RP:Legitimate Business With Illegitimate Funds

Part of the The Dust Up In Cenril Arc

Summary; Alvina and Hudson discuss plans for a legit business cover for his continuing Mobster ways after furniture shopping. Their recent glimpse into the housing market sparks a developing idea, which could lead to a legitimate business to explain their unusually luxurious life style.

Designs by Da'veed

It's the weekend and Hudson and Alvina are having a family day, which is to say reviewing the furniture for the new house while their children sleep in the double stroller. This activity has mostly been under the supervisor of A Designer, who more or less has already picked out the pieces for them, designated their place in the house, Hudson and Alvina are just approving them. The new house of course has its own style and so everything has to match, the perks of being wealthy is that you can simply re-do your entire furniture set at a whim like this, and moreover delegate the process to a person whose specialty it is to do this. Some of the furniture is on-site in the warehouse, some of it they're shown sketches of, as it must be imported. They've just about wrapped up, and Hudson and Alvina are sitting on the showroom version of one of the couches they've purchased for the living room. They're drinking the free waters - they'd been offered champagne but that had seemed ridiculous - waiting for the Designer to tabulate the bill so that Hudson can wince and sign. "What do you think our designer thinks I do for a living?" asks Hudson, starring somewhat blearily at their sleeping daughters. He's envious; that seems like a good idea right about now.

Alvina drinks her water and regards their daughters with the watchful eye of a mother hawk. Her hair is in a loose braid that pools in the center of her back with varying degrees of uncooperative strands. She turns to Hudson when he poses this question between them. She doesn’t want to admit she forgets on the daily what he does. It’s easier to buy the old lie about him being in pharmaceuticals than to think he’s basically breaking knee caps and threatening powerful figures for their safety. “You look a bit like you were born into money. Maybe they think you don’t do anything, just have a lot of family money to spend. Spoiled and rich.” She looks at the Designer running the numbers with a numb joy. Things lose their value when they are so quick to replace. She can feel it even now, start to set in. That she’s getting spoiled just as quickly as before. It’s so easy to settle into the safety of having more than enough with little to no work on her part. Sure she still had her job in Frostmaw but… Luna sneezes in her sleep but the twins remain asleep. She pushes the stroller just in case. “What do you want people to think you do for a living?” She asked, sipping her water again.

Hudson frowns at Alvina's answer, he'd kind of figured the same thing. "Yeah," he exhales his agreement, glancing in the direction of the Designer, hard at work. "I dunno, I don't like the idea of just being thought of as whatever, that, though," he answers her question, now also watching Luna with the same hawklike intensity. Please don't wake up and start to cry and thereby aggro your sister, we're almost through this, he pleads silently with her. "Maybe it's because we're moving to the same neighborhood as my mum but I feel kind of embarrassed ... I can't just say 'I own a strip club and a nail salon and my wife's a successful blacksmith,' that's ridiculous ..." He rakes a hand through his hair, continuing to speak in a low voice, "and the pharmaceutical reagents thing is getting to be an obvious lie too. Like, consider our house, Alvina. And I haven't even sold the old house, which was also ridiculous, albeit less so, somehow." So he is live to the way they're living their lives now. A female employee swings closer to them to offer them more water, and Hudson waves her off. "I need to figure something else out, I think." Alvina looks at him, mildly surprised. "Another lie or another job?" Maybe she hadn't completely given up hope that he might turn his act around one day. Feeble as that hope is, she stares into her water cup and tries to think of a plausible excuse. Some low key job that Hudson could claim, that would account for their spending habits. "Can't you just say you are a business owner?" Of course that statement would always be followed up by some question of what business. "Maybe you should buy the cubbies. Be a team owner. Is there money in that?" She doesn't know the specifics of sports but she does recognize the concentration in the Designers eyes. Clearly numbers are not his forte. "Or maybe we can get some cover job together. Like your alchemy job with the Eyrie. Couldn't you still claim that?"

Alvina looks at him, mildly surprised. "Another lie or another job?" Maybe she hadn't completely given up hope that he might turn his act around one day. Feeble as that hope is, she stares into her water cup and tries to think of a plausible excuse. Some low key job that Hudson could claim, that would account for their spending habits. "Can't you just say you are a business owner?" Of course that statement would always be followed up by some question of what business. "Maybe you should buy the cubbies. Be a team owner. Is there money in that?" She doesn't know the specifics of sports but she does recognize the concentration in the Designers eyes. Clearly numbers are not his forte. "Or maybe we can get some cover job together. Like your alchemy job with the Eyrie. Couldn't you still claim that?"

Hudson chuckles into his water glass in response to Alvina's suggestion that he vaguely identify himself as a 'business owner.' Yeah, because that isn't going to raise an obvious follow-up question. That thought seems to have just popped into Alvina's mind, because she's following it with a legitimate suggestion. He laughs again. "Yeah, there is money in owning the Cubbies and I'd love to, babe, but you can't... just roll up with a pocket full of cash and buy a team. I gotta establish myself as a reputable businessman first." He runs a hand over the stubble dotting his face, looking at his daughters as Alvina makes this second suggestion. His gaze, weighed down with skepticism, pivots back to her. "You're cute," he tells her, in a tone that suggests she's made an absurd suggestion. The Designer, whose name is Maurice, by the way, has returned, and handed Hudson a folio with the itemized receipt of the contents of their house. "Take your time," he tells them, though there's no need, because Hudson opens the folder and, scanning the invoice until the dotted line, signs. "Wow, well in that case... I'll be in touch by note when it's time for delivery. Thank you both, your children are so beautiful." "Thanks," says Hudson, like he didn't just spend a small fortune. He rises from the sofa and puts his hands on the handlebar of the stroller. "I'm not going to pop a wheelie with it, calm down, let me be nice," he says to Alvina, as they make their way out of the showroom. "I think... based on recent experiences, I need to invest in real estate."

