Strut.

In New York City, there’s a whole world you could never imagine.

Nestled in with the Upper East Side is Manhattan’s finest. The businessmen and models and Broadway stars. It’s a world of corruption, of bribes. It’s a world where everything is perfect, but only from the outskirts.

And you don’t know their names. Any of them. They’re so famous, they’re never heard of. They’re so famous, they’re literally no one.

I guess this is logical when you look at the fact that in New York City, the social ladders are so high you can’t even see the top anymore. They’re higher than skyscrapers, towering over that Manhattan skyline. The social scene, it’s a delicate thing. At the top, there’s this complex between people. That far up, they don’t have just an occupation to rely on. That far up, everyone is few and far between.

It’s like Everest or something.

There’s this mutual understanding between people. This respect. Like, yeah, you’ve made it up here too. Good job, or something. But every single person wants to be the best, believes that they’re really the ones on top. With every nod of the head, every word spoken, it’s like a whisper: I’m better than you, I’m better than you.

Clearly, the bankers and stockholders have the most money. But power? None.

The businessmen, they have both. They have corruption and greed. They hold the nation’s rate of employment in the palm of their hands.

The models certainly have money, and they also have power. It’s a different kind, though; the kind you get from plastering yourself all over buildings. If they wear one thing, suddenly everyone wants it. If they don’t wear anything, well, that’s even better.

And then there’s the Broadways, the stars. They’ve risen from the underground scene straight to the top. But they keep to themselves most of the time. Theater types, you know.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned photographers. Or make-up artists. Clothing designers. And that’s because, while they market to the top, they’re never actually there. Never.

Until now, I guess. Because that’s exactly where Ross and Reagan Cester are. They’re at the very top. The peak. The summit. If the Cesters were actually on Everest, they’d be at the part climbers call the Death Zone. Not because a lot of people perish there, though they do; it’s because every breath you take, every minute you’re there, you literally die a little. It’s absolutely impossible to live for a long period of time that far up.

But Ross and Reagan have. They’ve lived up there for quite a while, and you can be sure as hell they didn’t get there from talent alone.

The thing is, even less people know about the Cesters. They stay out of the limelight, preferring to deal in the shadows. To the untrained eye, it would seem that Alexis and Charles Flight share the top post.

Charles Flight is the head of Flight Corp., a business that, so contrary to its name of corporation, is most certainly dependant on one person. Charles is forty-eight, and whenever you see someone that young being a CEO at that big of a company, you can count on his dad snuffing it early or him being one conniving son of a bitch.

In this case, it’s the latter.

In this case, our friend Charles is in a little too deep. Flight Corp. is one of the thirty Dow Jones components, so if Charles fails, so does the economy. That’s a little too much for our friend here to worry about. So, Charles has a team of people working to make sure it never happens.

He calls this team the mafia.

Charles isn’t a stupid man by any means, but he does do incredibly stupid things. Such as get in over his head in his own company. Such as marry a supermodel half his age.

Meet Alexis.

Alexis did it because of the money. Charles did it because of the sex. It’s a win-win situation. In New York, all’s fair in lust and business.

Alexis, in a word, is heartless. She’s haughty; she knows she has what everyone wants. She has so many friends, and none of them know her. The only person that you could say really knows her would probably be her agent. Cameron Brooks, at your service.

Cameron books her shows and tells her what’s good and bad for her public image. He stages events that boost that image. He tells her what to say at interviews, he answers the fan mail. He is Alexis Flight, in short; he’s everything but the face. She’s slept with him a total of seventeen times.

Though Alexis is married, she’s not about to give up the entire model scene. Parties, sex and drugs galore. As you can see, Alexis clearly got cut the better deal.

Since Alexis is a model, and good one, I mean, she weighs about eighty pounds and is six foot two in heels, and it’s not enough. Alexis pops diet pills along with whatever the guy across the bar gives her. She washes them down with a martini and a cosmopolitan. At the fancy dinners, you can bet she’ll be she’ll be purging in the bathroom. If you really want to know, no one really goes to the ladies’ room to pee or fix their hair anymore. Girls go in groups, and they all take a stall, get on their knees, and puke. It’s turned into a social activity. Alexis isn’t an exception, not to anything, really.

Alexis and Charles have this agreement that, basically, Alexis can sleep with as many boys as she wants, as long as it never makes the tabloids. Don’t get me wrong, Cameron would love that for her image, but Charles forbids it. In fact, it’s the one place he doesn’t give Alexis any leeway. Charles is honestly just terrified of being left by her. The ridicule would be unbearable.

So Alexis goes to her parties, takes her pills, and sleeps with her boys. Charles works late. It’s a good system. A good marriage. An excellent business agreement. This is how almost all of them work when you get up far enough.

Reagan Cester knows this. She knows all of this. She knows all about the social complexes of the elite. This is because she is the elite. She is at the top. Reagan Cester is like a legend, and Ross follows close behind. See, Ross and Reagan are a couple, but not how you think.

Ross is the photographer. He captures the celebrities, the models in their finest. He exposes them in the magazines. And Reagan, she dresses them up. You can find her designs in all those custom shops, the ones that cost several thousand dollars. And she does the hair and makeup too; a jack of all trades. It may seem unprofessional that she does all three, perhaps, but it works. And Reagan knows it works, and so do the agents. Reagan and Ross, they’re good.

Oh, and they’re also twins.

They grew up together; they know each other inside and out. And apart from looking alike, with the same dark hair and eyes, they think exactly alike, too. That the world is theirs for the taking. That anyone who stands in their way should be taken down.

Figuratively, of course. Mostly, Ross and Reagan only take people down for fun.

You know that saying about keeping your friends close, but your enemies even closer? Ross and Reagan exist solely among their enemies. In fact, the only people who are close to them are their enemies. See, they don’t need anyone but each other.

