Deadly Desires

Shadowborn

"Do you know his name, Ivy?" Marissa asks me, cooly.

I shake my head, averting my eyes from meeting her cold gaze. It's not very often you get called in to speak with the head of your division and it's even less often you get called in for good reasons.

Which was precisely why I was shitting it, sat at this creepy little grey steel round table.

I was waiting for her to strap me down and cut me up so she could have me for her lunch. 

Marissa scoffs, I raise my eyes to meet hers. Her hands are clenched in front of her and her light grey hair is pulled back into a bun. She sort of reminds me of Miss Trunchball.

"So, just so I can get everything correct, you lost a million-dollar necklace and you don't know who took it?"

I shake my head, growing frustrated. I told her everything about what happened the other night on my assignment, I left out the conversation I had with that dickhead but I did mention we danced together.

"I told you, I know who took it I just don't know his name. If he walked past me I'd recognise him," I say, dryly.

"Do you think next time he walks past you you could ask him for his name?" Marissa snaps at me and I shut my mouth.

She was right, I didn't have anything useful to provide her with. In the hurry to get away from him, I'd dropped the necklace and hadn't thought to grab it. It was only when I walked into work the next day and Allison asked for it back did I realise it was gone. But I knew he had it.

"Well we know he's an assassin, and he's happened to be on both of your assignments, even having the same target. Safe to assume he works for Shadowborn," Marissa says, rubbing her temples.

"Shadow what?" I repeat, blinking slowly.

I think I see Marissa's eye twitch and I try not to snicker, I know I should take it all seriously but I can't bring myself to.

"Lotus has one direct rival organisation that is also in New York, the company is called ShadowBorn. They are ruthless, highly trained and consist of mainly men. They use women as pawns for seduction techniques but...that's it."

"How come they're our rivals? I know of two other companies like us," I ask her, folding my hands in my lap.

Marissa smirks and for the first time I feel a little nervous, "Shadowborn is the only rival organisation that brings in as much money as us, and has a kill count as high as ours. They're also international not just confined to the USA like us."

"Is that how they have as much money as us without dabbling into the things we do?"

Like prostitution and infiltrating the government.

Marissa nods, "They also infiltrate the government occasionally, my guess is they might be hearing of our assignments and going after them. Or our clients are two-timing us. And then of course the other problem..."

"Such as?"

"We have a mole."

I swallow dryly and look at her, no wonder she was so tense. A mole in this type of work would be devastating.

 Occasionally a few assassins get caught by the police during their crimes but we have so many of the police or government on a payroll the law always seemed to have loopholes for us.

But on those rare occasions, we're caught so badly there's nothing we can do to avoid going to jail we're given a little pill to swallow. Capturing an assassin doesn't mean they go to jail to suffer, it means we get tortured and interrogated for information and names.