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"Central to X-22. Report status. Have you located the suspected dealer? Over," The radio of a police cop called to the driver and a woman of black complexion and hair.

"Central, here X-22. We are following a tip from our informant, we'll keep looking, over." Vagatha lied. In front of her police car she could see her police mate Angel collecting the share for drgus from a local dealer.

Vagatha found herself parked in an abandoned alley where she knew no one would bump them by mere accident. She made sure a third time in the day her police uniforme remained neat and took a particular focus on her plaque hanging on the left side of her torso.

She pulled out a grey with red smartphone from her pocket and opened a chat she had with her girlfriend, Charlie. The history chat displayed a list of compliments, flirts, cheering up phrases, lots of emojis hearts, dogs and rainbows and a myriad of colors from the sender, whereasg Vagatha tried to play along as best as she could.

In that instance she limited herself to send an emoji of a bird, a cloud and a green check.

Vagatha allowed herself to relax after sending that message and let her view get lost at nothing at all, until her eyes fell in the rear-view mirror between the driver and copilot seats. She saw herself and the criminal situation she carried on. Though it wasn't the most correct per se, she had convinced herself it was the best on the long run.

To that day, she still had doubts about how she had ended up in a relationship with the daughter of the capo of the biggest mafia in the city.

Vagatha remembered It all had started when she caught in a dealer with pounds of cocaine in his car. She had turned him in, but in a matter of days he had been set free and Vagatha sought an explanation.

"Come in." Her sergeant said when she knocked his door.

"Sir, I wanted to ask about the dealer that I…we turned in. Bastard's got plenty of packages on his car. Why had he been set free?"

"Bail."

"Say what again?"

"Someone paid his bail, didn't you hear?"

Vagatha blinked a few times confused. "Sir, it had come to my understanding he had been denied his right to pay for a bail.

"What you want me to do? Junkie's got persuasive friends. Get the fuck out of my office, Jiménez and do something of use for once."

The woman cop could distinguish a couple bottles of alcohol in his shelfs.

Vagatha didn't find funny at all when the same guy was arrested two weeks later as he tried to sell small packages of cocaine hidden beneath his shirt.

Vagatha had been assigned with the task to patrol the streets in search of other dealers like the one she arrested to find clues in the product's origin. But observing from afar had never been her strongest suit. So instead she walked through the city streets trying to lure the least attention to herself possible. As much as she could with her police uniform on.

It had been several hours already and the most excitement she had found in her day was the verbal fight she had with a driver who had overstayed at the parking meter and she gave her a fine. She almost wished the situation had escalated to put his ass in the ground and put him inside her car. Anything to make her day any less blant.

It seemed the angel hear her prays Meanwhile Vagatha rested her stare, she found a tall women with a brown smoking that was surely equivalent to one month on Vagatha's salary. She had been hawking at her and her blonde hair fluttering against the wind for more time she was willing to admit. Her mind had gone blank.

And it would had have stayed that way, but Vagatha managed to catch how that woman received a yellow package from a hooded man from head to toes with a large grey hat, hidden in the insides of an abandoned buildings before he disappeared. Vagatha immediately recognized what kind of envelop that was. Some senior cops had confiscated a similar package from a small group of criminals of the Morningstar mafia.

All happened in less than a second and the woman continued walking with package at hand without saying a word and they walked separated paths.

She opted for following that woman and discover what the hell was her deal. She couldn't follow her from her police patrol or she would call too much undesired attention, so, with pistol at her holster, Vagatha opted herself to carry on her feet as fast and discreet as possible.

Despite her efforts to follow that woman and discover what was her damn deal, there was always that impeded her to reach her. Bumps with people, trips, traffic.

After following her for several streets Vagatha managed to peek how the woman entered a dog shelter she knew well. More than once she and other cops had received don't for robberies or even discussions that had escalated into violent brawls.

Whenever she was nearby and her job allowed it, Vagatha passed by and checked out everything were in order and nobody wanted to screw over Sr. Pentious, the shelter's owner.

