The Tiger King (Chaelisa)

34| Rosé's Meeting

Once a month, instead of being dispatched to broker deals between her boss and some other party, Rosé had a Meeting.

And though she dreaded them as much as her nightly job every week, the Meeting was important because it acted like an audit: it was the time the boss used to gauge her performance and review client deals with her, and then give Rosé her monthly budget handout. 

He did this with other runners like herself, but it didn't mean that the thought of being left alone with the man who owned her made her more at ease, though she had been doing this for a good couple years now. 

"Come in."

Rosé closed her eyes at the sharp, reedy drawl that answered her knock. Her Jay for the night, Jay-P, or Jimin, opened the door for her.

"Good luck, love," he cooed.

She pressed her lips into a thin line and slipped inside—she didn't care about Jay's flirting right now, not when she was about to face a far bigger menace.

The familiar spacious and well-lit office room welcomed her with the lingering foul smoke from his cigarettes that made her cough, even though he had left a window ajar—the cool breeze made her shiver and she inadvertently found herself wishing for summer already. At least the nights wouldn't be so cold.

"Hello Rosé. Sit." 

He had been waiting by the window as he puffed on the death stick, heavy curtains drawn so that nobody could see his silhouette. Heaven knows, he might be riddled by bullets already if he so much as stood out in the open. 

The black-hearted man played and gambled with the lives of others; he had provoked the ire of many. Monsters and men alike would jump at the chance to murder him but so far, he had always managed to stay ahead of them; he was simply too clever to be caught.

He was the devil: calm, collected, calculating.

But by God, Heaven have mercy on your soul should you incur the devil's wrath.

Rosé had witnessed his cold, clinical rage manifest in front of her eyes: she had watched as he seized the unfortunate source of his annoyance like a lion snatching up its prey in its deadly jaws. She watched with numb horror as her boss snapped back the arm from the elbow, twisted the sinews and ripped out the lackey's limb for failing to carry out an order.

The peeking elbow-joint had glistened so white and pearly, with strange white threads dangling from the flesh as the man screamed and screamed. His rubbery, floppy arm lay next to his face in a big big pool of blood, until he stopped screaming. Rosé had forgotten how to breathe for a few moments, but she never forget the sight of her boss's impassive face as he looked down on the corpse. 

Her boss didn't have a single drop of blood on him.

She sat down opposite him, aware of his hooded eyes piercing her skin as he also mirrored her actions and sat down behind his desk. 

"So, what have you got for me?"

And so the Meeting went, with the thick silence weighing down on Rosé like a boulder as she waited for his verdict, like a pupil anxiously awaiting a teacher's grading. The ironic mental comparison had Rosé smiling wryly.

 She had compiled the information about her deals of the past month with other relevant figures and numbers, and presented them on a paper written by hand in neat print, so as to avoid leaving tracks on her PC. All the while he read she kept her head bowed, eyes on the table as he skimmed through the report which he soon finished.

The good thing about Meetings was that usually they didn't last long—she'd give the report, get her money and book it out of the room.

"Not bad..."