The Story of Blood and Roses

I let the bullets fly until I had nothing left in me. My shoulder ached with the need to rest. My tank top had been soaking wet with sweat; my jacket was long forgotten. The atmosphere had grown hot as the day carried on. People had grown tired and left, but I had remained until the very end. Anthony had been called to the mansion for some urgent work, giving me time to think about what had happened.

Without him in proximity, I could think about what had transpired between the two of us with a clear vision. We'd started a dangerous game—the two of us. I had been blinded by his words, but I had gotten some leverage over him. His lust for my body far exceeded his need to control me, I had come to believe. It was probably the fact that I was beyond his control that spurred him on. Now that I thought about it, I realized that... that had been true since the first day we'd met; not as a child, but as an adult. My hatred for him was what made us both come inexplicably close to devouring each other.

If it went on at the rate that it was… we'd have no control and not even Cienna would be able to pull us apart (not that she had the power to do anything of the sort).

My mind worked at dissecting many things simultaneously; one part focused on how I would approach the situation with Anthony, another was focusing on getting as much information as I could about the organization as fast as I could and last but not the least- find out what was going on with Daisy.

Daisy would be the first part of the plan I would have to figure out. She had been missing in action for quite some time and I wondered if she was even working on anything. As I rode back home I dialed her number and waited for her to pick her phone up.

It took a few tries to get her to pick up her phone.

"Seven times, Daisy. I called you seven times," I said, irritated with her for picking up the phone so late.

"Good to hear from you, too." Her voice sounded garbled. I slowed the car down, taking a moment to adjust my Bluetooth device on my ear so that I could hear her properly. It was of no use, though. "What made you think about me?" she wondered aloud. She sounded like she was stuffing food into her mouth and talking while chewing.

"I have a better question. What have you been up to lately?" I hear her swallow whatever she was gorging on. So, I had assumed correct. The woman had been eating while I desperately tried to catch hold of her. I guessed that I could let her pass for the time being.

"Trying to make your life easier, would be a good answer to that question."

"I would've thanked you if you had told me what you've been doing and how it is going to make my life easier."

"I'm trying to find out how to hack that system that little nutjob build for Anthony. It's not particularly easy, let me assure you. It's going to take some time, but I think I have the answer." I decided that she sounded confident enough.

"Just try not to compromise yourself or my identity," I warned her.

"Don't worry about my safety. They've been trying to check you out quite thoroughly. If there was any person who should be happy that they have no relatives, it should be you. You're lucky." The silence was audible. I knew what she meant and it didn't hurt as much as she probably thought it did, but the realization hit me like a freight train. I really have no one left to go back to.

"I'm sorry!" she hurried to apologize. I didn't mind. The realization had come to me more as a shock than a jolt of pain. Shock, I could manage.

"Don't worry your pretty little mind about me being offended. It takes more than that to get me going." I could hear her sigh, audibly. "What you said is true and it's a good thing. No compromises, nothing. They have nothing to hold against me. They can't get me through emotional blackmailing. Isn't that a wonderful thing?" When I thought about what I said, it made perfect sense. It was a good thing and I didn't have it in me to think otherwise or hurt.

All my anger had been diverted into thinking about my mission. It was helping me cope with the loss of my mother. My father was never around for me, so I didn't feel the need to grieve. My mother, I had never given up on. My anger had helped me move on. It had made me think clearer.

"They've been doing some background checks in you. They've got the best private investigators on you." She changed the topic.

"Should I be worried? Do you think they guessed who I am?" I heard the shuffling of paper on the other side.

"There is nothing to be worried about. They are just a bit confused that they can't find much about you. I might have done a little too well with the hiding your identity thing. Your apartment is the only weak spot now."

"I want to know what sort of background checks Anthony has asked this investigator to do before." I heard a faint hum and then the sound of her gorging on more food.

"Will you be able to do that?" I asked her, wondering if she already had too much on her plate. I wouldn't be that cruel.

"Yes," she said after gulping her food down. "Now let me eat in peace. This is the first meal I've had in two days. Helping you out is going to get me killed." With a laugh I hung up on her, letting her eat in peace.

.

Being home had never felt more peaceful than at that moment. To enter the apartment after the noise of bullets firing and then the noisy cosmopolitan street, felt heavenly. I soaked in the sound of silence into every pore. What renewed my sense of peace was the knowledge of what Daisy was up to. Talking to Daisy had left me with a sense of relief. She had not dropped from the face of the earth and now I could do my work in peace.

I decided that I'd better take a shower before the apartment started to stink like dead and decaying buffaloes. As I stood in the shower I tried to remember the last time I'd ridden a bike. It had been a couple of years, but the memory brought back a smile on my face. It had been a really close call.

I had been assigned to infiltrate a small drug cartel at the Mexican border. They were digging up kids who had run away from home. They were hanging around a local school in search of younger boys and girls to run errands. The kids had been disappearing fast and the police could do nothing to stop the disappearances. There had been over ten teenagers missing when the assignment was placed in front of me. I'd wasted no time in signing the contract and started work immediately. My mission was to try and rescue the kids and get them out before they got too involved. I'd ended up killing one of the important stakeholders in the cartel and had to flee from the site immediately. Their men were everywhere. It turned out that the man I had killed had been a politician. The security had been severe and I'd almost gotten caught trying to escape. I had used a decent looking bike which one of the guards had left outside to find my way out of danger. It was a dangerous ride, though. It left me unguarded from all directions. I'd just hopped on it and thanked the God that the man had left his keys.

My disguise had helped me throw them off track too. My love for long hair had always made me wear wigs when the mission demanded that I chop my poor locks off. That time it was a neon green colored hair that stuck out everywhere. I'd removed the damn thing and rushed away and it seemed that it had delayed my pursuers to find me.

No doubt that it had been exhilarating, but I'd had a tough time constantly on road and rarely taking stops to feed myself. I'd constantly been on that thing for two days to throw them off track.

Dangerous things happened on missions.

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