Vagatha's alarms kept tuned when she saw the woman coming out of the shelter just as quick as she entered. Her mind went to the worst-case scenario at once. Right after the woman had walked away far enough, Vagatha entered the shelter kicking the door open with her pistol at hand ready for the worst. A couple of puppies sleeping nearby the door ran away scared in different directions with clear cries of fear. To her not-so big surprise, quick and loud steps as thunder strikes alerted her of the first person to receive her, a man in his thirties with black hair falling down to his back with a blue dark jacket and an old and dirty yellow shirt beneath. He charged into the reception with a shotgun in his hands.

"Get away from my babies or I will blow your fucking blow your h—! Pentious stopped right where he was upon seeing the cop at his reception. "Oh, is just you, Ms. Vagatha. What may I do for you in this fine evening?" All the hate and panic in his voice had vanished in a matter of seconds but he Pentious still held his shotgun at Vagatha.

"First, put that thing away." The woman showed herself undeterred to Sr. Pentious and his shotgun. Right where he couldn't see, Vagatha's hand trembled tense and still behind her back in case she needed to use it. In. Case.

"Oh, my most sincere apologies, Ms. Vagatha. Mi paternal instinct warned me of the terror invading my little creatures and I abided my duty as father." Pentious finally put down his gun and went to a back room to store it back.

"I need to ask you about the woman that just entered. The one with an classy suit and long blonde hair. Why she came here? I need information, and I need it fast."

Pentious stretched the neck of his yellow shirt. "Is not I don't want to help you—"

"Then you will tell me what I want to know."

"—But you know better than anyone that kind of information is expensive…more than one can imagine. Today is it you who comes through my door seeking answer, but tomorrow, good god, I don't want to imagine."

"If you tell me what you know I will pretend I didn't see the shotgun you just aimed at my face, for which I'm sure you don't have a license to hold and that I don't know how you got a hold of."

Pentious cried out to the ceiling and kicked out like a kid for a few seconds before he recomposed himself. "Alright. I don't know her name, but she comes once a month to leave…a payment."

"A payment," Vagatha repeated, hoping she heard wrong.

"Yes."

"A payment…of…money."

"Yes, of course."

"Why would she do that?"

"How I'm supposed to know!?" Pentious threw his hands to the air and shrugged his shoulders. "She was the one who came to me. I thought someone finally became interested in my personality and heart. Do you have any idea how tedious is to be father to thirty dogs on your own alone?"

"Pentious, focus."

"What I want to mean is, if you find a dollar in the floor, you don't ask yourself how it got there. You just grab it and carry with your life a little less miserable." One of Pentious' dogs came out of the shelter's kitchena d ran to his owner and bit his pants pulling them until the small puppie teared them with a clear ripping sound Pentious only exhaled without doing nothing to stop it. "Those were my last intact pants."

Vagatha's brow frowned a bit. "If I were you, I'd make sure no one is looking for that dollar. How much are we talking about here?"

"Not much actually. Just some ten…yes, ten grands a month."

If Vagatha had been drinking water, she would have spitted out in Pentious' face. "Ten thousand a month for a dog's shelter?"

"If you will stay here to criticize my every life decision, my mother already does that for me!"

A gut feeling advised Vagatha there was little else of use she could get out of out of Pentious. She left the shelter and resumed her search for the unknown woman.

To her good luck she managed to spot her before she turned around a corner in a street and hastened to follow her.

Vagatha could let it go. She could be not so impulsive and keep an eye on Pentious' shelter, waiting for her return or go to the police for a way to identify her.

Maybe it was out of boredom or her impulse for a merit with which stand out. None of those options sounded good enough for her.

Her mind was so busy justifying itself she didn't have time to react to the hand that grabbed her by her neck, lifting her off the ground to immediately after stomp her against the pavement like a ragdoll. Vagatha's body hit the hard concrete and her view became blurred for a few seconds. For a little while she could see smells and hear flavors. The hit had stunned her and deafened her. She couldn't stand.

Vagatha couldn't tell if she didn't hear anything around her because of the hit, or because she didn't realize she had walked into one of the city's abandoned streets where barely any homeless vagabond lived, if any at all.

When she finally returned to planet earth, the first thing she saw was the blonde woman standing in front of her. If her eyes were working correctly once again, she could swear she had seen some trail of…preoccupation?

