Feminine Imports Ch 09

Hey ConstantinCrew, thank you for coming back for this chapter. We're getting towards the end of the story, but don't worry' I've got big plans for the finale! As far as the future goes, I mulling over writing at least one more novel-length story in this extended fictional universe. Feel free to reach out to me (whether in the comments or private feedback e-mails) as I love hearing from you guys. Give me feedback about the pacing/world-building, pester me about other platforms, or simply say

Hi

; it's all welcome. This community has been nothing short of awesome to me!

As always, consent is necessary in real-life and obey the law. But you guys already knew that.

It was a chilly overcast morning, as the soft-grey glow of the morning crept in through the dirty window of the makeshift bedroom. Samantha Miller woke up from the mattress on the floor; her wind-up alarm clock prompting her to do so. She reluctantly pulled off her multiple blankets and rolled out of bed to silence the alarm. She stretched before walking ever-so-gingerly towards the shower. She stared at herself in the crusty mirror, her dark blue eyes peering back at her petite body, pale porcelain complexion and shoulder-length blonde hair. She exhaled before dragging herself to start her day.

Samantha stepped inside the shower and turned on the water There she stood in the makeshift shower stall, the lukewarm water hitting her soft body. The stand up curtain served less of a privacy and humidity control purpose, but more as her cocoon from the rest of the world. While she stood in that shower stall, nothing else from the outside world mattered.

MEANWHILE, JUST OUTSIDE...

Several armored personnel carriers slowly pulled up to the abandoned storefront that she was living in. Under the cover of the early morning and relative quiet, dozens of agents clad in tactical gear poured out of the armored personnel carriers. The point-man brought a small welding torch and began to cut around the locking mechanism of the front door, while other squadrons of the strike team surrounded the vacant strip mall.

Within 90 seconds, the locks were cut out and the armored federal agent pulled the metal doors towards him, he stepped aside and held the door open as numerous agents eagerly ran in with their short-barreled rifles shouldered. The agents quickly flooded the inside of the storefront; much of the shelving and other equipment had been taken by looters long ago as the economy turned away from the Rust Belt.

Agents used hand signals to communicate with each other and systematically cleared each aisle. Once the strike team verified that there was nobody in the storefront, they piled towards the door the led to the back of the house; the storage, breakroom, and office area. With a nod from the on-site sergeant, the point-man slowly opened the unlocked interior door, and the feds poured in once more.

The breakroom was cleared, nobody there and little more than cabinetry with ripped-out drawers stolen long ago. Curiously, they found non-perishable food and a hot plate sitting on the counter. The sales office, which was down the hall from the break room was cleared next; nothing in the way of office furniture remained. Merely a mattress on the floor, a tri-pod with a camera and a ring light, and some lighting equipment. On the opposite wall they found a paper map of the United States taped up; red thumbtacks were pressed into the wall in various locations, notably in Las Vegas, and strewn all over the Rust Belt and New England. They found a laptop sitting on some milk crates with an ethernet cable plugged into it. They ripped out the cord and quickly confiscated the laptop.

They made their way to the employee locker room. They could hear the sound of water running; a shower more specifically. Agents piled against a wall just around the corner from the shower stall. The agents nodded at each other, and went in. Three agents took charge, one rifleman and two flanking him with ballistic shields.

They violently ripped down the lime-green shower curtain. Samantha's nude body was now exposed to the federal agents. She screamed involuntarily.

"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS?"

"FBI FREEZE!" The chorus of agents shouted back at her.

However, they did not wait for a response as they grabbed the sopping wet blonde and yanked her out of the shower stall. The 110-pound Smanatha tried to pull away from the arresting agent, though he quickly threw her to the ground. Once on the dirty floor, he used his knee to apply pressure to her back, thus immobilizing her while another agent used riot zip-ties to tie her wrists behind her back and her ankles together.

Samantha squirmed to no avail. "Who the fuck are you guys? Why are you in my home? Don't touch my stuff!"

The senior agent, a middle-aged man did not answer the nude blonde's questions but instead asked one of his newer field agents. "Your body cam on?"

"Yes sir"

"Great!

My home. My stuff

." The senior agent repeated "This'll hold up great in court!"

