It Stinks In Here Part I
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“It still stinks in here,” Thisbe complained as she entered Gulliver’s office. “Why the hell would you offer to help Ford work on a baby skunk?” She laughed her head off when he’d shown up to her apartment the night before begging her to help him. She’d refused to let him through the door and told him to go home. She knew he was only wanting to stink out her place instead of his own.
“It was really fucking cute,” Gulliver looked at his sister as he lifted his arm and sniffed it. The smell was almost
gone.
“Why were you there anyway?”
“I told you. I needed to get out of the city. He said he was going to do some volunteer work at the rehabilitation place which bought up the services he auctioned to them yesterday. Apparently one of the volunteers paid for his services and donated it to the facility. In an area where there are a lot of farms and homesteads, a lot of people wanted a couple of hours with the traveling television veterinarian. Some guy he went to vet school talked him into volunteering his time. Apparently he made a lot of 1/7 money for the rehab center.”
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It Stinks In Here Part I
“Why did you need out of the city?”
“Thisbe, you’re annoying.”
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“You know who else is annoying? Grandfather.” Thisbe smirked at him. “Could his presence in New York be the reason you decided to take off to Vermont for a dumb
reason?”
“Thisbe, why are you here?”
“I’m bored.” She flung herself onto the chair in his office and stretched out.
“Do you not have a boutique you’re supposed to be stocking and running?”
“I do. I ordered some jewelry online from a small boutique in Vermont, coincidentally. All handmade. I’m waiting for the order to come in. The manager of the boutique sent an email out on Sunday that all orders were delayed due to some kind of family situation which required the designer to take a couple of days off. It’s only going to be here tomorrow.”
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It Stinks In Here Part I
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“You run a high–end boutique, and you’re worried about one order of jewelry.”
“You don’t understand. This designer is in high demand. She’s incredibly reclusive. Only puts out a specific
number of pieces a year and you can only order online or by going into the shop itself. The shop is in some podunk tiny town in the middle of nowhere. It’s more than an hour outside Burlington.”
“You should have come with us to the wildlife rehab facility. You could have taken a look at her stuff in person.” He wondered what was going on with his sister today. She wasn’t usually one to mope, at least not for a long time.
“I considered it when you texted me in the morning, but I looked at the location of the facility and it’s in an opposite direction to their town. I’d love to be able to get her to sign an exclusive of sales through my boutique. Her work reminds me a lot of January’s designs. I mean, this woman’s work is a bit edgier, sharper, but still incredibly beautiful. We were supposed to open a boutique together someday and I’m missing her I guess.”
that why you’re here in my office?”
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It Stinks In Here Part I
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“You’ve not heard anything from your team? No updates at all?”
“No. None.” He gave a sigh and exhaled loudly. “Not a fucking thing. I miss her too, Thisbe.”
“I need closure, Gully. I need to know what happened for her and her family to just disappear. She was my best friend, my only friend, and she just left without a goodbye. If she is dead or in a hospital somewhere comatose, I need to know. If she left because she hates me, I need to know that too.”
“Why would she hate you?”
“I don’t know.” She pouted and looked away from his concerned stare. “I just miss her. She hugged me before she left for her early class and then ghosted me.”
“The surveillance in the house, all the CCTVs being wiped clean made me panic back then. It made no sense to me that everything was wiped from the time she left for classes until later in the afternoon. It was the worst
timing.”
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It Stinks In Here Part I
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“An enemy would want you to see her be taken and torture you with it. You said it back then and it was how you figured out who really wiped them.”
“We know now the feds did it when they were planting their own surveillance equipment. They needed to make sure they weren’t seen on our system. Fucking idiots. All they did was make me bolster my security so that if a mouse farts it sounds an alarm.”
She gave a giggle at his words, and he winked at her. “I like how it goes off like an air raid siren when someone unauthorized comes onto the property.”
“You’re talking about Duchess.” He gave a laugh. Five years later and they still laughed over it.
“You should have told me what was really happening back then Gully. You left me in the dark.”
“The less everyone knew the better. The only people who knew were me and Glenn,” he named his brother who was between them in age. “I couldn’t risk you being part of it or drawn into it, Thisbe. If we were wrong, then we were at risk of pissing off not only a family we’ve worked for decades with but also Grandfather. It would have meant31
It Stinks In Here Part I
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your inheritance and your family standing with him, even possibly a hit on you. Glenn and I were willing to take the risk.”
“It’s why protected January.”
“If I put her name associated to me legally on anything, if I fucked it up, if I was wrong with my suspicions on the Ziogas family, then they would wipe everyone associated with me out, especially her. They’d destroy her to punish me, and you know it. I had to protect her. If I made it look like I was playing her, playing with her, they wouldn’t care.”
“Well, you were right to be suspicious of them. It’s been almost five years since everything went down and you got your proof.”
“They wanted the patent to the work. Dad’s company and Grandfather’s company were collaborating on the new ballast design for the new ship. It made us billions because it’s innovative. If they could steal it and get it to market before our unveiling it would have been a huge loss but also they would have taken our profits as their own. I asked for the assignment here in New York eight Fears ago so I could make it more difficult for them to get
It Stinks In Here Part I
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their hands on the blueprints and the designs, I could also do more without Grandfather looking over my shoulder.” He smiled at her. “I came here to protect the family and our business from the Ziogas games and found the love of my life and then,” his smile fell away, “I lost her.”
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