“W-Who are you?”
She finally gathered the courage to force the three words out of her mouth.
Even though she knew exactly who it was standing in front of her, Lisa thought denial of recognition would make the situation less scary and hopefully, change reality itself.
“You don’t remember me?” a most familiar grin appeared on the visitor’s face.
Lisa shuddered as the unforgettable events of long ago took birth before her eyes.
Breaking the stillness of the whole scenario, the unexpected visitor walked into Lisa’s house, as if it were an everyday thing to walk into someone’s house at 6 am.
“So you live here now? Couldn’t leave Sicily, could you?” The visitor went round Lisa’s house taking in every detail. “Bit low class for you, isn’t it?”
“Not really…” Lisa tried to keep the atmosphere normal.
“Hah…still not gotten into the habit of cleaning?” the visitor asked with a lighter tone of voice, as he gently touched one of Lisa’s bookshelves. Lisa began to feel that this arrival’s purpose was not a serious matter. She let out sigh of relief.
“Oh no, I come here for a purpose.”
Lisa gave a nervous look. It was as if the visitor had telepathic powers.
“One of our members has decided to walk out on us, to save a mere life that was very close to him.”
“What’s the big deal? Numerous members have walked out – “
“ – and numerous have recruited”
Lisa fell silent, realizing she had just insulted the visitor’s family.
“It seems like it has almost become a trend to walk out”
Lisa recoiled and moved her gaze down towards the floor. I had too, long ago.
“People fail to understand the royalty that our way of works gifts. The pride, money and – “
“I would choose poverty any day over the path you follow.” Lisa snapped back to the visitor.
The visitor took a deep breath and replied in a calm tone “Remember, the path you despise today, was the one you followed graciously some time ago. However –“
“Long time ago” Lisa interjected.
“However,” the visitor continued with a pinch of anger in his tone, “my purpose here is not to debate upon your views of our path; I come here to seek your help”
My help? Why would the master need my help? What is going on? A stream of questions flowed into Lisa’s head. She chose the one the visitor was most likely to answer.
“What for?”
“As I was saying earlier, one of our members has walked out to save a mere life he had known for a long time.”
“What’s the big deal? Change your mission” Lisa wondered why the visitor was talking about it in such a grave tone.
“The problem is that we cannot afford to change the mission, most specifically the target, the one this man has fled to save. “
Lisa did not understand. As far as she knew about the group when she was part of it, the target of a mission if opposed by any of the members, would be abandoned and a new target or mission was found. Usually the targets were people who came in between the organization’s business, or were some kind of threat to it. Yet occasionally, targets were handpicked by the consigliere or the boss, if there were any personal matters to be taken care of.
