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Gloria Stanford was a deputy mayor who had over her career risen to power fast. Getting into politics in college, in just a bit over a decade after getting her master's degree she had gone from staffer to advisor to councilwoman to deputy mayor of her large city. It was an impressive display, especially with one who had no political connections prior to graduating.

There was speculation on how she did it. Mostly it was attributed to her intelligence and her will, her savviness in handling people and her ability to solve problems. There were a few who speculated that she had a powerful man in her corner, someone she was little more than a girlfriend of, the real power behind her facade. Some thought she was strongly manipulative of people, someone who uses whatever she can to bend people to her way of thinking, to run roughshod over them in her own ambition.

The truth, as it was, didn't fit neatly into any of these. It was true she was intelligent and savvy and she was legitimately competent in her work, but she knew that alone would not secure her a thing. No, she needed some help to climb up to where she wanted to be, mayor eventually, then either a governor or a senator later on. That help was from less than legal means, secret deals with companies, an organized crime connection here or there. It was all strategic, careful, all designed to be discreet while still building her powerbase.

However, one company had an employee she had partnered with who was making some noise. He was demanding more. A payoff to keep her silent.

Unfortunately for her she couldn't trust anyone else to deliver what he wanted so it was up to her. She went to the location, a back alley door in a seedy part of town. She wasn't worried about being spotted here, having done a presser for a charity just a couple of blocks away, so her presence wouldn't raise eyebrows if she was seen. Plus, the owners of this place were supposed to be a charity as well.

Of course, they were nothing of the sort. This was where that company did a lot of their secret research, an off-the-books place that if something every happened here they could walk away from it without much difficulty. She did wonder what they did here, but she decided she didn't care. She knocked on the door and she heard it unlock. She walked in and shut the door behind her.

He walked out of another entrance on the other side of the building, another unassuming door in a side alley, closing it and making sure it locked properly. She had bought his demands completely, not realizing that the payoff was never a threat, it was a lure, something to make her come here.

He walked down the brick alley, careful in his new heels. He looked down, watching his heeled feet move, watching his nylon-clad legs and the movement of his skirt as he walked, smiling as he did. She did have a very nice body and it was all his now.

He held the briefcase tight, not wanting to drop it or risk someone trying to grab it. It had the "payoff", a flash drive with $750,000 in cryptocurrency, all ready for him to use whenever and wherever he so decided, along with her essentials like her wallet, keys, and credentials so she didn't need a purse at her job.

He would take her car to her place, go in, loot it for everything, then drive her car to a secret apartment, and then ditch her vehicle a few miles away, an associate picking him up.

He laughed as he thought about this whole thing. She thought it was about power and politics, but she had been very wrong. No, for him, it had been about having her body, and not in the way she might have suspected.