The Beauties and the Ash

First Lady

Melania wasn't a woman to leave things halfway done.

If Melania wanted to do something, she committed. She did it surely. Quickly. Intensely. Melania stuck with whatever she was doing until the end, no matter how crazy and out of proportion it grew to be. She knew that eventually things would turn in her favor. She would get it her way. Perseverance was Melania's middle name.

Melania's last name was Trump. 

If Melania wanted to marry into ridiculous amounts of money, she would do it, and she would do it well.

 If the marriage happened to make her First Lady of the United States, then so be it. Melania wasn't one to back off. 

Sometimes, in nights when sleep didn't come easy and she was stuck with looking at the Donald Trump statue her husband had ordered to be put in their room before he died, his alabaster face and the flesh one of his widow enveloped in shadows, she wondered if her motto was a naive one to live by. How much of this would she be able to tolerate before it became too much? What would happen after?

A visit to the castle's private bar was usually enough to get her to stop thinking of such annoying trivialities. 

Melania Trump was still First Lady. 

She couldn't even fathom why in the world Donald would try to pass The Law-- a law that established that a president, even in death, would still keep the position, until the president decided to step down or their administration period was up. The commoners were more confused (and angered) with the fact that The Law had actually passed, but Melania knew. It had to do with how there was a sudden million dollar draw from her and her husband's shared account. It had to do with how every congressman seemed to have a new lamborghini, but she had never found out why. It was crazy, completely out of place, but it had  happened, and her husband wound up dead and still in office.

Two years had passed since his death.

If Melania wanted to do something, she worked incessantly. She put all her assets to the task, didn't stop until the job was done.

If Melania wanted to marry into ridiculous amounts of money, she would do it. 

There was a man with who her husband used to hang out. "Best detective in our force," He had introduced him, though Melania couldn't really know if he was exaggerating. She had looked at his suit, at the Rolex on his wrist, at his shoes, and had jotted down his name in a list she carried since she was 26.

The same list she held in her hands now, standing in her best ivory-gold dress in the middle of Trump Castle's most luxurious ballroom.

Vladimir Putin.

Melania knew that any man in her list of wealthy individuals would do. It was quite long, but for some reason she felt drawn towards the man. They had only met a handful of times, but she remembered his eyes. Beckoning her. Full of violence, homophobia, and mystery. They invited her to find out more, at her own risk, very unlike those dead, dull eyes of politicians that she had become so used to seeing.

No. Melania had to concentrate. She hadn't come here to wonder about strange men. She needed to place the centerpiece, where the spotlight of the evening would rest, the single, I'm single, centerpiece.

Donald Trump's ashes. 

Now, like in the previous two years, this would happen: Melania would elegantly glide among the tables surrounding the marble pedestal with the golden urn, being, as always, the perfect hostess. Then the first dish would come and she would stand tall beside the president's, her husband's ashes, and she would give the most heart-wrenching speech, filled with the most beautiful quotes from the greatest minds (well, not that she would actually quote them, she would just include the words in her speech). It would be other people's turn to speak, then, but she knew that every guest would have her speech stuck in their minds.  

That was when she collected hearts and potential wallets, but it always ended up with her having a new batch of phone numbers and never calling anyone. 

But this time she wouldn't. She knew she would get the best husband, one with a brimming bank account, a bank account that, if it was a swimming pool, would be always and forever spilling out from the sides like it was torrentially raining. Of course she would.

She was Melania Trump.