Europe / Florence / Palazzo Medici Riccardi (A Bedroom): June 22nd, 2020.
(Persia's POV)
"So…this is what I look like now" I thought with gritted teeth as jolts of pain coursed through my body.
The room was completely silent.
Not a long minute.
Not a long moment.
Hours.
Well…it was long enough to feel like hours.
I held myself up in a seated position at the edge of the king sized bed and stared at a large full body mirror across the luxerious room and seen a very old and naked 4'11 voluptuous pear shaped light olive skinned wrinkly woman with a bald head, light gray-blue-brown hazel eyes and a diamond shaped face.
The room was silent.
"So I died and became a 98 year old man with stage 3 severe lipedema." I said with a voice full of confusion as I glanced down between my legs at a tiny skin fold and with a lot of pubic bush.
The the room was completely silent.
My eyebrows visibly creased as I thought "So my fucking coochie is really nonexistent. This really isn't my body after all. I really did die and wake up as a 98 year old transgender woman with a 0 inch dick that has only a tiny foreskin to cover the peehole inside of it"
The room went silent. The atmosphere heavy.
I jolted in pain slightly while looking down at both of my new wrinkly hands and thought "I shouldn't waste this chance even with a body like this. I've already lived a full life and died at 88 years old. I'm not going to sit around and whine like a bitch just because I woke up as a 98 year old crippled woman with lipedema. I should at the very least be grateful that I even got a chance like this at all"
The room was completely silent.
My eyes slowly lowered from my hands as memories that were not my own began to move through my head.
Pieces.
Things the former annabelle had seen but apparently never understood.
My eyebrows slowly creased.
"That old man isn't dead" I thought calmly as an image of a very old and tall frail 6'6 man sitting at the head of a long table appeared in my mind.
Gian gastone de' medici II.
My new younger brother.
95 years old.
Former nobody of florence.
I could remember gian sitting in the duke's chair, wearing the family ring, speaking like every word that left his mouth was law.
But I could also remember the entire room going silent when the old man lifted one finger.
One finger.
Romeo had stopped speaking.
The advisors had stopped moving.
Even the guards had looked down at the floor.
My light gray-blue-brown eyes narrowed slightly.
"That fatty might be the current duke, but his daddy still owns the room." I said, muttering under my breath while rubbing my chin.
The room was silent.
Another memory surfaced.
Romeo standing near a large window with a glass of wine in his hand.
But his fingers were squeezing the glass hard enough for the skin around his knuckles to turn pale.
Gian gastone had praised annabelle.
Not for anything important.
Not for politics.
Not for money.
Not for strength.
He had simply said annabelle had the better posture.
But gian's smile had disappeared for half a second.
Half a second was long enough.
Another memory.
A dinner.
Annabelle coughing into a white cloth while romeo spoke to a group of noblemen.
One of the men had glanced toward annabelle and said "Her grace still has the look of a ruler."
Gian laughed.
Too loudly.
Then he spent the rest of the evening speaking about annabelle's failures.
Her weak legs.
Her overall uselessness.
Her inability to produce a child.
Her dependence on servants.
Things nobody had asked about.
I stared at my reflection before the corner of my mouth slowly lifted and thought "Insecure. I'll add him to the kill list."
Gian had everything annabelle should have had.
The title.
The palace.
The servants.
The money.
The respect.
Yet one compliment toward annabelle was enough to make him start barking like a little dog afraid somebody was going to take his food.
That told me more than any memory of him smiling could.
Men showed themselves when they thought they were hiding.
Gian did not hate annabelle because she was weak.
Gian hated annabelle because she was first.
Firstborn.
First son, transitioned daughter.
First choice before something happened.
And somewhere underneath all of that silk, fat, jewelry and fake confidence, gian still believed somebody could look at annabelle and ask why the younger brother was sitting in the older sister's chair.
My smile disappeared.
"What happened to you" I thought while staring at the elderly woman in the mirror.
The former annabelle's memories shifted again, but the answer did not come.
Only pain.
A tv.
Hands.
A cup of something bitter.