But before she could confirm anything, a figure emerged over her. Covered in a brown hoodie from head to toes and a grey fedora hat on his head. It was the same figure who had given the woman that package full of money.

Cop and hooded figure stared at each other, as much as they could with Vagatha on the floor managing to tell the man was in his forties, face filled with some wrinkles in his goatee beard. His expression one of few friends and one filled with the full desire to kill someone: Her, most likely.

Over time, sound came back to Vagatha and could catch some of the discussion between woman and man.

"You went too harsh on her!" The woman shouted at him, wanting to help the cod, but she didn't know if she should or how to even do it.

"So?" You told me to take care of her." The man answered back as simply as the woman did exalted.

"Not to almost kill her! She's not a-a-a-a junkie or…a stoner or something worse!"

"She followed you like one."

"That's not the point! The point is…" The woman sighed and inclined her back to Vagatha. "Er…Hi, are you okay? I'm sorry Husk was so hard on you," The woman pointed at the hooded man with a wave of her hand. "He was doing his job…and I think you were just doing yours too…anyways! Name's Charlotte. Yours is…? "Charlotte realized the floor maybe was not the best of places to carry a conversation on, she asked Husk with an eyes signal to help her stand up.

Husk complied, lifting her with the same effortless move with which he tackled her down with and put her back against a wall and kept his hand at her shoulder firmly.

"Again, I'm really sorry, I-we had to be sure you wouldn't cause us any trouble, er, Officer." Charlotte cleaned some of the dust in Vagatha's uniform.

Only then Vagatha had returned to herself fully and had only grasped fragments of her encounter and the situation she found herself in. Her brown hair had turned into a mess and now covered one of her eyes. The one uncovered eye became filled with a fierceness Husk identified in an instant. The will to fight with whoever on had in front of them no matter how injured one could get.

For two whole seconds those were Vagatha's intentions until Husk turned her around and stomped her face against the wall and grabbed one of her arms against her back. Such defenseless position only exuberated Vagatha's rage, but Husk didn't let her move one inch.

"Husk, please," Chalotte said, almost begging. Husk eased up his clutch on her but still held Vagatha against the wall. A little more relaxed and having an easier time to breath, Charlotte said: "I don't want to cause you any harm Officer, I hope just you understand it…worried us, that you were following me, and…we had to be cautious. Nothing more."

"I'll give you a reason to be! Who do you think you are and why you have that package full of money!?" Vagatha spoke for the first time, only being able to see Charlotte in the corner of her eye.

Upon hearing such question, Charlotte played with her long hair as she laughed, unable to look at Vagatha. "Unfortunately, I don't think I can answer that? If my father finds out, I don't want to imagine what would happen…especially with you. He will maybe send you to sleep with the fishes." She thought out loud that last part, only realizing the such words escaped from her lips and her eyes opened up wide in terror. "¡Is not like he will do that!" She raised up her hands in front of her. "I hope not," She whispered to herself. "Well, he won't as long as he doesn't find out I found out you found me out. So we can…simplyyyyy…" Charlotte begged with her eyes to Husk to step in with a solution as she tried to give her most confident smile lacking of nervousness.

"Kill her."

"Let me go."

"No!" Charlotte squealed before she covered her mouth with her hands, as if someone was going to hear them, despite the fact that she knew there was no one around them.

She couldn't help but fall silent as a sign of her recurrent stress in the situation, or any situation considering her…line of work.

Charlotte couldn't let her go. If she did, she would run the risk of having these police come back from her, only to trap her and use her as a weak point in her father's criminal world. And she would not return alone.

Her, the entire police force, every crime boss she could name, and God only knows how many more.

Blood. It would end in blood. Blood on her hands.

And if Charlotte killed her, she would end up with her blood on her hands.

Did she always have to end in blood?

Was there no other way?

Those same questions ran through Vagatha's mind out of survival instincts and impulsive temperament.

"We must hurry or Don Morningstar will be upset if you are late." Husk broke the silence.

Vagatha found herself strange at such a statement and at the mention of a mob lord, only beginning to understand that she had walked down the wrong shit hole, or she thought so, that she was beginning to understand.

"Who the hell are you even to have anything with Don Morningstar?" Vagatha asked as she tried to keep her face away from the grime of the brick wall she was stuck to.