Ross and Reagan, they make a sport of ruining people. They’ll find out as much as possible, and then strike, deciding the best way to hurt them. Usually it’s wrecking a job, or an ego, or an image. Usually it’s enough for the target to realize what they’ve done, but not enough for everyone else. The stupid ones still blame themselves.

Ross and Reagan are a flawless team, both in the studio and in their “hobby.” Reagan is the mastermind, moving the pawns along the chessboard, and Ross takes care of the dirty work: the blackmail, the threats, the digging.

If you ever speak to Reagan personally, you know you’re in for it, because she never takes things into her own hands. She’s surrounded by able bodies just begging to do her business for her; Reagan never lifts a finger. On the few occasions when she has had to, the results have not been pretty. Reagan is dangerous; she’s a planner and takes her time to find the perfect revenge. She isn’t to be messed with. Her ability to intimidate is helped by the fact that she can call upon Ross, weighing in at two hundred pounds, six feet five inches. He’s just as huge as she is tiny, and can mess people up physically just as thoroughly as Reagan can mentally. It’s quite the dynamic. They’re unstoppable.

Ross and Reagan had first gotten into this business, if you could call it that, simply on a whim. Reagan had at first operated alone, in small doses. If someone got on her nerves, they would simply disappear. No big gaudy show, nothing that would make news. They could be passed of as flukes, as extremely well-placed mistakes. But Reagan quickly moved on to bigger things.

The first example of this is Brandon Walker.

Brandon worked for Entertainment Weekly; in the board room he was pretty far down the table, but he was still there. He worked for the advertisement section, hiring photojournalists to shoot exclusively, or calling and asking if he could use an appropriate shot. He gave strict deadlines, and had quite an eye for that sort of thing. He was getting there, working his way up. The current boss was nearing sixty, overstaying his welcome and quashing the new ideas. Brandon hoped to replace him, eager to use his skills and reinvent Entertainment Weekly’s ad campaign. He would boost sales into the millions if only given the chance, he was sure of it.

This single job assignment was said to be the last test before they let the old man go and Brandon in to fill his place. It was to be relatively simple: a girl at the beach, leaning back, reading her favorite magazine. She should be tan and fit, wearing a bikini, and laughing. Maybe put some shirtless guys in the background. That would be sure to attract.

Brandon had a particular photographer he wanted for the shot. He wanted–no, needed Ross Cester. Ross Cester was sure to deliver. He would shoot Brandon up to the front of that board room table like that.

Instead of being easy to work with, however, Ross proved to be a challenge. He failed to meet the deadlines, and kept delivering sub-par pictures. But Brandon was determined. He was going to get a Cester picture for that ad.

And so instead of getting a nice beach scene, Brandon settled for, or rather, was forced to settle for a different picture. An extremely risqué one: a girl, naked, only covered with pages of the precious magazine. The cover obscured her face.

Brandon sold it as best he could, really, he did. He did quite a good job, too, enough to get a couple of the higher-ups even considering it. But in the end, such a message was just not acceptable to portray in that magazine. So unacceptable, in fact, that Brandon was fired.

That isn’t the end of it, however.

Upon storming into the Cester’s studio, he found Reagan, clothed in a tiny, slinky dress, sitting as if waiting for him. She had sighed, so understanding. She had told him she’d heard the horrible news, and was terribly sorry they’d failed him.

Reagan was no stranger to seduction, and I suppose it’s needless to say that by this point Brandon had already forgiven her.

She proceeded to offer him a job, which he took, and then a drink, and another, and another until he was so drunk that he was horny, and so horny he could hardly stop himself from tearing off that tiny, slinky dress.

In the morning when he reached for her, kissing her neck, she just giggled. “What are you doing, silly?” she had asked. Brandon was confused. She laughed again. “Honey, you didn’t tell me you were gay!”

“What?” he had stuttered. “I’m not!”

“Oh, Brandon, come on. You barely even got hard last night! There’s no need to be ashamed, okay? I get it, it just wasn’t the right time… I wasn’t the right gender.”

Brandon was horrified. He hadn’t gotten hard? She thought he was gay? And, dammit, he had taken a job from her!

It was the perfect ploy. And two years later, Brandon still works as her assistant, making twelve dollars an hour and following her around like a kicked puppy. It doesn’t help that she’s so beautiful, that he wants her so, so badly. It just makes it hurt worse when she makes jokes about his sexuality, always in front of people, always a lie. At first Brandon had thought it was all a joke, but after two years he’s had to stop kidding himself.

Reagan knows it isn’t true, of course; saying that he couldn’t get hard was a blatant lie. In fact, Brandon was quite good in bed, but telling him that would completely ruin the point, wouldn’t it?

Brandon’s reserved to it now. Reagan practically introduces him as gay to everyone, so it’s not as if he can even pretend otherwise. Everyone would think he’s just ashamed. So Brandon pretends. Every single day. It’s the reverse of coming out of the closet; it’s getting shoved forcibly in. It’s a terrible way to live.

Mission accomplished.

After that, Reagan was hooked. She told Ross what she had done, and initially he was disgusted, but quickly got turned on to pulling the strings once Reagan did some coaxing. Ross loves it almost as much as her, now. It’s an exhilarating feeling, after all, to control somebody. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s addicting, to both of them.

Those two years left dozens of “projects” in their wake: actresses regarded as whores, models starving themselves dead, once-CEO’s now beggars on the street. These failures were Ross and Reagan’s pride and glory. While their victims are shunned by everyone else, The Cesters beam and smile whenever they see each other, adding insult to the injury.

Without a doubt, Ross and Reagan are terrible people. Absolutely despicable. And that is why they’re the ones on top.