Chapter One

You hadn't realized how screwed you were until you felt the spotlight shining on you. A thousand eyes on you, and you were locked up like a little bird.

The announcer's voice had proclaimed that you were the next one up for bid, and whoever won could do whatever they wanted with you. You cringed as you registered his voice, eyes dancing across the room for an escape, for a plan, for anyway out.

You had nothing, no back-up plan, no partner.

The bidding began, starting at a half a million dollars and quickly escalating past one million dollars.

You tried to pull your arms apart but they were cuffed together. You were disarmed and dressed in bright white dress, as if to signify your purity. No possible weapon, no possible escape option, and you were gagged. You snorted. Where was the FBI when you needed them the most?

For the past few months, you had been working a sting undercover as a maid in a hotel, owned by the Ichinomiya Group, one of the largest in Japan. They owned banks, hotels, trading companies, whatever you could possibly name. They also had many dealings overseas, which is what triggered the whole operation in the first place.

You remembered your excitement when the boss had offered you the job undercover, as you were proficient in Japanese, but felt less and less excited as the details came out. You were to work as a maid, find out about the secret auctions which took place in the hotel, attempt to get close to the board of directors or any executive. You were supposed to work together with the Japanese police, but they had their hands full with the mafia, the Ice Dragons.

Most of your teammates and partners had delegated their work to taking the corrupt board of directors of the Ichinomiya Group down, but Eisuke Ichinomiya had a flawless record and perfect paper, accounting and administrative work. They would sit in the office all day while you would come to the office exhausted from doing your job as a maid, in order to do your job as an agent.

The more time went on, the more discouraged you and your taskforce got. Your boss had completely shifted her attention onto the mafia, your coworkers had begun to lose faith in the rumoured auctions, and you had been too tired to argue after dealing with guests and scrubbing floors for rich people all day. The whole operation had been careening towards a full on bust. In desperation, you had attempted to become more assertive at your job, despite your fake personality as a meek maid.

You had met Eisuke Ichinomiya only twice.

The first time was utter devastation. He had been walking past the hotel front lobby, and you and your new friend Sakiko had been angling at a glance at him. You were pushed by the crowd and nearly fell into his arms, and instead, fell to the floor at his feet in one of the most humiliating moments of your life. He had merely glared at you and walked away as his entourage scolded you.

You could feel the burning anger inside you begin to rise. It was that man, right there, Eisuke, the one who had created this whole shame of a case, leaving no traces behind of any type of evidence. He had been the source of your constant misery for months on end, and he had the nerve to glare at you?

He probably hadn't spared a single thought about you, just thought you were a silly young maid with a crush on the big boss. You made up your mind then, to engage in the most un-agent-like behaviour you had ever conducted in, and break into his penthouse suite that evening. You never got the chance, however.

Because the second time had been on the same day, at the party in the I.V.C. You were working there for all the celebs, the politicians and the businessmen. You were evading awkward touching and attempting to do a good job, despite the stocky man trying to hit on you. He told you that he was worth over 500 million dollars, and you were debating with yourself to take him up on his offer, so you could have the budget to quit the case and pursue other, more relevant ones. Maybe you could finally get that apartment you had been eyeing for ages. You had shaken away your crazy thoughts then, before Ichinomiya walked up to you, scowled, and announced that the party was officially trashy. You probably looked at him the wrong way or something. He then ordered you to move aside, you were blocking his path. You bit back a few choice words, before apologizing, and he made his way out the door.

You noticed that he had dropped a white glove onto the floor. He was exiting the party at a breathtaking speed. Quickly making up your mind, you grabbed the glove and meekly called after him, so you could leave the party under the guise of concern for a client.

You were lead to a long hallway, with several doors on either side of the hallway. He wasn't there. You could heard voice coming from the far room, and your heart began to pound.

You looked through the gap, and saw briefcases lying on a table, filled with guns and money. There were men in black discussing something in hushed voice. You couldn't identify what language it was, it was certainly not Japanese or English- perhaps Cantonese or Mandarin.

At this moment, hope was injected back into your body. You began to feel like yourself again. Your fingers began to twitch, feeling the excitement of opportunity and illegal activity literally turning you back on from a robot to a human being. But before you could react or begin to investigate, you were accosted by a handsome looking Chinese man, with slicked back hair, and a suit and tie. He had asked you what you were doing here, and in your guise as a terrified maid, you had babbled incoherently and apologized.

He ordered you to forget everything you saw, or face death. You nodded over and over, like a shameless bobble head, and he lets you go.

You begin running down to the basement of the hotel, pulse racing. You knew who that man was. Soryu Oh, a known mafia associate, part of the Ice Dragons. You had seen his face in pictures, accompanied by a group of intimidating looking men. Your boss was going to flip- what on earth was a mobster doing here, engaging in illegal activities, in Ichinomiya's hotel?

Yes, your undercover scheme was worth it. The mafia was definitely here, secret auctions or not. Finally, you had something to show for, something to prove.

You were debating making the call from the basement of the hotel, where you had previously stashed a burn phone. You had to let your colleagues know that you weren't completely useless, and that we were on to something.

Your luck was about to run out at that point. You hear a crash, see two men inspecting something that had broken into a box. They began to wail that the statue was broken, a beautiful broken glass statue… that resembled another case that was assigned to Interpol. The President of France had given Japan this statue as a gift- but it was stolen from a museum. The case kept getting more and more intense.

When they had looked up, they had yelled at you, said that the statue was something that was to be put on auction. At that word, you had approached them slowly, like an animal. An auction? What auction? The stolen statue? The guns? The drugs? You had barely got in a word before a third man had crept up behind you, hit you hard over the head, and you woke up in a cage.

The bidding was still going. You were at a measly 2 million dollars now, and beginning to feel insulted. An older man was bidding on you, over and over again. You looked straight at him, realizing it was the same stocky man from before. This was no problem, you could intimidate your way out of this one and put him in jail before anyone would know the wiser. Furthermore, you could probably still keep working the case.

The auctioneer began to countdown, and you squeezed your eyes shut. You knew that there were secret auctions, you just knew it. And finally, finally, your work had paid off, even though you knew that this was possibly the most terrible situation to be in at this point. You had what you needed, some sliver of evidence that you and your team weren't actually crazy. All you needed to do was some more investigation, and of course, get yourself to safety.

Then, the bid of 20 million dollars came from the seat 100. You had actually frozen in shock. A bell sounded, a screen flashed the number which you were bought for, and the auction came to a close.

20 million? You were stunned by the ridiculous number. In fact, you were so shell-shocked, you didn't even fight against the men leading you to the highest bidder.

You were lead away from the stage to the hotel's penthouse by two familiar looking men, before you turned face-to-face with two other immediately recognizable men.

Soryu Oh, member of the mafia, with the sharp eyes.

And the number one person of interest, Eisuke Ichinomiya.