Empire of Vendetta

The Mission

Lilith's mouth dropped for the third time that night. Her master had often spoken highly of his first ever apprentice, Sage, but he had also told her that his Sage was long gone now so she had automatically assumed she was dead. It would be a lie to say that Lilith had never been envious of her master's love and admiration for Sage and had always made it her mission to outperform her so that she too could win her master's admiration. However, no matter what she did, she could never outperform Fen Luo's one and only Sage. 

"You're Sage?" she asked as she massaged her wrists. 

Alia nodded with a grin, "Looks like Master Luo still speaks about me if you know that name." 

Lilith couldn't help but roll her eyes. Fen Luo never stopped speaking about her. He was the apple of her eye and the reason he even bothered to accept Lilith in the first place. However, that just made Lilith's life as Fen Luo's student harder. He never stopped comparing her to Sage and always made it his mission to make her compete with her ghost. Although Master Luo told her that he would let her graduate once she wins against him, even when she did, he told her that he will only really consider her good if she had won against Sage. That obviously angered her but she had won against the strongest assassin in the world so she did not bother to take his words to heart. But seeing the mighty Sage before her, the same one that had managed to tie her to a chair without any effort, she could clearly see why he was so obsessed with her. 

"Let's move on to business then, shall we?" Alia said as she moved back to her seat across from Lilith. "I assume you have heard of Carlos Otero, right?"

Lilith wanted to scoff because little did Alia know that not only had she heard of Carlos before, but he was her next hit. 

"Somewhat," she lied. "His name is familiar but I do not know too much of him. I don't pay attention to politics."

"Carlos Otero is probably the most untouchable man in the universe right now," Alia began. "He has ties to the mafia and Interpol. He has men in every organisation out there so no matter what happens, he finds a way out of trouble. The public see him as an angel but any one who knows him knows that he's the devil in disguise. All of his ties are forced and people are either with him out of fear or because they are forced to be." 

"So what exactly are you planning to do to bring him down?" Lilith asked. She claimed he was literally untouchable with ties in literally every possible organisation so how was it possible to bring down such a man? 

"That's where you come in," Alia said. "Do you know who Valerio Otero is?" 

Lilith wanted to roll her eyes, of course she did. But then again, she had claimed to have not known who Carlos was so it wouldn't make sense to know his son. 

"No, I do not."

"He's Carlos Otero's only son," Alia said before she stopped for impact, "and the person responsible for protecting Carlos." 

Lilith's brows narrowed at that. That was information she had not been aware of. As far as she knew, they barely had any contact at all with each other. 

"Had it not been for Carlos's genius son, Valerio, the man would not be able to go running around so confidently right now. In fact, he would most likely be in prison already. But Valerio had all of Carlos's criminal information protected and he's the only person in this world that can actually bring the man down."

"What?" Lilith asked, feeling shocked for the first time. It seemed her plan before she had met Alia would have been more effective than she had expected. 

"Valerio Otero has a reputation for being upright and just but his father's crooked blood runs through his veins. He's the mastermind behind his father's success. If we want to catch Carlos, we first need to catch Valerio." 

"And how do you plan to do that?" Lilith asked. 

Alia smirked and leaned forward in her seat, looking as if she knew a secret that Lilith didn't. 

"That's where you come in," she said, her smirk turning into a full blown crooked grin. "Valerio Otero's senior assistant is on maternity leave. You will be taking over her spot."

Lilith couldn't hold back her laugh, "You want me to be Valerio's assistant?"

"Fen Luo wanted you to go to law school, did he not?" Alia rhetorically asked, knowing the answer already.

Fen Luo may have raised Lilith to be a killer but his philosophy was that you also needed to know the theory behind the practical. He claimed that the best criminal was one that knew and understood the law. So he had taught her everything to sit and pass the bar exam, which she did. He wanted her to be a lawyer by day and assassin by night. Although Lilith was not one for education, Fen Luo had done a lot for her so she did not want to disappoint him and had agreed to it. But she had decided to get her personal vendetta out of the way first and that was how she had spent the last eighteen months. 

"Valerio may be our target, but he is an excellent prosecutor. You will learn a lot from him," Alia tried to convince her, although even without it, Lilith was already on board. She just wanted to know how they would manage to make it work.

"I have no work experience or knowledge on law. If he's as good as you say, he's going to figure out that I'm a fake sooner or later. I mean, you want me to be his senior assistant, he's going to figure me out one way or another."

"My team will sort all of that out. You just need to be willing to cooperate," Alia said confidently. Lilith felt as if it was not necessary to be too close to her target to get her job done but Alia's confidence gave her a sense of surety. She felt as if nothing could possibly go wrong even though there were a million and one things that literally could. 

"And this cooperation will grant me legal immunity for the rest of my life?" she chose to say instead of continuing on with the doubtful conversation.  

"Not only legal immunity, but a brand new future." 

"A brand new future?" Lilith asked, a disturbed look growing on her face. Something about that just sounded so off to her. 

"As you should now be aware, I used to be in your position once upon a time too. But I got my second chance and I think you deserve one too. If you successfully complete this mission, I'm offering you a permanent position in my team as an agent."

Lilith opened her mouth to reject the offer but Alia quickly cut in. 

"Don't make a decision right now. Let's get the mission over with first and then we'll speak about it again." 

Lilith didn't bother fighting her on that. After all, there was nothing more she wanted than to begin the mission and get her hands around the neck of that Valerio. 

"Let's get this mission started then," she told Alia, who grinned in response and jumped off her seat. 

"Great! Time to meet the team then!" she said before she began to walk towards the exit of Lilith's apartment. 

Lilith couldn't help but feel something was very off about Alia but at the same time, they had the same goal and as the saying goes, "An enemy of my enemy is my friend." So with that thought in her mind, she followed her new boss out of her apartment.