Charlie forced a smile as she inhaled and sighed, then rubbed her neck. "I'm sure he'll understand if we explain the…situation. Nothing to worry about."

"So I kill her already?" Husk pulled Vagatha away from the wall and drew a knife from her trench coat, placing the tip of her blade into her neck as he now held her stomach. The police instinctively tried to get as far away from the knife as possible without much success.

"No! Wait! Why did you give money to the owner of the animal shelter!? Where did you get the money!? What other illegal businesses do you have!?" By now, Vagatha was asking more out of desperation of never knowing the truth if she died than out of a true sense of justice or duty.

Husk snarled at her questions and pressed the blade harder into her skin. The two connected eyes with each other with intense desires to kill the other. Vagatha gritted her teeth, preparing herself if she had to throw punches and for the worst when-

"Why wouldn't I?" A voice interrupted her silent desire for blood. Charlie's voice.

Cop and thug looked at her confused. Her expressions filled with an expression of: "What do you mean?"

"Why wouldn't I give money to a dog shelter when I can? It's the least I can do, after all he's done. Besides, if I don't do it, who will? Charlie was unable to look at Husk and Vagatha and only looked to the sides.

"What the f-Who is "he?" Who are you?" Vagatha was getting fed up with this situation, and not just from his knife against her throat.

"The truth is that I hate pulling this card but, I was referring to Lucifer Morningstar." Charlie pressed her lips together as she rocked her head slightly from side to side, as if she was choosing her next words carefully. "He's…well…he's my dad." Charlie tried to make it sound like the most natural thing in the world.

Vagatha blinked uncertainly, unsure that she heard Charlie correctly, unsure if she should believe him in the first place. There was very little they knew about Lucifer Morningstar for sure, so Vagatha could only assume that if someone made such bold statements, they either had a death wish or were telling the truth.

Somehow Vagatha believed both options applied to Charlotte.

Cold sweat broke out on her brown skin. She almost wanted to want to laugh. Almost.

Morningstar? A daughter!? She had only been a cop for a few months and she already knew shit that only criminal bosses should know! This was like knowing the biggest secret of her worst enemy. The kind of secret that could get her killed by for knowing! Except this was ACTUALLY the biggest secret of her worst enemy, for fuck's sake!

And now if Vagatha managed to get out of this disaster alive with the intention of telling of her discovery, Charlotte's two options would apply to her as well.

She was probably seconds away from death and yet the same insignificant question filled her future empty head: "What does Pentious have to do with all this?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Pentious. Why him of all people? Do you use his shelter as a money laundering business?"

Husk growled once more at her intrusive questions, but Vagatha didn't care as she believed she was seconds away from dying.

"Oh no! No no no! On the contrary! He was the one who told me that he wanted to open a dog shelter."

Vagatha's lie detector skyrocketed to the sky, but she at the same time she could see the conviction with which Charlotte backed her words. But then Husk interrupted them.

"If we don't come back soon the boss will shit on us."

"I'm sure if I-we... explain the situation to him, he won't."

"He'll shit on me."

Charlie swallowed heavily. "We can't leave her here. That just leaves me with the option of bringing her with us to see what we do with her. And definitely not…kill her." Charlie whispered that last part to herself.

"The boss won't like you dealing with a cop."

"Let me be the one to deal with him," Charlie said with a smile, a sudden boost of confidence.

Husk grunted to himself and the three of them headed deeper into the alley they were in until they came upon a sleek white car. Vagatha didn't know much about cars, but she could guess that it was a carefully preserved old model.

Husk tied Vagatha from hands and legs, blindfolded and deprived her gun away from her before he threw her into the back seats of the car, taking the driver's seat and Charlotte the passenger seat. Vagatha could hear them arguing, probably over what to do with her, but Vagatha was too busy trying to free herself from her restraints and remove her blindfold to hear them.

Husk started the car and the three of them drove out of the alley onto busier streets in the city. After several minutes of spinning around like a twisted worm in the back seats, Vagatha managed to remove the blindfold over one of her eyes. She immediately tried to see through the window as she lay down and was only able to recognize the silhouettes of the buildings for a short period of time before the car entered parts of the city she was unfamiliar with.