A doctor refusing to look her in the eyes.
Gian's absence.
My nephew standing in the corner, saying nothing.
Nothing clear enough to accuse anyone.
Nothing useful enough to trust.
I remained silent for a long moment.
Not a long minute.
Not a long hour.
Just long enough for every person in those memories to become a possible enemy.
My eyes moved away from the mirror and slowly glanced around the bedroom.
Gold.
Silk.
Paintings.
Old marble.
A chandelier that probably cost more than most people made in years.
The bed alone looked expensive enough to feed a neighborhood.
The palace was luxurious.
Too luxurious.
That was usually a bad sign when the family was supposedly broke.
People with money did not need to show it in every corner.
People losing money did.
My eyes stopped on a large carved desk across the room.
There were papers on top of it.
A locked drawer beneath it.
Two cabinets against the wall.
A small black safe partly hidden behind a curtain.
I stared at each one carefully for a moment.
5 million dollars.
The number came from annabelle's memories.
That was what annabelle tracked in a daily basis.
5 million dollars.
For a normal man, that was wealth.
For a family with palaces, guards, servants, political connections, old debts, expensive women, old men who refused to die, and a reputation that had to be fed every day, five million was a funeral with the casket still open.
The spies were either telling the truth, lying, or too stupid to know the difference.
All three possibilities interested me.
My fingers slowly tapped against my thigh.
I needed the family ledgers.
Not summaries.
Not whatever clean little reports romeo showed at meetings.
I needed everything.
Properties.
Debts.
Loans.
Shell companies.
Art.
Land.
Church money.
Government contracts.
Private accounts.
Servant payroll.
Guard payroll.
Mistresses.
Bribes.
Anything hidden under another name.
Anything moved before the family announced a loss.
Rich families did not simply become poor.
Money went somewhere.
Even stolen money left a smell.
The problem was getting close enough to smell it.
I glanced toward the bedroom door.
Matilda would return.
She had access to the palace.
She moved without fear.
She knew where bodies were buried, probably because she helped bury some of them.
But she was not mine.
Not yet.
And asking her directly about ledgers would tell her too much.
No.
First I needed to learn who entered this room.
Who cleaned it.
Who brought food.
Who handled annabelle's letters.
Who believed she was still stupid, broken and harmless.
Harmless women heard everything.
Crippled incapable women were ignored.
I could use that.
A weak former duchess trapped in a bedroom was not a threat.
A weak former duchess asking innocent questions was lonely.
A weak former duchess wanting to understand what little remained of her inheritance was pathetic.
People loved explaining things to women they looked down on.
Especially when they thought the explanation made them feel important.
My eyes suddenly glanced back toward the locked drawer and said quietly "The ledgers won't be in here."
The room was silent.
But a key might be.
A name might be.
A letter might mention the person who kept them.
Accountants were rarely loyal to blood.
They were loyal to whoever protected them when the numbers turned ugly.
And every accountant had a fear.
Prison.
Exposure.
A wife.
A mistress.
A gambling problem.
A child they loved too much.
Everybody had something.
I learned that before I learned how a man tasted.
Women had wants.
Men had weaknesses.
Money moved between both.
That was business.
People could dress it up with titles, churches, family crests and expensive Italian words, but underneath it all, power was still about finding what somebody needed and deciding how much they would pay for it.
My brother controlled the room.
Romeo controlled the title.
Somebody controlled the books.
I would find that somebody.
Then I would find out how much of this family was real and how much was being held together with lies, debt and old paintings.
A slow grin crossed my face as another jolt of pain ran through my body.
I gritted my teeth and waited for it to pass.
This body was old and broken.
The family was broke.
The palace was full of enemies.
And I had no idea who tried to kill the woman whose face I was wearing.
But I was alive.
That was enough to begin.
I had built money from women, fear, secrets and men too ashamed to admit what they wanted.
A palace was just a larger street corner.
A dynasty was just a gang with paintings.
And whether my name was persia zarwick or annabelle de' medici, one thing had not changed.
I was a pimp.
And I would die a pimp.
…
THE END…