Alvina scans the bill from her spot beside him, noting how each item was more than she made by a long shot. There wasn't a lot of money on blacksmithing... Unless you did custom weapons and enchantments... She didn't have that kind of client base. It wasn't the first time she thought being part of Huds' business might be good for both of them financially. But she couldn't compromise herself that completely. Her morals were still in fact, intact. Luna doesn't aggro Harper and vise versa. Alvina stands to push the stroller, a beat after Hudson takes the handlebar. He's got it, no mom help required. She lifted her hands, surrendering without a fight and stays a few steps behind him as they move out of the furniture store. She likes everything they bought but buying a set felt... Weird. Normally you buy one piece and put it with all the crappy pieces you have and upgrade bit by bit. It becomes an occasion, a mini holiday. But now they both just had empty houses with furniture in them, sitting and waiting. "You know... That's not a bad idea..." Alvina could become a little realtor, while Hudson bought houses and she could sell them. A legit business started with dirty money. It doesn't sound so bad. "Right now, we have two houses we could rent?" She offered, meaning the house she use to live in, in the Sage and their practically brand new Larket home. "Recent experiences?" She added, just in case their was maybe something she didn't know about.

Hudson wings an eyebrow up at Alvina's suggestion. "You know, our home shopping experience. What are you talking about, rent houses?" he asks, like she's again made a quaint suggestion. "I guess. But I was thinking more... real estate development. You know, like that apartment building we looked at, somebody developed that. There was nothing there before, or, I think, there was probably like a shipping warehouse that the developer had razed, and the developer then worked with the city and then an architect and an engineer and to design the building, and they supervised the construction... and then they worked with a real estate agent to sell off the units, at a big markup. And developers also make like, shopping centers and... well anything. That's what I mean." He steers the stroller around a pothole, which is probably unnecessary because it's just a stroller. He glances over at Alvina as he continues, growing animated now with his own idea. "I don't know what I'm doing but I can get a partner who does all the work, I just put up the funding. And it's like, a legitimate job that people have that makes them able to buy houses like ours. It's a business you need money to enter, but... I have that?

Alvina rolls her eyes secretly. Of course she can't suggest a level one thing to Hudson that she could even help with. What was she thinking? It has to be a big thing, that he can be proud of. She feels guilty, for punting this idea and nods instead. "I like the idea of creating jobs...do something good." She almost notes the jobs as honest but that might fell like a dig at his expense so she navigates around it, much like the pothole he is avoiding with the stroller. Money was something they definitely had. Or he had. She just kind of tagged along on the money train. It made be feel guilty, even though it was illegal money. She wanted to contribute somehow. Maybe... Take Valrae's place as hot person who helps him do stuff but she didn't know about the body they'd disposed of together and couldn't articulate what it was she wanted. Not to mention any time she asked to help, he redirected her with their children, like a dog fetching a treat instead of tearing up the grass because it got the urge to dig. "Do you have anything I can do...? To help you?" Her voice is small, and they are moving out into a busy street. It isn't overly crowded or throbbing with noise but she's growing more frantic about the question. "I want to keep working on Frostmaw but... My offer to be more involved still stands." Meaning that while conversation they had about her being involved in his day to day still stood. Hopefully he didn't think that would be solved by moving back in together.

Alvina knows her man. He interprets her offer of help as the sort of sweet but rhetorical suggestion that significant others make to one another. "You don't have to do anything, babe," he says, looking at her with affection and obliviousness to the fact that she'd meant it. "You can just do your Frostmaw gig, or if you get tired, you can time off, hang out with the girls. Literally whatever. Maybe we'll have another baby, I feel like that always happens at the most random possible time." Saying this, he catches a weirdness in her expression and suddenly feels seized by the realization that maybe he'd answered incorrectly. And just like that, he assumes that she's grown abruptly paranoid about the presence of Hot Real Estate Agents (?), because if he'd done the bad thing one time, he couldn't be trusted not to repeat the crime. "If you want to be involved," he continues, in a gentler, more humbled tone, "I'd love that. Maybe you can design some stuff?"

Alvina doesn’t want to admit that her weirdness stems from this impossible ‘new baby’ idea. They’d gone through hell and back for the girls and Valrae wasn’t exactly going to be up for consultation in the near future since Hudson fired her. It was wishful thinking. She also doesn’t take it too seriously that Hudson brushes off her offer to ‘help’ in the drug occupation. Sometimes she wondered if he wouldn’t be happier to just have her home all day and tending the children. How old fashioned. While she’s thinking this, his face contorts with a softer tone and she’s legitimately surprised. Designing stuff was how she’d met him to begin with. She hopes he means mechanically, and not like ‘design the room’ like those Home and Garden magazines. It doesn’t matter, he’s offering it to her, even if it’s just for the sake of peace. Alvina knows when to take a bone. “I’d love to.” The twins, sensing a subtle peace between them, wake and start shrieking, making adult conversation impossible. Could they handle another kid?