Every agent within earshot shared in a chorus of laughter at Samantha's expense. The agent pinning her to the ground lifted her up from the floor. Samantha continued to squirm, though she was clearly no match for the iron grip of the 210 pound agent who was carrying her out.

TRIAL

The trial started, and the fear on Samantha Miller's face was palpable. The prosecution went first, presenting their litany of evidence one by one, in a slow drip-by-drip manner. The prosecution started with the seized laptop. The feds needed a few days of round the clock code-breaking to crack the encryption on her computer, but once they did, they discovered a treasure trove of evidence. They found the encrypted video-call app on the computer. The call logs lined up well with the calls placed to Rae's computer that Fraggipone had seized. The prosecution had even demonstrated the connection between the two in court. Using Rae's seized computer as Exhibit A, they called the saved contact of

ML

in front of the jury. Sure enough, Samantha Miller's computer started ringing. The jury's faces turned white as jaws dropped and the courtroom turned uncomfortably silent. The evidence was undeniable.

Samantha's attorney rose from the defendants stand and yelled "Objection!"

The judge turned to the public defender "On what grounds?"

"Just because One computer called another with a saved contact of

ML

, that doesn't mean that my client is the so-called

Madam Lioness

! Seriously,

ML

could be anything; it could mean Monkey Lemons for all we know."

The judge stared down the public defender with an unenthused look that screamed

Really?

However, the judge couldn't fault the logic of Samantha's public attorney.

"Sustained" the judge sighed as he turned to the prosecutor "I hope you have something a bit more definitive than that."

"Why yes, your honor" the prosecutor replied. "Ms. Miller's laptop also has video editing software. Some of the old discarded files were of raw footage of

Madam Lioness'

threatening videos."

"Objection!" Samantha's public defender shouted "That doesn't prove that my client necessarily is

Madam Lioness

. How do you know that she could've been doing editing work for her instead?"

"Sustained." The judge answered dryly. He turned to the prosecutor "Your response to that?"

"So, you admit that, at a minimum, your client is a contractor of

Madam Lioness?

"

The low-pitched

ooof

sound filled the court room as the prosecutor dealt a punishing body-blow to the defense of Samantha Miller. The public defender was visibly sweating; he knew his knee-jerk objection may have just doomed his client.

"Your Honor. I'd like to enter into evidence the stockpiles from Ms. Miller's home."

On the downward rolling screen, there flashed images of the rows and rows of shelving in the back of the abandoned storefront that contained the tools and items used in the Norlangarth Auction House arson, the invasion of Steve Sharper's home, and the attack on the Las Vegas meeting. Nearly hundreds of bottles of vodka in plastic bottles, butane lighters, glass cutting kits, lock picking kits, retractable riot batons, and even cylinders of hydrogen gas were displayed. The prosecutor even cross-referenced many of the items seized in the trial of Rae's team.

"Looks like Ms. Miller must've gotten a good buying-in-bulk discount" the prosecutor joked.

The jury chuckled at the dark humor. This spelled utter disaster for Samantha's legal defense; the public defender could see that the prosecutor had the jury eating out of the palm of his hands.

"Finally, I'd like to enter in the evidence the catsuit and custom gas-mask worn by

Madam Lioness

that was recovered from Ms. Miller's home. We analyzed the DNA from the remnants of the skin cells sloughed off from the suit. It was a perfect match to the skin cells pulled from the shower towels found in Ms. Miller's home."

The prosecutor stopped and turned to the defender, though was still speaking to the jury "Now, unless Ms. Miller is also towel-drying

Madam Lioness

and is tasked with doing her laundry" the prosecutor paused for dramatic effect. The judge banged the gavel down to simmer down the ensuing giggles from the jury's bench. "We can pretty conclusively say that Ms. Miller is indeed Madam Lioness."

The trial lasted for another day, as the public defender challenged minor procedural nitpicks; he had no other defense of Samantha Miller otherwise. Each time he challenged the prosecution on how they obtained their evidence, they were able to show that the evidence in question was obtained legally and through the proper channels.

The string of defeats took its toll on the public defender. Regardless of how hard he fought, he was utterly stymied at every opportunity. Samantha, meanwhile, seem detached from it all. Reporters quipped this out to their broadcasting overlords and the TV-mouthpieces posited that Samantha had no remorse for her actions. Samantha shut herself off emotionally; the guarantee of a looming conviction was just far too much.

