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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE a corrected glitch
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
CHA-CHA WAS FUCKING PISSED. After receiving that damned order—terminate Hazel for immediate extraction—her day had spiraled. She'd always been a working woman—next job, next tube, next kill, as Hazel would put it—and she'd never had qualms about getting her hands dirty before. She was one of the Commission's top assassins (until that little shit Number Five took her spot, that is) and she prided herself on her work, even if it was messy. She didn't complain about the shoddier and shoddier accommodations she was forced into, not even when two rooms turned to one and she had to share with Hazel; and she didn't complainabout the constant pay docks that came with another day of failure. And, of course, she never once spared a second thought for the marks she was assigned to. She would arrive, kill them, and then walk away, her mind already on what was for dinner that night, or what country and time period she'd visit next. So, this order should've been no different, right? It was just another job, and Cha-Cha was a working woman.
Except, for some reason, she couldn't kill Hazel.
She'd done what she was supposed to—lied about the briefcase, driving him out to a remote location deep in the belly of the woods, pulled her gun on him when his back was turned—but he'd stopped her. She knew he'd been getting tired of their constant nomadic routine, never having one place to call home, knew he was sick of the work never ending, but when he'd told her to forget the briefcase, to forget that stupid French girl, she'd actually considered his words. Maybe it was because she'd known him for so long. Maybe it was because she could almost call him a friend. Or something more, perhaps.
So she'd brought him home and burned that order to a crisp. Spared his life, which was one thing she'd never, not in her years and years of Commission work, done before. She'd risked being fired—which surely meant assassination—for Hazel, only to find out that he had different motives. Finding him behind that doughnut shop with that geriatric waitress had been like a punch to the gut. Hazel didn't care about retiring, staying out here with her, all he cared about was that old bird-watching fogey. He was going soft, and Cha-Cha had allowed him to melt.
She'd been a fool, and she was determined not to be one again. Which was how, creeping back around the doughnut shop, she steeled herself, her eyes narrowing, ignoring the faint regret pulsing in her chest. She straightened the collar of her suit and snaked around, heading back the way she came.
There was a job she needed to get done. And Cha-Cha had never failed her assignments.