At a certain point, the natural light was decimated as the car entered a place Vagatha couldn't tell exactly where it was, once the car stopped Vagatha could only assume that the discussion between Charlotte and Husk about what to do with her had only been postponed. for later.

Vagatha lost sight of them as they got out of the car, but she could still hear one of them approach the back door of the car Vagatha was staring at and saw their shadow rise from the car window, immersing Vagatha's silhouette as a prelude to her destiny.

Shit! She could see when she was supposed to be blindfolded! Even if she didn't know exactly where she was she could guess an approximate and that could end up killing her.

The car knob began to move to open.

"Okay. This was it. All or nothing. I will fight until I find a way out like I always do," Vagatha thought. "And that old bastard is not going to s-!"

When the door opened, Charlotte was on the other side. Each looking at the other in a frozen response. Vagatha found herself on the verge of getting into a fight as Charlotte thawed into a fawning response as she put Vagatha's blindfold back where it was supposed to be. Most of Vagatha's self-preservation anger de-escalated, leaving just enough for a sense of alertness and wariness.

"Who's the dead weight?" A male voice asked between laughs as Vagatha felt her legs and arms being tied to a wooden chair.

"Angel! Not today please don't start! She's not dead weight."

"She soon she will be," Vagatha heard Husk say.

"OK!" Chalotte took a deep, quick breath. "You two, enough! No one is going to die unless I say so!"

"Tell that to my mood for a good night. I had a guy I had to extort for money and then suck his dick, but youuuuu had to bring this thing and ruin everything!"

"This thing has a name and it's official Jimenez for you, you bunch of morons! All of you and your poor asses are about to end up in jail for the rest of your miserable lives! Starting with you, asshole!" Vagatha exclaimed still blindfolded.

Nobody answered.

"I'm talking to the wall, aren't I?" She sighed in a defeated tone and then received a few pats, almost smacks, on the back of her neck.

"I'm here, sweetie." Angel taunted her from behind. Vagatha tried to stand up and defend what little dignity she had left, but any effort of hers was decimated by Husk's heavy hand keeping her in her place. Such reinforcement only spurred Vagatha to try even more.

"Can you stop fighting for a minute?" Charlotte raised her voice clearly fed up with the situation. "Please? She's just a police officer and not our enemy. In any case, she has done more for the city than all of us put together."

Angel laughed profusely and let out a great breath of joy. "And why would I do that? The only thing this city has ever done for me is be a pain in the ass. And not the pleasant one." Vagatha didn't need to see to know that Angel was smiling.

"Eeeh, I think we should kill her," Husk muttered drunkenly with bottle in hand, Vagatha could guess from the weight in his words and the sound of bouncing liquid.

"Thanks for agreeing with me, honey." Angel purred moving closer to Husk and hugging his arm as he placed his hand on his chest.

"I fucking didn't!"

"Then what are we going to do, 'Her Majesty'? If she is not an enemy to us, then what is she?"

Charlotte ignored the nickname she hated for being lost in thought about her until her face lit up with the distinctive expression of having had a new idea.

"How about we make it one of us?" Charlotte proposed with the same naturalness with which someone orders in a restaurant.

This expression was received by different reactions by those present in the room.

Indifference. Inconvenience. Confusion.

"You mean a traitor?" Angel asked.

"No! No. She was thinking more of a—"

"Traitor?"

"No."

"Liar?"

"No…"

"Two faces!

"I meant a double agent!" Charlotte yelled raising her hands.

For a few seconds Angel just stared at her without saying anything until he burst out laughing. "And what is she going to do!? Bring you donuts and coffee!? No, no, no. Wait! I got a better one! You will make her arrest people over stepping flowers!" Angel continued to laugh so hard that he began to double over himself for a while having the blast of his life. Eventually his laughter gradually ceased as he wiped the tears from his eyes. "Well, I think I've had enough fun here. Let me know when it's time to take out the trash." There was nothing Vagatha wanted more at that moment than for her to kick the huge, stupid grin off Angel's face. The mocking criminal dragged Husk to go with him to another room, leaving Vagatha and Charlotte in an uncomfortable silence which made Charlotte sadder despite being the one with her hands not tied behind her back and her eyes blindfolded.

