"Do not trust the lips that conceal death. Do not trust the venomous tongue that purrs.
Those were the words written on the paper slipped beneath my office door. I would love to say that I was confused, but I knew immediately what they were referring to. My other hand had shifted into my coat pocket, feeling the weight of the new watch that had been handed to me earlier in the night.
Beneficial, she'd said. Her gaze tender, her words wrapped in warmth that her hands could not replicate. I knew the woman I was working with and I knew what she was capable of. Yet in that moment as her hands folded around mine, pressing the watch down into my palm, I felt safe.
I should have heeded the warnings. I thought that I was playing her. That I would be the one man to conquer something that moved with the same fury as the sea. I was a fool who could not see that her coy smiles and gentle laughs were merely the call of a siren. It cost me everything.
Through me she spread like a plague to my business partners. They too fell into her hands, seduced by her strikingly cold touch and the addiction that was her bite. My men beneath me - my company - all withered as she drained me, body and soul.
What a fool am I, don't you think? That even now knowing the true curse that is the Madame that I find myself longing to feel her teeth sinking into my throat. Is this how the rabbit feels? Surely not as they run from the fox. No, I am no rodent. They are wiser.
I tell you now as I was told then, friend. Do not gamble against her. You will not win."
- Letter from [ Redacted ] to Senator [ Redacted ] of the United States (1931)
