Disclaimer: Standard rules apply.
Pee-Ess: Wow, the annual anniversay mark has just been passed. With a mere number of seven chapters. If that doesn't say something about my progress, then I won't encourage anything else that will give it away.
Interlude
(Tuesday, March 10; three days prior to blind date)
There was an insistent knock at the door and she waved her personal assistant to open the door. A man steadily walked through and up to the woman's desk, placing a folder in front of her.
She looked at it and back up at him, raising a perfected eyebrow. "What is this?"
"The files found on one of your targets, ma'am. Ms. Valentine has been found on the internet," he said and promptly left thereafter.
The woman sitting down at the desk (newly buffed) raised her eyebrows slightly and opened the manila folder, peering down at the documents.
After a few minutes of shuffling through papers and some brief comments under a sharp tongue, she closed the folder and snapped at her assistant.
"Get Alecto in here, now," she ordered whilst examining her nails.
The small woman nodded and went out of the room. The woman reopened the folder and sat back in her seat, delicately clasping her hands in front of her and waited for Victoria to return with Alecto.
Victoria came in followed by a handsome young man who looked a bit perturbed to be in the room. Victoria moved to the corner of the room as Alecto walked close to the desk, raising a dark eyebrow at the woman across from him.
"What do you want?" His behavior then and there, if he were anyone else, would have him fired without a second's notice, but the woman had unusually more patience with this particular man.
She smiled at him, her blue eyes meeting his without any intimidation. Perhaps, it was because their eyes shared the same icy tint. She leaned forward and placed her clasped hands on top of the desk, eyeing him with a mix of annoyance and amusement.
"Alecto, brother dear, I have a favor to ask of you," she said, her voice ill with saccharine.
Alecto crossed his arms and tilted his head, matching her smile with one of his own, flashing a dazzling set of straight teeth. "A favor. Knowing you, you'd probably want me to do your dirty laundry, and I don't mean clothes. Am I right Anneleine, sister dear?"
She laughed and shook her head. "Clever you are. Anyway, I want you to look at these files." She then pushed the folder across the desk towards him.
Alecto walked forward and picked it up, opening it and reading the contents inside. After a few minutes he looked at his sister and raised an eyebrow.
"Who is this Faye Valentine?" he asked while gazing at a picture of a beautiful woman with violet hair and striking green eyes. Her expression alone sparked his interest.
Anneleine smiled. "Exchange Valentine with Sadire and tell me if that sounds familiar."
"Sadire? Faye Sadire?" Alecto paused for a moment before his eyes widened. "What the fuck? Sadire as in the Gregory Sadire?"
She nodded. "Yes, as in Gregory Sadire. She is one of our prime targets and I need you to get more information on her."
Alecto threw the folder onto the desk and stared down at his older sister. "Wait a minute. First of all you explain to me what you mean by Faye Sadire. I thought that name had ended more than thirty years ago? How the hell is there a generation popping out of nowhere? Gregory Sadire died thirty-five years ago along with his syndicate. What the hell Anna?"
"Yes, he had died, and soon after his beloved syndicate – as well as the first ever established – collapsed in mourn of their lost leader. Have you ever heard of the Gate accident that happened fifty years ago?"
He thought for a moment then nodded. "Yeah, the one from earth. What about it?"
"Well, Gregory Sadire had a family. He had a wife and a daughter. Faye had been involved in a study and was to be a part of a team that took a shuttle up to the universe and investigate the planetary life. Unfortunately, the shuttle didn't make it past the Gate leading to the developing universe.
"Seemingly; however, there were a few who survived, Faye being one of them. They were in space, and obviously couldn't be brought back to Earth. There was a scientist though on Mars with another research operation on biological life, and he had started a project on cryogenically freezing species. He found Faye and because her files were lost, he decided to use her – without her consent – as his human guinea pig."
Alecto frowned. "So he illegally used her as his test subject? So what, her family thought she was dead?"
"There wasn't any news on anyone making it out okay. Faye was pulled from the shuttle before the investigators could seek through."
He was silent for a moment before asking, "So apparently she's alive and well now? How long was she frozen?"
Anneleine got up from her seat and walked around the desk until she was in front of Alecto. Leaning against the wood, she crossed her arms slowly. "Around fifty years. She woke up five years ago and though there weren't any files found on her, I did my research and put two and two together," she said. Her smile was anything but chaste.
He looked down at the folder than at his sister, perplexed. He knew what her objectives were in terms of this budding syndicate, but he didn't know what the lost daughter of the most notorious syndicate leader had to do with anything. He thought for a moment and realized that his sister's plans were all coming together now.
"So originally you wanted to resurrect the Golden Serpent Syndicate and merge it with the now muddled Red Dragons to fuse the greatest and the strongest, am I right?"
"More or less."
"And you didn't know how you were going to do that. In fact, this…project wasn't even yours to begin with. Father had tried doing this for the majority of his syndicate career."