After verifying they could have some privacy, Charlotte removed the blindfold in an attempt to make the best of the situation, although she couldn't deny that she backed down a little when Vagatha still had that fierceness instilled in her face, contrasting against the expression Charlotte's fearful and evasive expression as she played with her hands unconsciously.

"Look, I know you don't have many reasons to trust me, or…none at all. But, you can trust me when I tell you that I have no intention to harm you."

Vagatha's eye narrowed in contempt. "Why should I have the same sentimentality when I walk out of here and kick the door down with a full SWAT team!?"

Charlotte looked down at the floor with a reluctant smile. "Yes, I can understand why you would want to do…that…after…this."

"Yessss! And 'that' is just!—"

The sound of an incoming call interrupted Vagatha. The tone was that of an excessively colorful musical that got Vagatha off the hook. She didn't need to wonder who was calling after Charlotte answered with a: "Hi Ma!" calmer than she could pronounce.

"Lilith Morningstar." Vagatha's mind makes sure to note if, and only if, what Charlotte has said so far is true.

Seizing the opportunity in her new solitude, Vagatha rocked in the chair until she fell under her own weight to the floor. A grunt later, she searched the room for something to cut her bonds with until…

Bingo! Vagatha saw a knife on the edge of a shelf in what appeared to be a compact little kitchen. "Of course! Thank god for the stupidity of these buenos para nada."

Her path to the kitchen was like that of a worm: embarrassing and slow. She couldn't stand up or even roll into the kitchen because of the chair on her back. Eventually Vaggie managed to position herself just below where the knife hung. She rocked her body so that the chair hit the furniture and the tremor dropped the knife.

The bladed weapon wobbled but not enough to fall. If she hit harder she could draw everyone's attention back to herself. But if she didn't risk it, Vagatha would make sure she stayed trapped there, so Vagatha did what she did worst and was to face the odds against her.

After stronger blows, the knife ended up falling under her own weight over the precipice.

The sharp end of it landed on Vagatha's left cheek very close to her eye, opening a small wound and causing it to bleed slightly. Vagatha grunted for a moment before her face was filled with the first sign of real joy of the day.

…

Ok, maybe of the week.

Her knife bounced a few meters away from her and Vagatha rolled as far as she could with a chair on her back until she managed to grab the handle of it with her hands tied behind her back and lay on her side. she.

Slowly but surely, Vagatha cut her bonds and with her free hand she finished freeing herself from the chair.

Her first thought was to escape from that damned place. But the side of her most eager for recognition of her prompted her to search the place for something she could use as blackmail material against Charlotte. Or at least use as confirmation of the big fish she claimed to be, or her connection to one.

While exploring the place, she came across a warehouse full of garbage and plastic crates with a large wooden table at the end of the room against one wall. On that wall Vagatha found a mural with several photos connected with a red thread. Vagatha acknowledged that all the photos were of relatively recently renovated places from last year and recent months.

On the same mural he found photos of abandoned places, consumed by dirt and neglect, connected by a light blue thread.

Why were these places points of interest to this woman and what were her intentions?

Curse! She if she only had her phone to take photos as evidence, but she had left it in her car. Only if she still had her police car that hadn't been stolen or vandalized.

Vagatha shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I need to get out of here to—"

CLICK!

One moment Vagatha was looking at the series of photos on the mural and the next she had turned to the source of the sound which turned out to be Charlotte, pointing a gun at Vagatha in her hands, her grip shaking from it.

"Ok, I know this looks bad. But I REALLY needed you to listen to me for five minutes before I—"

"Before I do something I regret?"

"Before I do." Charlotte cocked her pistol. The gun killed the silence before the bullet did.

"You don't know what you're doing, so let me tell you that a—"

BOOM!

Her ears went deaf for a second followed by a gasping sound. A trail of smoke passed through the room. Vagatha felt a brief, hard push. Her hand was slow to respond when she wanted to put it on her stomach. She suddenly felt sticky and wet, and lifting her up in front of her face she could see it covered in shocked red until it all faded and she received another reality check instead.

"AGGHHH!"

"Oh my God!"

