Playing God (Helford #2)

(3) Power

Disclaimer: I know little of the government standings mentioned in the following chapter, so if I am wrong, I would love for you to correct me, or just point out if something is illogical. Thank you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I never really thought that I would last this long—assassins had such short lives, being caught in such fragile situations. Even now, what I do is not safe or secure, no matter how it looks on the outside. I guess I crave that, though. Working under Woodburn in the embassy hadn’t been enough, not when it came to the itch, the need to get out into the world, to feel useful, to show my face and know that Shawn Masterson wouldn’t know it was me. I used my political connections through Woodburn and took a chance, slowly working my way up a ladder, climbing and climbing, knowing that the end wasn’t in sight for a long time but trying to find it anyway. I still actively worked for Woodburn and his cause with his anti-Helford movement he calls the Underground, but I just had other responsibilities, other people and places to see, than I was tethered to solely working for the cause.

Woodburn has been stationed in Russia as the foreign ambassador from the United States, a career path that has lasted him almost a decade at this point. This occupation, of course, keeps him busy, but also gives him a lot of leniency for travel, with the private jet to prove it. He used this position to build up my new identity, and to establish myself in the dangerous world he lived in.

I remembered the moment well from all of those years ago, when Woodburn strolled up to me and slammed a folder down in front of me and told me this was my new name, my new life, to memorize it and burn it. I had looked at the seal for a long time before I broke it, and I pulled out birth certificates and passports and degrees from schools in foreign countries that would pretend to recognize me as alumni when the time came.

I have had a million and one names, having worked for the company upstairs, but I was no one but Nina Abraham, barely eighteen at the time, who was destined to follow around and politically assist one of the important political figures in the world, growing a prominent voice to a country that so desperately needed to hear what I had to say, a girl who didn’t exist other than in paper and with a special mentality projected from my own smile.

Three years ago, when I genuinely graduated from Oxford with a political science major and a loud diplomatic voice in the British government, I caught the eye of a prominent figure in the government and enough from the people, and they all seemed to like the things I said because they offered me a job, voted me into it, but the prominent figure gave me a better one on top. It gave some people quite the shock to hear that a woman barely over the age of twenty-one was a representative in the House of Commons and was appointed in 10 Downing Street with the title of Parliamentary Private Secretary due to a vacated position, but it was the perfect opportunity for me.

The inner spy in me wanted to poke around at a couple of things that were top secret, but the outward impression I had to give as well as my true inner interest to work my way up in the world kept me away from wading into murky waters.

Woodburn had pulled the strings he needed to get me to where I was today, and all without suspicion from Helford—it turns out some big names over here are heavily leaning in the Underground’s favor and were willing to cover as many tracks as we needed them to. I owed Woodburn for what he did for me, but I liked to think I made up for it with the amount of times he called me at midnight asking me to look something up for him, not to mention the remarkable size of my cell phone bill due to all of the international traveling.

Maybe I didn’t owe him anything, really. Nothing but my life.

Life was a lot easier now, but it was still just as empty. Every morning when I woke up, it was gasping awake from a night terror. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I barely recognized myself most mornings. The first couple of months I had to stand in front of that mirror, trying to drink in my appearance as I told myself my new name over and over again, as if saying that I was Nina Abraham would make me any less Caitie Alastair.