She sighed and slanted her head. "Alec, he worked so hard for the last ten years of his life in the Red Dragon Syndicate to do this. All he wanted was to bring back the one syndicate that started it all, and by bringing it into the one he was in now, he could have had all the power to control this whole goddamned universe. He died trying, and now I'm stepping up to finish it."
Alecto narrowed his eyes slightly and crossed his own arms. "You honestly think you can pull this off?"
Her laughter was humorless as she pushed herself off the desk and walked around toward the window, gesturing widely to the office. "Look at where we are standing. I have gotten up this far on the ladder with or without anyone getting in my way, and I will honor our father's wishes, however it takes."
"So what does Faye Valentine have to do with any of this shit?"
Anneleine turned around and smiled at him. "Dear brother, this is where the fun starts. You see, I cannot literally resurrect the Golden Serpent Syndicate and take possession of it, seeing as how the legal heir to all executive ownership is alive and well. And because a certain man by the name of Spike Spiegel had single-handedly killed the leader of the Red Dragon, that position is granted to him by default, though regrettably."
Alecto glanced at her. "What? Spike Spiegel? I thought he died."
"Yes, well, that man is very good at hiding. And as it appears to be so, he and our lovely heiress are in near contact with one another," she told him, walking back to her desk and shuffling through some papers until she found the one she had been looking for. She held it up to Alecto and he scanned over it, confusion and bewilderment crossing his handsome face.
"A birth certificate? They had a kid together!"
Anneleine's smile grew. "Which means that the dirty work is done. There is now a new heir to the merged syndicates."
He stared at her. "You've got to be shitting me."
"So." Anneleine pulled out another paper. "It seem that they're making their living as bounty hunters. For their next bounty head, Faye entered herself in a blind date service. This is where you come in."
Alecto laughed at her and after a moment said, "You can't be serious."
"When am I not?" she shot back, raising a brow at him.
He shook his head and gestured wildly with his arms. "So what, you want me to follow her and kidnap her?"
"I don't want Faye. I want her baby. And I need you to put a tracking device on her, which means that you will need to be in physical contact with her. Your best shot is that date."
Alecto sighed and returned his arms to their crossed position. "You're going to track her."
"Obviously we can't get the baby now. We have to wait until they're stabilized on a planet and then when they're least expecting it, we'll snatch little Cailin up. Then voila, we have our new heir to this wonderful junction of syndicates."
"Wait a minute, you said that I have be her blind date? You're putting a bounty on my head?"
"Don't be stupid. There's already a bounty on that date. We'll just capture him ourselves and coerce the lovely duds at ISSP to keep quiet about it. Then, you go in as him, as easy as that. You go on the date, put the tracker on her - and please, don't try anything stupid, Alec. We can't have her falling for you."
He laughed at her audacity. "It's hard not to fall for someone as myself, in all honesty," he said vainly for her sake. As beautiful as this Faye Valentine may be, he's going to politely excuse himself from her and this whole ill-conceived ordeal.
Anneleine's smile was more disconcerting than assuring and Alecto mulled over this proposal. Being younger than his sister, and to be quite truthful more principled, he didn't see the straight reasoning beyond his sister's twisted logic. Anneleine wasn't a person to be reckoned with, and she was a narcissist lustful for everything that wasn't hers. These two separate syndicates aren't clubs that she can manage because she says so. Of course, his sister wasn't without education on these things, her position in this corporation (being the best word he can describe it to be seeing as it is without title of being a Syndicate) glorifying her supremacy.
But he didn't see why she had to go and set herself up to try and carry out their father's wishes. If it took their father ten years scheming only to die trying, then how confident is she to actually do it? She had the money and power and contacts to turn this building into a Syndicate building, to, with a flick of her wrist, be the most powerful leader of all syndicates, even more so because she is a woman. But once her interest settled on doing the near impossible to the general throng of syndicate savvy, a witted and devilish smile along with a few vain words set her off with a new mission.
Alecto laughed not kindly and looked at his sister in a mixture of dismay and amusement. "You're going to end up in a pile of bullshit, Anneleine, before you know it."
She laughed mildly. "Ah yes, maybe so," her voice then lowered with an ominous and blazed tone, "but Alec dear, you're going to do what I say, whether you want to or not."
There's the little devil. Alecto's smirk splintered into a waxed smile as he saluted his sister, for all purposes vindictive. He may agree to take part in this expedition, but he won't abide by her orders, seeing as she is not his warden. For conventional purposes, recreation more than intentional, until he can figure how to dismantle her wires.
For now, he will just have to appeal to this Faye Valentine and maybe get more information on her and her "family". Besides, who am I to pass up on a date with a woman such as herself, he thought as he glanced down at the picture on the desk of a violet-haired woman with dazzling green eyes.
"Let the fun begin."
