The Story of Blood and Roses

Next were her accounts: how well she had run the different businesses that she was assigned to, and the details of Poseidon's Realm. Poseidon's Realm had been inaugurated five years ago after many other clubs that she ran and was an immediate hit due to its ambiance and mythological reference. She even had interviews with the top newspapers and news channels about market strategies. Turns out that she is a big face in the marketing business, yet has no business of her own. Her boss was never named, but her background had certainly made some influence. She had been popular among the rich crowd back in her prostituting days and those rich clients had followed her to the club. They wanted a glimpse of their favorite Cee Doll. The rich were followed by stars from across the country and then the globe and the stars attracted commoners. Cienna must have been ecstatic by the success of her strategy. I assumed that Tanya had some hand in this and prevented any scandalous stories to leak. It was just Cienna's face plastered on the screen that had influenced the hitting off of her favorite club, Poseidon's Realm.

There were other unimportant details about her marital status and height, but one of the recent details caught my eyes. Despite her possession of drugs previously, she had never actually been found under influence until in recent times. About three months ago, Cienna had been found under the influence of some truly colorful drugs in the middle of a public park, screaming about her being the victim of some master plan. The cops had tried to take her away, but she was safely escorted away from the place after her companions came into the picture as she refused to leave with the cops.

I made some mental calculations in my head. Her strengths were her age, obviously. She knew far more than I did... and had inside information. She was a professional at sucking Anthony off, which was a bonus for Anthony to keep her around, I presumed (not that I wanted to do anything that had the word 'sucking' and 'Anthony' in the same sentence). And she had a wicked sense of marketing. She could make a commodity that was not worth the attention of the public seem like the elixir of life. This seemed to be her strength.

Her weaknesses were equal in comparison. She had a nasty temper and stupidity to match it. Her past as a prostitute bothered her and she shunned away from it despite using it to her advantage at times and that she may or may not have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

I put these down in my file and let it stay there. Not satisfied with what I had found, I got over to other people in the organization. I found little to nothing about these people because of their non-criminal status. Most of them had gotten nothing worse than speeding tickets which were saying something.

The access to the government records proved that they were all citizens of America but some were early immigrants after the war. Even though the information said that there was not much to them, Anthony's interest in them made me believe otherwise. I had heard about Sean and was in no mood to waste time researching about him because I knew that he would readily provide me with the answers that I wanted.

Now there were two people that I could check out. One was Anthony and the other was Ethan. Some of Ethan's information was lying with me in my email id as Jake had sent it to me. On the other hand, some information about Anthony was there in the black files that I had received. Anthony was a lost cause because any concrete information about him had a chance of being false and may have misled me. Hence the only option left was Ethan. The dilemma was there, but not for long. It was for research purposes and he didn't need to know anything about it.

But there was a pang of nagging guilt in my head about how unfair it would be to give the man space at first and then sneak behind his back to find out more about him.

'They are doing the same about you! Don't you think that they did a thorough check about you? It's a different issue that they found nothing to hold against you, but they too went behind your backs. And none of that should matter because you are on a mission and no emotions can be involved. Any sense of duty, guilt, love, anger can lead to fading of the goal from in front of your eyes. Do you want to fail? You have been training for the opportunity to do this all your life and you throw it away just because you've suddenly gained some morals and want to act upon them. It does not work like that! This moment is yours and you must cease it because if you are exposed no moment will be spared to put an end to you. They do not need you like they needed Scott.'

Fear crept into my body.

'They must need something from me, too.

And you must hope that they never get what they want because it can't be good. You must work and do so fast enough to accumulate information and place yourself in a protection cell.

Or you can kill the bastard for ruining your family and a chance at a normal life.'

I jolted upright and typed furiously. My inner voice had been quite right. It was something to be scared off; their interest in me and my abilities. And I needed to accumulate all that I could even if it ate away at me. I was not betraying anyone. I was just going to betray myself if I went back on my promise and quit this and lose control over some part of this mission. I would never let that happen.

There were not many Ethan's in the database, only three and his surname was a dead giveaway. I opened his file and saw a picture of him in a uniform. His hair was cropped in an army cut. There was nothing unique about his face as such. He looked nothing like the Ethan that one would see today.

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