doing them a favour." She took the phone back. "Don't overthink it. Just find him."

"And when I do?"

"Be sexy," she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

I looked at her.

"I mean it. Connor Vega does not suffer boring women. He has too many options for that." She sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. "You don't go in there and wait for him to notice you. You make him notice you."

"I understand the concept."

She ignored that. "Don't face him directly when you first see him. Let him catch you from the side. Men like him are used to women who come straight at them, it doesn't register anymore. You want him to see something he has to turn toward." She tilted her head. "And when he does come over, which he will, you don't give him everything at once. You listen more than you talk. Ask him something about himself and then actually look interested in the answer. That could make you different from the other girls he is used to"

"Mirabel."

"He always has women around him," she continued, as though I hadn't just spoken. "That's just who he is. So you can't play the same game they're playing because you'll lose. You have to make him feel like you're not playing at all. Like you happened to him." She stood up and smoothed her dress. "Can you do that?"

"Yes."

She studied me for a moment, then handed me the clutch. Inside the clutch was a pass for the VVIP entrance, enough cash to cover a drink I'd never finish, and a small slip with a number to call the moment I had confirmed the situation.

"You better not mess this up," she said.

I picked up the clutch and left.

The cab ride lasted twenty minutes. I spent most of it watching the city move past the window. Friday night traffic, restaurants with their outdoor tables still full this late. Noche was on the ground floor and basement of a building in the kind of neighbourhood where you needed to already know where you were going. It had a small sign. There were two hefty bouncers standing by the door. A line to the left that moved slowly, full of people who were dressed well enough but still waiting. I walked to the door, not the line, the way Mirabel had told me to, and showed the pass to one of the bouncers.

The man looked at it, looked at me, and stepped aside. The second bouncer, the one who had been looking elsewhere, turned at the small movement and looked at me as I passed. I kept walking.

Inside, the music was low and textured. The lighting was dim but not dark, the calibrated kind that made everyone look like a slightly better version of themselves. The main bar ran along the far wall, backlit and busy. Tables sat in curved arrangements in the middle. To the right, slightly raised and separated by a velvet rope, was the VVIP section.

I moved through the room without rushing. I took in the space the way I usually took in architecture. The VVIP section had six or seven tables, maybe thirty people across the whole space, small groups arranged for privacy. I found a spot at the bar where I could see the section without looking like I was watching it. A glass of water appeared in front of me without my asking. I began to look.

“Connor Vega, where…. are… you….?” I whispered gently.

I found him near the back of the section, seated with two other people, leaning in to hear something one of them was saying. I could only see his profile from where I was. I noticed the brown hair and the dark jacket. That was Connor Vega. But I wondered why he didn’t have women surrounding him like Mirabel had described.

“Perhaps, he just arrived? They’d surround him in no time.” I took this as an opportunity to immediately pull his attention and get him out of the club.

The bartender appeared. "Can I get you something?"

I turned from the section and said, "Something light. Surprise me."

He nodded and got to work. I settled onto the bar stool. My hands became still. I had found the man I was looking for. The next part of the evening could begin. I was not going to think about the thing sitting

underneath the stillness. I picked up the drink when it came and waited.