When Karen Shapiro saw the four able bodied men at the airport, searching for her, she almost exclaimed for joy. They looked perfect for the job. Rushing forward, she helped them carry their duffle bags, instantly introducing herself. The man in a cap, the biggest of the four men, smiled at her pleasantly. From the bulge in his pocket, she could tell there was a gun in there. It was all very pleasing to the eye. She liked it. She liked them. They were perfect for the job, and that was the most important thing of all. They were perfect for her revenge match against Mark Darius. She ushered them into her car, smiling all through. They got in, remaining silent. From their looks, she could tell that they were all hard, strong men. She could tell that they knew how to do their jobs pretty well, and they were not here to mince words. “I'm Karen Shapiro, as I mentioned at the airport, and again, I thank you for your services. I told my friend, Jamil, to help me do the proceedings o
Mrs Jenett Darius exited the taxi, paying the driver and making her way inside the hospital. In her hand was a flask of food she had prepared for her son. For all she knew, she was a terrible cook but had no choice. She didn't have any money. Where was she going to see the money to buy good food for her child? Using the leftover flour and eggs, she had prepared some pastries and scrambled eggs which she had bundled into a flask. He was going to eat it, because he hadn't eaten since his recovery. Just like her, he had no choice. As she entered the hospital, she found out to her shock that the nurses were looking at her strangely, a grim look that said they knew something. Something was wrong, there was something they were not telling her. Instantly, her mind went to her son. Clutching the flask firmly, she took the elevator, slamming the buttons until the doors opened. She slipped in, her heart hammering in her chest furiously. What was happening? Why had they all been star
Karen Shapiro was as beautiful as she had been the last time he had seen her. Her hair was neatly and recently made, and he could see that she had spent quite the time on her makeup. The makeup was perfect, suiting her perfectly and capturing the important angles of her face. He smiled at her, cradling her hands and saying the very words that she wished to hear. “You look very beautiful, Karen.” He looked at her, watching her blush once again. It made him wonder as usual if his words had the effect on her, or she was pretending as she usually did. He didn't know which, but he didn't care to know at that moment. He didn't care to know anything at all. All he wanted was to make sure that he seeped as much information as he could gather from her. All he wanted was to be successful in the ongoing war between the both of them. In the ongoing silent war that was taking place not only in her heads, but in their houses, in the physical as well. “As do you, Mark. I love when you wea
The bullet had struck Makachev just next to his eye, slipping through the bridge of his nose and passing clean through to the other side. Makachev, his guard, was dead. Makachev had laid his life for him to live. At that moment, everything seemed to return to him. It had been planned and had been executed beautifully. There was no fault whatsoever, and when he looked at the building opposite the cinema, the men who had probably fired at him were no longer there. They had killed Makachev. It all seemed to come back to him at that moment, the smiles she had been giving him, all of them misleading and making him believe that their date was actually genuine and he was trying to find his way past her defenses. He had been awfully wrong. He had been played like a fool, which was perhaps, his enemy's best trait. She had excelled at it so well that he found himself wondering if he was ever going to muster the courage to confront her. Maybe one day. But he was refusing to back dow
Makachev's funeral was conducted in a small church that he loved to attend on Sundays. Even after his dead body had been wheeled in a coffin, the shock of the members and the people that knew him very well were dumbfounded. A few of them that had spoken to him during the week couldn't believe their eyes as well. It was actually true. Makachev, the great soldier and great warrior was dead. Mark Darius sighed, wiping off the tears that rolled down his cheeks and stopped just short of his beard. He had always chosen to believe that his men had been sent into his life as a blessing, but he seemed to be wrong. He was probably a curse, and he slipped his hands into the pockets of his trousers, totally avoiding the face of the dead man in the coffin. The face had haunted him for days and days on end, and while he was sad that his guard and friend was gone, he was even more disappointed to know that he couldn't do a single thing. That he didn't in fact, know what to do. It made hi
Mark Darius woke up from the bed that had given him solace the previous night, ditching the covers and finding his way to the bathroom. There, he immediately took his bath, his mind on the meeting he had with the chairman of the organization in charge of shipments in the seaport. He had known that his latest acquisition was going to raise eyebrows, and he could tell that was why he was being called for questioning. He had made a lot of profit last year, and he had used his excesses to buy car parts. He was going to be a distributor of car parts to retail automobile shops, and although it was a small business, it wasn't the money he was after. He was after the name that came with it. He needed the company he had inherited from his father to upgrade. He wanted to put it on the forefront of the country as one of the best earners, and he wanted to make sure he was always leading the market no matter the sector. The same way he was expertly good in the business field was the same
The chairman in charge of the seaport was a woman. And not just any woman, Mark Darius seemed to notice, a beautiful, freckled woman with a stunning hourglass figure and curly jet black hair. Her eyes were enrapturing, green pools that seemed to cast a spell on him, a spell that left him tongue tied and lost for words as he stood in her air conditioned office. “Mr Darius?” He nodded, adjusting uneasily, noting that she seemed to study him, staring at him and for a moment, he thought he saw her checking him out. Trying to regain the composure that he had lost a few minutes ago, he ran a hand through his hair, then gave her a smile that said he didn't even know what he was doing, that he wasn't sure of what he was doing in any way. “Yes, that's me.” Nodding, she went back to her desktop, leaving him to his thoughts. For a while, Mark Darius found out that he had forgotten about Makachev's death, his guard, Sergei, who was waiting for him in the car, and all the problems that ha
Farida Atticus told him no. In her words, she wasn't going to give him her number because she was fresh out of a marriage that had gone wrong, and she was trying to focus on her child completely. She was also trying to pour body and soul into her work, she had said. Mark Darius had left the office shattered. He knew that he had flunked it. After all, he hadn't flirted and asked a woman for her number in years. While asking Farida to give him her number, he found out that he was very rusty. It seemed like ages since he had last talked to a woman that wasn't Karen and Elena, his ex wife who was in prison at that moment. Opening his car and easing himself into it, Mark Darius tried to acknowledge that the rejection was not too deep. All he had to do was work more on his skills of talking to women, after all he had the face, the structure and the desired height that most women loved. It was when he saw Sergei that all that had transpired between him and Farida inside the office