The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 79
Just as the young undercover agent Wood was looking forward to the new day, William, on the other side of town, drove to the edge of a middle-class community in a very good location.
After waiting a little over ten minutes, a mature woman wearing light makeup walked out through the community gate, a fashionable handbag in her hand.
William immediately got out of the car, waved to the woman, and smiled. He even opened the rear door for her.
It was a very gentlemanly gesture. The passenger seat might have felt more intimate, and not every woman would like that kind of presumptuous move. Before there was absolute certainty, dealings between a man and a woman were best conducted without creating awkwardness, especially in a relatively sealed space.
“Thank you...” Vera smiled at William as she got into the car.
That afternoon, William had called her and invited her out to dinner, while also discussing some work matters.
Vera, who had been in a cold war with her husband all this time, felt she really did need to go out and clear her head. She had even put on makeup, a rare thing for her.
Women wearing makeup had only become fashionable in the past few years. In the past, women in the Federation, and even across the world, basically did not wear makeup. Only professional women with certain skills used heavy cosmetics to conceal their real faces, and only they used perfume to cover the scent of dead hormones rising from their bodies.
But as the sweeping suffrage movement achieved victory after victory, the use of cosmetics was completely liberated from prejudice. Of course, one Federation sociologist believed this was a conspiracy by those professional women.
In the past, people only had to see their faces and smell the strong fragrance on them to know what sort of work they did. Naturally, these people would also be discriminated against by all of society.
Now, people could no longer tell who was who. They had successfully hidden themselves.
The Suffrage League, however, believed this claim was nothing more than grandstanding. Beauty and the pursuit of beauty were everyone’s freedom. Men always treated women’s behavior as abnormal, and that itself was discrimination against women.
The success of the suffrage movement in these years had indeed changed many things. Even some men had begun trying makeup. Another change was that perfume had entered people’s lives across the board.
The Federation was a carnivorous society. From morning to night, most people ate meat. Some ate small amounts of vegetables, but overall, meat dominated.
This gave some Federation people serious body odor. In the past, other than bathing often, they had not had many solutions. Now, everyone had begun using perfume.
Although social customs were changing, women from the middle and upper reaches of society, especially women from high society, were not very likely to take the initiative to wear makeup. Many older women, even today, still preserved the old traditions: no makeup, no perfume.
That was why, in certain times and certain settings, people associated cosmetics, especially lipstick, with intimate goods.
For Vera to come out in light makeup was already a kind of breakthrough. One had to know that there were still thousands upon thousands of women who only wore makeup at home, adding a little force to the feelings between husband and wife. They rarely wore makeup when going out.
William gave a small nod, acknowledging her thanks. After he returned to the driver’s seat, he started the car and drove toward the restaurant he had reserved.
The restaurant he had reserved was not far from where Vera lived. Residential areas and business districts always complemented one another. Absolutely no one would invest in building a superstore specializing in top luxury goods in the slums of a third-tier city, and no one would operate a dollar store outside a high-class community.
After a drive of roughly ten minutes, the car slowly stopped outside a restaurant. Just as the greeter was about to come forward and open Vera’s door, William smiled at him from inside the car and asked, “May I have that opportunity?”
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