Undercover Lover

The Glorious World of Comics

A/N: Graphic mentions of violence in this chapter

With your black messenger bag hooked on your shoulder, you headed into the tall office building belonging to the Agency, a rush of cool air greeting you as you walked through the glass double doors. You had been called in by the Director to give an update on your progress, which wasn't very much unfortunately. You knew things like this took time, but you had hoped you and Gerard would be further along by now so that he'd drop his guard a little. You just wanted him to slip up and say something even slightly incriminating, but oh no he was astute.

You knocked on the edge of one of the glass walls that made up the Director's office, alerting him of your presence. "May I come in, sir?" You asked, fingertips playing with the edge of your black blazer.

Director Hawthorne waved you inside, sitting up in his chair as you approached his desk, which was stacked with paperwork. "What progress have you made, agent?"

You reached into your messenger bag to pull out a typed report you had written detailing your progress and encounters with Gerard and his associates so far. "I'm still working on getting him to open up to me. He's very shielded," you told him as you handed him your report.

"As I'd expect. What happened to your hand?"

You glanced down at your hand that was still wrapped from last night after your accident. "Just a work accident. Nothing of concern, sir," you replied, placing your hand behind your uninjured one to keep it out of sight.

"They frequent this VIP lounge it seems," Director Hawthorne murmured as he scanned your report.

"I believe it's their main meeting place since they keep it pretty exclusive. I'm going to try to sneak in and check it out soon," you told him, having been dwelling on a plan to get inside. Well, it wasn't much of a plan. You were just going to try to sneak in when there wasn't anyone looking and hopefully sneak out without getting caught.

"Well, use caution, agent. These guys are another level of cruel. There was a murder last night that had the Way family written all over it," Director Hawthorne muttered, reaching over to grab a manila folder and to toss it in front of you.

You opened the folder, crime scene photos coming into view. And not pretty ones. You had become fairly desensitized to blood due to the nature of your job, but the gruesomeness of the photos still rocked you with slight nausea. You knew the Way family carried out their hits in all sorts of different ways: stabbings, shootings, strangulation, even poison a time or two. It was randomized. However, you had never seen them cut off body parts before. Someone was frustrated last night.

Last night. Wait. You saw Gerard, Frank, and Ray last night, and they were at the club for a decent amount of the night. Then again, there were still quite a few hours unaccounted for that they could've gone and done this. Did Gerard patch your hand up and then leave to go cut this guy's hand off?

The nausea you felt increased, bile rising in the back of your throat that you had to force down. You nearly flirted with this murderer last night. What were you thinking falling for this monster's charm?

"I'll work harder to put a stop to them, sir," you promised him as you shut the folder, tearing your eyes away from the evidence of Gerard's lack of humanity. You heard your phone's message notification sound go off in your back pocket, an apology jumping to your lips as you grabbed your phone to silence it. You checked to see who messaged you as you switched your ringer off, an unfamiliar number showing on the screen with a message beneath it.

If you're still up for me getting you into comics

-G

Another message popped up, prompting you to open your messages to see a flyer for what looked like some sort of comic book expo in town. You started piecing things together, realizing this had to be Gerard ... inviting you to a comic book expo? He must've gotten your number from when you applied for the job.