Sacha hurried down the long corridor when her phone rang and she remembered she should turn it off. She was about to when she noticed the caller id.
"Anna, who do you want me to bribe this time?" She asked, continuing to walk down the corridor, but slowing her pace.
"Probably everyone. I need the death penalty back. I know it will be difficult and I will give you so much money but I need you to do this for me."
"Anna, I can manage it, I can bribe people to do anything but it might just rob you."
"I can take that risk."
"What for Anna, why are you threatening everything to what, kill Sarah?"
"I never said that was why I wanted you to bring back the death penalty and even if it was, you just get the work done and the laws passed I make the decisions."
Sacha smiled, she guessed what Anna's final plan was, if not her motive but she still had to make sure her dominance was clear.
"Anna, you may make the decisions but I can make the decision to get you sent to prison for life, and you want the death penalty back so that increases my leverage so you should be the one watching what you say." There was a moment of silent before Anna replied, trying to hide her amusement.
"Just get the bill passed."
The line went silent and Sacha turned the phone off, took a deep breath and entered the room. As she entered all the conversations went silent and Sacha smiled. She loved the feeling she got when the most powerful people in the country went quiet when she entered. Especially because at least half the people in the room had made headline news at one point or another and therefore were easily spotted on the street. The most she got was her surname in a block of text and that was how she liked it. She ran parliament but no one knew it, meaning she was safe in her position. She scanned the crowd before talking, taking not of who she could bribe and who would tell the press she was bribing them, either because they normally had a strong moral code and went into politics not for the power but to do good or because they were so strongly against the death penalty they would do anything to not let it pass. When she realised more than half could be bribed she started to speak.
"Let's get this meeting over and done with." She said and moments later the Prime Minister echoed her words.
Sacha waited a bit before bringing up the new bill. She had slowly mastered the world of politics and new all the rules to manipulate everyone into doing what she wanted them to do. The waiting time meant most people were bored, wanting a change and weren't on their guard. Of course she also needed to the correct time to interject so it made sense, so it was like she was just thinking it. So that no one knew that while she was pulling parliaments strings someone was controlling her as well.
"The new training programme for police is working well, there has been an increase of arrests by twenty percent." Said the Home secretary.
"How full are the prisons?" Sacha asked, already knowing how she was going to steer the conversation.
"They're getting almost too full. We either need to build more or find a way to reduce the number of prisoners." Sacha tried to hide a smile, this was almost too easy. She had heard that the home secretary was pro death penalty but still, this was almost too easy.
"How?"
"We could start having harsher punishments."
"How would getting rid of parole sort out the problem of jails being too full?" Sacha asked, playing dumb. She had to get him to say it. Men were weird like that, get a woman to suggest something and they notice more problems, like they have something to prove. Have a man they think that all men are right, therefore this suggestion must have no faults. It made it so much easier to destroy them.
"I know, but if we get back the death penalty then problem solved." There was an almost audible intake of breath and everyone was looking at everyone else to know how to react.
"Meeting adjourned. In an hour we shall come back to decide how to solve the problems we have discussed." The prime minister said.
Sacha sighed, only an hour. Jesus, she would be so fucking busy trying to persuade, okay bribe, everyone.
Sacha entered the room again, fairly pleased. She had got everyone on her list to agree but now it was time to see if they would follow through. In that hour they had to vote using a ballot and the results had just finished being counted. It still annoyed her how slow everything was, votes on paper that were manually counted, but it did mean long wait times between statements and voting.
"...the motion has been won" Sacha sighed a breath of relief. She couldn't believe it had been so easy, no referendum, nothing. A bit of cash and England was changed forever.