The judge banged his gavel and ordered the jury to deliberate what they had seen. Samantha was loaded into the back of a paddy-wagon so she could be taken back to her cell. 45 minutes after her departure from the courtroom, the paddy-wagon needed to make an abrupt U-turn; the judge had ordered all relevant parties back to the courtroom. Smantha's stomach was in absolute knots. Being ordered back to the courtroom this quickly could only mean one thing; the jury had reached a decision. She knew what was coming.

The TV cameras were inside the courtroom. The verdict of

Guilty on all counts

hit her all at once. She lost composure and began bawling her eyes out for the nation to see. Much of the in-person courtroom audience, and the nation as a whole, cheered at the conviction of the loathed

Lioness

. The judged fiercely banged his gavel, mostly to contain the hoopla within his four walls.

"Order, Order, ORDER IN THE COURT I SAY!" The judged barked, with each bash of the gavel having more force than the last.

"Ms.Miller, I hereby sentence you to a public auction. Should you fail to sell at auction, then you'll serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. That is all." The judge banged his gavel "Now get this terrorist out of my courtroom."

While the death penalty was an option, the judged decided to break away from the sentencing guidelines for this case. A death sentence carries an automatic appeal, and the evidence was so overwhelming again Samantha that an appeal just for the sake of an appeal would be a waste of valuable time and resources, especially for someone who was clearly guilty. Sentencing her to an auction first would also keep prison costs down. That, and given her still-youthful age of 28, she could still help reverse the nation's population crisis. That was, after all, the whole behind legalized female slavery.

The burly bailiff came by and wrapped his massive arm around the petite terrorist, shepherding her to a new life; a life she once tried so desperately to free other women from.

Meanwhile...

Steve Sharper stepped out of the rented blacked-out SUV and onto the cracked pavement. Despite the fact that it was 8am, the heat was already intense as the Mercury soared past 75 Fahrenheit. He was on a business trip in a small dusty town in New Mexico, one that sat near the cross roads of two major interstate highways. True to his word with Greydon Michaels, he was location scouting for the new Western hub of Feminine Imports.

Admittedly, real estate and the Southwest were not Steve's forte. Thus, he leaned on his venture capitalist for help. Greydon felt flattered that Steve reached out for help in brokering a deal in acquiring what was once a buy-in-bulk wholesale center. As the New Mexican economy tanked starting in the early 2000's, residents left for greener economic pastures to neighboring states such as Texas and Arizona. Thus, many of the businesses closed and the buildings left abandoned.

The previous real estate holding company could not find a corporate tenant in the area who was cash-flow positive enough to rent the space out, and thus tried to offload the property through traditional channels. However, few investors were willing to come to the so-called

Thank God For Mississippi

state. Thus, the abandoned building came under the purview of the local town government; which had neither the budget nor the manpower to maintain the building, let alone use it for any municipal purpose.

Thus, Steve turned to Greydon.

He opened the door to the SUV and helped Crystal out. Her six-inch heels clacked gingerly against the pavement of a vast parking lot that had not seen a re-surfacing in over twenty years. He tugged on the red-head's leash, making sure that she knew that walking with him wasn't optional. Crystal obliged, partially out of her deepening submission to Steve, but also out of self-interest. After all, redheads-especially ones who cannot drink thanks to a ball gag-do not fare well in high UV index environments.

Steve also brought Brian with him on the trip; he knew that he'd need his lawyer in his corner now more than ever. A deal this big could make-or-break the company he worked so hard to build. He wasn't about to let some poor wording or a sneaky town employee punch a hole in his hull.

Brian, Steve, and Crystal walked up to the front of the former wholesale warehouse. Up close, the outlines of the logo of its previous tenant could be seen; a regional rival of CostCo. Greydon approached the Feminine Imports crew.

"Good seeing you, Mr. Sharper!" Greydon excitedly shook Steve's hand.

"Please, you can call me Steve now" he replied. "By the way, this is my attorney, Brian LeClair, he's here to make sure Feminine Imports doesn't get taken for a ride."