"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

Charlotte's pistol fell to the ground at the same time as Vagatha's body with a heavy thud. She didn't know at what moment she found himself in Charlotte's arms while she was bleeding at great speed while she was screaming something and…she was dragging her? The cold enveloped her and she did not know what to do. Her arms moved without her control. They touched everything within her reach, looking for something to cling to without purpose.

The next thing she remembered was more screaming and a great urge to vomit. Flickering lights and a head world filled her senses, and then, darkness.

The next thing he remembers is opening his eyes to an annoying light from which she couldn't hide. As her eyes adjusted to the new, annoying lights, Vagatha found herself lying in a hospital room bed in the middle of the night.

It took her several minutes to realize that she was connected to only-God-knows how many monitors and an IV. A nurse stopped her from removing it and informed her that she had received a gunshot wound to her abdomen.

Vagatha immediately tried to get up upon hearing that, but she got a horrible cramp inside her. As if someone had opened her wound, had reached inside and crushed her organs from inside her until they turned to a thick red mush. Vagatha fell back onto the bed limp and sighing heavily. Subsequently, Vagatha probed her stomach with her fingers and found a large patch on the left side of her abdomen.

The nurse told her, not to say she ordered her, that she should rest until she was discharged. Worst of all, she was not told when that would happen. She could also feel an itch in her left cheek. She touched it and found she had a band aid attached to it.

"Who brought me here?"

"Your friend, and her grandfather, I believe. Do you think you can contact them? It would be nice to have them as a support system until you get better, they left before we could get their information."

Her heartbeat quickened at that moment. Proof of this was her heart rate monitor. "…They…will be leaving town soon. But I have people who can…help me. I am a police officer. I need to notify my superiors of my…mishap."

The nurse complied and gave her a phone with which she called her police sergeant. The first four minutes consisted of pure yelling and cursing, Vagatha tightening her grip on her phone with an urge to throw it out the window as her blood pressure rose by the minute.

But the real worst came the next morning after her scolding when Vagatha received her first visit from another male police officer with a goatee and a similar complexion to Vagatha's.

Relief was one of the last sensations that Vagatha felt when she saw him. One of the reasons for her being hers, having abandoned her to her fate in her turn —to mention a few of hers. Another reason being that she knew the only reason she and he were together was because of forces beyond her control.

"You look like shit," was the first thing he said upon seeing her.

"Eat shit, Arackniss."

"Yes whatever. When do you think you'll be able to get your ass out of bed? The sergeant has been bothering me because you—"

"You've been fucking missing!"

"—been missing. He 'asked' me to investigate the activities of a person who has been leaving packages of money at random locations and see if there is any connection. Don't you happen to know something?" Arackniss looked out the window as if the streets were a thousand times more interesting than her mate before turning to see her. "Ah, why am I asking you? I'm sure your ass was glued to the police car seat. Oh by the way, they stole it from you."

The conversation between the two ended shortly after. Vagatha had proven more than once that talking to Arackniss was just as productive as talking to a brick wall.

Vagatha was released after a few days of observation—no more visitors, but she was taken off work and forced to take a two-week vacation.

She spent the first week on alert peering through the tall windows of her curtained apartment looking for the car in which she was kidnapped as her main pastime, apart from an old TV whose signal sometimes failed. Usually Vagatha spent her free time at the shooting range or exercising, but with her gunshot wound she couldn't leave the house and do any kind of minimally demanding physical activity hurt too much.

She jumped exalted whenever she heard a sound outside her apartment, forcing her to look through the peephole of her door into the hallway, distrusting every shadow and figure that caught sight of her.

In the middle of a night, one of the few in which she went to bed, Vagatha couldn't stop tossing and turning between the sheets with the worldly sounds filling her brain with background noise coming through the window. But then, through the distant sound, she could make out someone's footsteps in the hallway. She wondered who could come to her house so late at night as the sound reached its crescendo as it reached Vagatha's door. She expected the footsteps to recede into the distance and disappear, but instead the sound stopped immediately. Vagatha's pupils went in the direction of the door.

