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
Whatever he was doing, it was to protect his identity, to protect him from the dirty business he was doing. All in a bid to get his mother out of the hospital. No matter what he was doing to get there, he didn't care. All he desired was her complete healing and nothing else. “Bartender, a bottle of brandy for my friend too, thank you.” Without mincing words, the man decided to launch into details. He was ready to risk it all. He was ready to throw all caution to the winds as far as he got the financial strength to pay up his mother's bills in order for her to beat cancer. “Terry, I have a favor to ask of you.” “Anything, Jonathan. Just name it. I met you at this bar a few weeks ago, and I've tried to know you better. Seems you're finally letting me into your world now.” Nodding, the man laughed grimly. If only it was easy. He was a man whose reputation preceded him, a man who was feared by most people. Most people didn't even know in reality that he was a soft spoken man with a
Karen Shapiro paced her room, unable to sleep. It had been the same way for days now, lying down, unable to sleep, seeing the face of the man who had been struck down by a bullet that was meant for Mark Darius. Seeing Mark Darius in his office clothes that morning when she had decided to trail him, she had only succeeded in getting herself annoyed. Annoyed because he was where she was, annoyed that he was in charge of a company that was also supposed to be hers. Gritting her teeth, she reached for the pack of cigarettes on her bedside table. Retrieving a stick, she lit it, gratefully inhaling the nicotine and taking as much as she could inside of her system before letting it all out through her nostrils. She continued pacing, her mind in turmoil. What baffled her most was her supposed love for Mark Darius. This was a man that she was supposed to hate with her life, her soul and spirit. But there she was in her bedroom, missing his features, his bone structure and imagining her
Mark Darius ate the meat in his plate slowly, savoring the taste of the pork as he ate slowly. Since meeting Farida Atticus, he hadn't seemed to enjoy a moment of his time alone. Why? Because Farida Atticus occupied all of his thoughts. She was there in his head, the images of her beautiful figure and her green, large and almond shaped eyes destroying his reverie. Sighing, Mark Darius acknowledged that maybe he needed to give it another try. He had never been so drawn to a woman, so in love with a woman at just first appearance. But with Farida Atticus, he seemed to break all the rules. She turned a genius like him into a stuttering man, and that was because of how beautifully she had looked on the day he had first seen her. Shaking his head, Mark acknowledged that thinking about Farida wasn't the best step in his life at the moment. His life wasn't only in shatters, he was a walking time bomb, ready to explode at the bomb's control. At any moment, he could explode and, imagine