The mission is supposed to be easy. Mika and his gang of real-estate crooks only have to infiltrate a high-rise building and steal secret codes for a client. But the building is the ZENITH, the most fortified residential tower around, the codes are...
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Mika stared down at the envelope marked with a big, red CLASSIFIED sitting atop the Boss' desk. His arms stayed by his sides, ignoring the thickening silence between him and the woman sitting behind the slab of ornate wood.
"Well?" the Boss raised an eyebrow, chin rolling over her twined knuckles as she tilted her head to the side. Her strands of pastel pink hair poured down her shoulders like an off-brand waterfall.
He narrowed his eyes. It didn't matter what he said to her. She had considered this mission to be handed over, not caring which team ended up taking it. "I still think it's a death sentence," he said. Behind him, one hand squeezed the other to prevent himself from lunging over and shaking the Boss. She needed to get some sense—even if he had to knock it upside the head. "I don't want them to bite more than they can chew."
The Boss scoffed. "Someday, your caution will hold you back."
"And being careless will kill me nonetheless," Mika answered, throwing reverence to the wind. Of course, this was The Conquest he was talking to. Despite the name being made as a joke upon her expense, it had a ring of truth to it. Once she decided she could take something, she's willing to use everything she had under her sleeves to get it.
Unfortunately, Mika was under the sleeve too.
"Don't you want to follow up on the Mont Rasto case?" the Boss changed tactics, pulling from their previous lackluster heist.
Mika pursed his lips, feeling the Boss' technique weeding into his ego. The Mont Rasto caper was disappointing at best, with one member almost getting captured. Distaste curled at the base of his stomach and flared at the tip of his tongue.
"We did not know the system was rigged," he said. An excuse—the best one he could manage, as the previous ones he had come up with were shot down with a single snort or a sardonic giggle. Call it pathetic, but it was the only thing he could do to salvage his near-polished track record. He needed a scapegoat, someone or something to blame. And Ida wasn't letting him have it.
Ida Widdman—another one of the Boss' well-known personas. A successful business woman, an heir to a conglomerate at the tender age of fifteen, and a miscreant with penchant for real estate portfolios and doing it under the government's nose. She might have inherited tons of money, but she's finding the thrill of life through the shadows.
That's where Mika and his cadre of crooks came in. Since she couldn't step out of the public spotlight for more than a second, she needed bodies she could move at will—ones who would do everything she asked without batting an eye. Other cadres have been instructed to kill, to spill blood, and they would. If a client wanted Mika to shoot a head clean, he wouldn't have a choice.
Because the next of Ida's tactics would always lay in wait, proving to be the most effective in case all the other ones fell on deaf ears and stubborn minds.
"Twenty-thousand," the Boss said. "In two deposits. Half at the start. The other after reporting the completion."
If he was a taut wire starting out in the business, he would have bitten and swallowed. But he wasn't. He knew every term of the Boss' contracts, and what the promise of getting her money entailed. So, he steeled his nerves and met Ida's gaze head-on.