"Smart move, Steve" Greydon shot back. "Wish I had the sense to bring my lawyer with me to my first expansion. Lord knows he woulda saved me a chunk-of-change in the long run" he reminisced as he shook Brian's hand.

Greydon turned to the captive Crystal "..and who's this lovely young lady? A returned shipment?" Greydon chuckled at his own joke.

"Well, almost" Steve returned-in-kind. "She and her buddies made the ill-advised mistake of breaking into my home. Now she's part of the employee morale-boosting program."

"So why's she here?" Greydon inquired. "Please, do tell", his tone sinister.

"I just thought that I'd bring a comfort woman along for the trip." Steve said nonchalantly. "You know, perks of the job, and all."

"Entrepreneurship ain't for everyone, and that's why the rewards aren't either" Greydon said, reflecting on his days as a scrappy, get-it-done founder on a shoestring budget. He motioned inside "Come now, let's get outta the heat.. The town manager's inside waiting for us."

Steve tugged on Crystal's leash as the group slowly started moving. They walked slowly, as there was leftover trash strewn about all over the inside of the former wholesale store. Crystal, in her leashed and high-heeled state was particularly vulnerable. Eventually, they made it to what used to be the manager's office on the top floor, behind an old sign that read

Employees Only

from the former regional cost-cutting store. In the office sat a tall, though slight chubby man with pale white hair and a red face.

"Steve, meet Dennis Green; Town Manager of Fallen Rock, New Mexico" Greydon started. "Dennis, meet Steven Sharper; he's the Founder and CEO of Feminine Imports. He's looking to expand into New Mexico.

Dennis Green was the local town manager of the dusty New Mexican outpost. The town of roughly 4500 people had been one of the last ones in the entire state to receive a zip code and a post office in the state's history. The population was still small enough where issues were still voted on directly by citizens, hence there was no city council. The 2008 recession had ensured that the money-well dried up as brain-drain hit the county hard. Young people left in droves, whether on an academic scholarship to the out-of-state University of Arizona, carrying the football for a PAC-12 powerhouse program, or military service. Despite him being only 51 years old, Dennis Green's weather-beaten and prematurely-aged face had personified the struggles of the small town.

Dennis reached out and excitedly shook Steve's hand, doing so with an iron grip. "Good to see you!" Dennis remarked, the small sign of hope evident in his voice.

After introducing Brian as his Chief Legal Officer and ordering Crystal to stand in the corner, the men sat down at the abandoned manager's desk. It was more expensive for the now-defunct wholesaler to move the furniture than it was to abandon it. All of the drawers had been removed long ago.

"So, as Greydon mentioned, I'm looking to expand into the Southwest. New Mexico specifically. Can you tell me a little bit about this building?" Steve asked an open-ended question, hoping that Dennis Green would volunteer intel that he could use in the negotiation.

"Well, the old tenant moved out pretty abruptly. Employees showed up to work one Monday to find that the doors were locked and that was simply a sign on the door stating that the store was closed immediately, and that employees would be automatically sent their severance packages."

"That's gotta be rough" Steve empathized.

"Yeah, it hit Fallen Rock pretty hard. The building itself stayed abandoned ever since. Per Statue 168 of New Mexico state law, abandoned corporate real estate goes becomes available to claim after 90 days. Sadly, nobody has gone through official channels to claim it."

"Official channels?"

"Yeah, every few weeks, some squatters use the place as shelter. A place to shoot up" Dennis Green replied. The lament in his voice was apparent; Fallen Rock, like many Southwestern towns, was hit hard by the American Opioid Crisis of the 2010's and 2020's.

Dennis continued "Every few weeks, we need to send the cops in to drag out vandals and junkies. Others just wind up taking their place though. Large vacant buildings tend to become drug dens."

"Sounds like you'd be happy to have this liability taken off of your hands" Steve threw out.

"You could say that again" Dennis exalted. "Nobody's legally claimed the building due to the ensuing tax bill."

"Alright, so let's talk about that." Steve leaned forward in his chair "Obviously, you want to be rid of this liability. As we can see, the building needs some touch-up work, and I'll need to put up some fencing and other security measures to keep the dope-heads out while I get the place operational. All of that will cost money."