The Story of Blood and Roses

Chapter 49 Sniper Online

I had actually thought that I'd get some rest while I was on 'vacation'. Turned out, I was incapable of enjoying my time alone and threw myself into cleaning up my apartment, washing my car and other such activities. After a long time, the apartment genuinely felt like home and not just a place I crash at, at night. It was clean, without any dirty dishes in the sink or an overflowing trash can. Sometimes I wondered if I was just messy or didn't have the time to take care of my chores. I hoped that it was the latter. Those were the first two days of my vacation. The third day had gone by and there had been not a single spot left to be cleaned. I thought I could see my face on the floor. Anthony was yet to call.

That night, I didn't get a blink of sleep. I cooked up all sorts of scenarios where Anthony planned to take action against Darcy without my help or knowledge. I wouldn't mind if he excluded me from his plans of ruining Darcy, but it was pretty evident that I would get screwed if something went wrong and Darcy went after everyone who dared to go against him. Anthony, I realized, had played a cruel game and introduced me to the 'visitors' sent by Luke Darcy, thereby making them believe that I was someone of importance to the gang and Anthony. It was indeed a clever trick, and someday, I'd get back at Anthony for it. In retrospect, he had been flaunting me. More like rubbing my presence in their faces. I chalked that up to lack of trust, obviously.

Just because he'd stopped those trailing bastards didn't mean that he had suddenly grown less cautious about me. This was the method he was using to ensure that I would be plastered to his side at all costs so that I could save my own skin. He was right, of course. Anyone would have done the same, but I had no choice in it. I would have to blindly follow him anywhere and win his trust. If facing Luke Darcy with a blindfold was the beginning of gaining his trust, I would grab at the opportunity.

I then deduced that my worries were unjustified. Anthony wouldn't just barge into anything if he had been planning these under the radar projects for a long time. And leaving me behind was not an option. I was an asset to the mob, and both of us knew it.

Which brought me to the functioning of the mob; it seemed to be working in some sort of a hierarchical pyramid on top of which sat Pharaoh Anthony Murray. There seemed to be heads of different portfolios. I had, had the privilege of meeting the head of security, Ethan and my personal favorite, Cienna. It turned out that she was head of the legal businesses. There were other important portfolios as well, I had found. One was media. It was definite. To keep Anthony's existence under the wrap would take some serious influencing. I was sure I'd heard about some journalist—who was turning into the star of the nation, working for Anthony.

Then there would be a Head for the illegal trades or maybe one head for each type of business. There was only one way to find out... research. I had one definite source I could use to get the answers from. That source would be Sean, but I assumed that Ethan would be more resourceful in these matters. I believed that he'd been there longer and knew more about the secretive ongoings in the mob than most.

I remembered a guy named Alec who had been on the receiving end of Anthony's wrath when a chunk of the shipments went missing. He probably looked out for the docks... probably not that high on the social ladder, but it was a pretty important job to have. Looking after the safe passage of shipments would be a tough job.

Then there was Eric who seemed to be the head of the investigation department. When I looked closely into the matter, it made sense for Anthony to simply ask Eric to put a few boys to follow me. He didn't need a private investigator or strangers to do the work for him. I decided that I would give Daisy a call to let her know of my assumption. Maybe she had already found everything but was extremely busy with her own work to let me know.

Again, there was no use becoming too dependent on her. I could do this the old fashioned way and find out for myself. There was no need to be stuck in front of a computer screen all day long to find answers that one could gain manually and probably without inflicting as much damage to the eye as that the glare of the computer screen would.

I should have made a list so that I hadn't missed out on any of the queries that I had, but I think that would have turned out to be a bit, too, suspicious.

'So, who to call over, Ethan or Sean?'

I needed an excuse, fast. If it was Sean, I could just call him over to celebrate his kick-ass performance in the treasure hunt, even though it was a bit belated, or I could call up Ethan and demand answers from him without any hesitation. Both the options seemed pretty convincing, but I chose Ethan because that was where the undisputed inside news could be gained from. We were going to work closely for a long period of time in the near future and discussing strategy seemed like a pretty amazing thing to do.

Now, the question remained: how did one contact Ethan? I couldn't possibly ask Anthony to give me Ethan's number. That would just bring up a lot of questions that were better avoided. So, how did I go about doing it? I fired up my email and checked the people who were online. Of course, like the web addict that he was, the prince of the Organization—next in line to take the reins of his father's business, sniper Jacob Hunt was online.

---------

[Donate @ paypal.me/SunScar9 and ko-fi.com/sunscar9 to ensure I don't starve.]