For a moment she Vagatha thought that maybe she was just overanalyzing him and that she needed to go to some damn sleep, but then she could see the shadow of a person coming under her door. still. She could see how the shadow crouched over the door, but she couldn't guess exactly what it wanted to do. Then the shadow moved away from her and with it the silence returned, failing to reassure the sleepless police.

Vagatha lay tense with one foot off the bed; just in case you have to jump into action. Her heart pounded in her ears waiting for things to go to shit, only to have her heart beat even harder when it never did.

She only dared to move after several minutes when her body could no longer bear the stillness and agony. She pulled her pistol out from under her mattress. One that she had supposedly lost "In action" on one of her shifts.

She walked as close to the wall as she could, reaching the door wearing only a white tank top and gray shorts. Vagatha put her ear against the wall looking to hear whatever the person outside was up to, but she heard nothing.

She pulled the door open just enough to pull the barrel of her pistol out of the small opening. Even finding nothing Vagatha kept her guard up. She closed the door briefly before removing the chain and opening it fully again and immediately ducking around a corner at the entrance to her apartment and she pointed towards the door holding her pistol firmly with both hands.

Vagatha checked both sides of the corridor quickly, finding nothing and no one in the proximity, but when she had started to explore beyond her door, her foot collided with a small box on the floor.

At first there was no clue that could tell her who the sender might be, though due to the fact that it was the box it was neat and ordinary she did give him a clue as to who she might be.

Her curiosity mixed with her insomnia almost prompted her to open the box just then, but the nuts in her brain turned at the right time and she remembered who it may have come from.

Vagatha immediately went back inside her apartment and put the box on her kitchen table as soon as she could. The thought of calling Arackniss or her sergeant crossed her mind sooner rather than later. Doing this alone was perhaps the most sensible thing to do, but then she would have to explain why she received that package, and thus her encounter with probably the daughter of the biggest mob lord in the city, how and why she had made it out alive and…

She shook her head when it began to spin due to the mental overexertion in digesting and processing the situation at such late hours of the night. She taped several forks at the ends and crafted a long stick with a knife at the end to open the box from a safe distance.

By the time she managed to open the box hidden behind a table with her homemade elongated stick, Vagatha waited a couple of minutes in anxiety, excitement, and sleep depravity. After nearly falling asleep, Vagatha forced herself to check the box herself.

Inside she found a phone. A much better one than the one she had. Taped to the phone was a yellow note taped that read: "So so Sorry to shoot you! I hope these gifts help you feel better. Get well soon! ^_^"

Vagatha read the letter several times hoping to find some secret message or clue that would tell her the location of the eccentric woman, but she found nothing.

After the eighth reading, she realized that the letter mentioned "gifts." Vagatha had only found the phone. Checking the box, she realized that it was too big and heavy to hold just a phone, not to mention that she could feel something crashing against the cardboard as she shook it like a child going through her Christmas presents to guess what they were.

She cut a hole in the bottom of the box with the same makeshift long knife and could make out something green in the hole she made. She expanded the gap with her hands and suddenly her eyes froze at the sight of the unmistakable green of bills peeking through the cuts.

She removed the lid that covered the bills completely and discovered that the entire bottom of the box was full.

It was then that she understood. Like a bucket of cold water falling on her without warning.

They were bribing her.

Or…were they trying to? She hadn't accepted the money yet…but she had already taken it…and it was inside her apartment…

She tried to find clues on the smartphone that she found in the box for clues to contact Charlotte.

No apps. No numbers. No messages. No secret codes.

Then the second bucket of cold water fell on her head.

They were going to contact her. Not the other way around.

That woman was more intelligent than she had anticipated.

She had received a one-way ticket to the criminal mob world and they did not accept refunds.

This idea originally came from a Pinterest prompt, I had the intention for this to be a one-shot, but the more I wrote it down, the more I had to add and solidify for this whole story to make sense, and by the time I realized it, this was getting too long for a one-shot, not to mention that I was liking it too much and I was realizing the potential that this story had, so now the idea is to divide it into a few chapters.

Not gonna lie, I feel a little guilty pleasure writing this story since I should be working on other projects that I have pending, but I think I can make the best of this situation.

Anyway, if you liked it, leave a comment, add it to fav and follow.

Also if you spot any mispelling error or anything similar please let me know!

See ya!