☆Wish Upon A Star☆

☆~Chapter 9~☆

'Toris felt every next step of the ladder with his feet, making sure where to land in his descending way to the sewers.

His nose scrunched up at the strong odor that rose from the underground streams, at the slimy touch of the ladder's handle and in self pity, at the thought of what he was doing there.

He felt like a message bird. A pigeon domesticated by the most powerful Russian mafia in Northern China, an overpowered dove in hands of the Braginski.

And he hated that feeling, even through the layer of innocence of obviousness that his slave condition threw over him and his fellow pigeon Edward, hiding them from their owner's sight.

Caught, yet free.

His task was simple. He just had to retrieve a new pigeon for the Braginski's cage. Barely a teenager, a homeless Latvian kid no one would miss at his empty home.

A new pigeon he would hide in the Mission's shadows, and who would fight by their side for the freedom he deserved; for the freedom everybody deserved.

And so, he waited. He waited for Beildschmidt to send one of his girls, one of his own pigeons.

He tried to hold his breath to keep his lungs from trading the little amount of oxygen in the dirty, nauseous air, squinting his eyes for a prostitute and a child's silhouette.

Not much after, he saw them.

More exactly, he saw a thin-framed figure carrying a limp lump, which he presumed it'd be their new recruit.

As the figures got closer, he could see more and more clearly the girl's face and the sleeping bundle. She wasn't the first prostitute the Lithuanian man had ever seen, but she was unique in some way.

She had straight, shoulder length hair waving after her pace, as furiously quick as her high heels let her; slightly dirty but still shining. She had big, beautiful green eyes that glanced around, wet with fear and cold. Her lips were as bright red as blue her eyelids were shaded and as thick her winged kohl eyeliner was; and she wore tight clothes that covered very little of her body, just a miniskirt and a crop top, even though she had a coat on to resist the coldness of the sewers.

Toris suddenly felt embarrassed of his old, stained shirt and his ripped long coat, watching her approaching.

"Toris L-Laurin-naitis?" She mumbled, reading a small note she had snatched from the front pocket of her coat. Then, he noticed that she was shaking.

He nodded, not needing to take his own note to recite his contact's name. "Feliksi Łukasiewicz?" He gently looked into her eyes, wanting her to calm down.

She seemed to gulp down a lump of saliva and nodded, sighing. "Here..." She gently laid the asleep child in Toris' arms. "Raivis Galante... God, he's only eleven..." She flinched just barely, brushing her perfectly white teeth against her perfectly red lips, looking unsure about her last choice of words.

Toris shook her doubts away with a soft, understanding nod, trying to keep his gaze from the still round and child-like face of who would be a new slave for the Braginski. "I know... It's horrible," He sighed, looking into the sex worker's gleaming, light green eyes. "I hope I could let this poor kid free without being punished with torture or death, prisoner in a rotting wet cell in the best of cases,"

The Braginski servants' loyalty towards their master was well known, as were the methods used to get this loyalty.

The beautiful Pole's lips curved in a soft grimace; a part pained, part disgusted and part grieved grimace. "I'm s-so sorry," She swallowed a sob back, trying to remain calm.