Target Down - The Ghost Assassin

Egos

The next stash I acquired, that my father's previous one led me to, had a number of tiny glass vials wrapped in my father's typical "use the whole roll of tape" fashion I was getting accustomed to, a list of what each vial contained and how to use them with cautionary warnings, written in bold red ink, capital letters, underlined and highlighted, just in case, I'm sure, as well as a file almost as thick as my mathematics text book. It was about as daunting as my text books too, only considerably more disturbing. Sickly so. The kind of sickly that makes you wish you can unread what you've just read, douse your eyeballs with bleach and pray for amnesia.

My next target. A decorated war veteran that was snatched up by the FBI as soon as his feet landed back on home soil.

A Sam Calvera. His arrogance seemed to have no bounds, founded by becoming a pin holder for medals of so called honor, only to be boosted by the titles he was given after becoming an FBI agent. Soaring his way through one promotion after the next making him think he was invincible.

I'm sure the speedy inflation of his ego was what lead him to making the deals with the kinds of people anyone with a sense of pride at being honored for his patriotism wouldn't have made, but this is Sam Calvera we're talking about.

The dirt my father complied on this man made my insides crawl and twist with nothing short of pure disgust.

His promotions brought him face to face with the most ghastly and most despicable species the human race has to offer, which made him a devil for making deals with them.

Human traffickers.

He would be given first dibs, until his heart was content, on the seriously  under aged "merchandise" if he kept the FBI looking in another direction. It made no difference to this repulsive man if the 2 to 5 year old children that were being  brought in were boys or girls, kidanpped or sold by their own parents or even under nurished and bearly clinging to life. So long as he was the first in line to completely decimate their lives, and he would protect that so called privilege with everything he had and smiled at the rest of his ignorant countrymen singing his praises for being such an upstanding hero.

His arrogance warped into a god complex making him think he was untouchable.

This man needed to be taken out. Not just for what he did to my father but for what he continues to do to tiny little human beings too small to fend off a fly, let alone a grown ass man with a face that could, on its own, inspire nightmares.

The only thing now was to plan his demise with no time to spare.

Every weekend, I'd feed my uncle and aunt every excuse in the liars handbook in order to head out and watch my prey.

Fortunately for me, Lady Luck came sauntering right up to my bedroom door and slapped my shoulder with a congratulatory hand and an evil grin sporting her face.

There was going to be a fund raiser in Las Vegas... At a renowned mob conncted casino...

And who was in charge of all the mob, maffia and gang related stories for the paper...? Yep.... You guessed it. My uncle... Either we have Irish blood somwhere in my family genes to have such luck or my father had prophetically planned having a kid with a woman who's brother was the right journalist with the right inclinations.

With the fund raiser taking place on a spring break, the only thing left to do was to butter my uncle up to the point of non-refusal in taking me with him to Las Vegas.

For the entire week preceeding the event, I unscrupulously appealed to his ego, telling him how much I'd love to see him in action. To him, no one but me would get as excited as him about his job. I was useful too.

The back and forth negotiations between him and I lasted a total of four days,  as I was running out on leverage for my negotiations, I stooped low enough to start a bitter bickering contest with my aunty. Making him reassess things and think that he would probably come back from the trip to either a run-away niece or a burnt down house, if not both.

I left him with no other choice other than to concede to me tagging along. After all, an ego boost from an eager fan was a much better option than coming home to dire consequences, bedsides, I was over half way to being 18 years old. A neat suite, a bit of makeup and a good clean hairdo and I could easily pass as an intern shadowing her mentor.

So, unlike most my age, I was heading for Vegas, not to get hitched but to extinguish a man who didn't deserve all the titles and praises he was lavished with by a bunch of idiots who couldn't be bothered to know any better.

The event was rather uneventful to begin with.  Just a room full of people too full of themselves to care why they were there in the first place. Women passed their due dates trying to latch themselves onto arms that could maybe afford to give them the lifestyles they wanted. Men wanting to parade the kind of lifestyle many thought they had, with undulting pride. Tabloid reporters feeding the crowds egos so that they could get the dirt they were there to get, slipping waiters notes to get them to dote on their drunken needs to loosen their tongues even more.

Except for two of the waiters. Twins. They had eyes only on the entrance. They seemed to be obliviously way too interested in the guests that arrived... One in particular...

My target.

Not knowing what plan they had for this piece of filth, I took the liberty of getting to him before they did. Why they had eyes for him made no difference to me. As far as I was concerned, he'd be dead before he stopped for his first trip the mens room.

I worked my way through the crowd of overly dressed and heavily scented people, after telling my uncle that I'd get us a soda from the bar after hearing him all but croak his questions out on a dry throat and making sure to leave the twins with nothing more than my back to watch, I slipped a syringe filled with a concoction I mixed from the vials my father had left me, out my pocket and concealed it in my jacket sleeve, as I brushed passed the vile man I injected him with the potent cocktail, leaving him with nothing more than a slight prick to his hand, then I kept walking, vanishing into the sea of bodies and did exactly what I told my uncle I would do. I got us a soda.

By the time our sodas were done,  a commotion broke out from the private games room. A reporters dream story, tabloid or not. A man had died. Not just any man, a decorated war veteran, high up in the FBI ranks. 

More like a pedophilic ego maniac who was just proven to be touchable.

Good riddens. The victory to me was sweet. Retribution to both my father and every kid he had ever ruined, not to mention all the kids that would be spared from him. Now the FBI could actually look in the right direction for a change, saving even more lives.

My target was down.

And it didn't matter if it was by my hand or not. Between those twins and I, that man was never going to make it out this venue alive.