The Wrong Man

Chapter 2

Sighing, I sit in my plane seat and look out the window. It’s a nice day out and thankfully the flight will be short for me so I don’t have to worry about jetlag.

The plane soon takes off a few minutes later and I let myself relax to the music that plays in my ears soothingly. It keeps my mind off the marriage and about my family’s treatment towards me, but the stinging sensation in my heart still lingered, keeping me aware that I’m not okay and where this plane is taking me is not home. At least it won’t be to me.

Home is where I have never been to, never seen, and probably will never discover as long as I live.

But I’ve known that all of my life.

“Excuse me?” A voice pulls me out of my thoughts so I take out of my earphones to look at the person that spoke to me. Sitting beside me is a woman in her early fifties at least with a small grin on her lips. “Are you Seraphine? The daughter of the White family?”

I give her a wary nod and she smiles wider. “You’re just as beautiful as you are in the magazines. I’m glad I finally met you. My grandchildren admire you a lot. Can I get your signature?”

I nod again and sign her notepad that she hands me out of her handbag. She thanks me for signing it and lets me resume back to my music in silence, which I’m grateful for since I need time to recuperate.

The music is giving me an upbeat to think off of as the plane glided through the air while the lady next to me continued to stare at her phone with an angelic expression on her face. I didn’t glance at her too much, just when she accidentally nudges me when she searches through her bag or when I have to look next to me to talk to the pilot about my food troubles or when I need assistance with a small matter.

“Gum?” The lady offers a piece of gum to me.

Rule number ten: don’t accept food from strangers. It could be spiked or poisoned.

“N-No thanks.” I stutter, trying not to seem impolite or standoffish for not accepting her offer of gum. “I don’t chew gum.” I say. It wasn’t a complete lie, I didn’t chew gum every day, only when my family needs me to or while I’m on missions to help me concentrate.

“That’s too bad.” She smiles understandingly and puts the gum back into its pack.

I return her a soft smile before turning my head to look out of the window, feeling a bit suspicious of her niceness, a bit of her demeanor screams red flag, but her smile subsides my doubts of her, barely. I just can’t shake this feeling that she’s up to something. Maybe it’s from being a part of the underworld too long, but the way she wears that facade of a sweet old lady makes this small primal uneasiness inside of me scream louder as I slightly squirm in my seat to swiftly feel the outline of my g*n in my bag that’s on the other side of me. My eyes flicker to see the lady on her phone again, minding her own business as she hums quietly, before I look out of the window again, confirming whether I want to risk glancing at her phone screen.

It could be a conversation about me, but then again, what if I’m overreacting?

Her sweet, innocent exterior beckons those red flags in my mind each minute that passes. So much so that I let the earlier worries bypass me, allowing my suspicions about his lady to cloud my mind.

“Why am I suspecting her so much? Is my anxiousness messing with me?” I think, pressing my lips together in a tight line. After a few minutes, I manage to convince myself to let it go.

It’s just me overthinking again. I can’t ruin my family’s ruin over a misinterpretation of someone. They will kill me, literally.

Another hour passes by and I give up listening to music to instead preoccupy my mind with messages between my friends and me. The conversations consisted of nothing except curiosity of who the guy is and if my family still considers me a ‘White’. And the question did make me acknowledge that obvious fact or whether they allow me to use their last name or not. Maybe until I get married or they need me to make them look good in the media still. Considering how they escorted me into the airport, that’s the reason most likely.

I text back minor details saying the guy is also famous and my family might not disclose that fact until after I meet him. But as I did text, at the corner of my eye, for a split second, I see the lady watching me before turning her attention back to her phone, but I don’t know, I didn’t get a clear glimpse of her.

“It’s in my head. I’m just nervous and mistaking admiration for something else.” I think, mentally scolding myself for being this way to a sweet person that did nothing to me.

‘Would you two have kids?’ one of my friends texts me and I feel my face heat up in embarrassment. Oh no, I wouldn’t have any kids with him. I want my kids away from the underworld but dang it, Cal, why would you make me think of something else to worry about on this flight?

“Psst?” A voice makes me nearly jolt out of my seat as I turn to look at the woman next to me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but can I borrow a pen? I seem to have lost mine.”

Rule number four: after you let someone borrow something, discard it in case it has a tracking device put into it.

“Sure,” I say, handing her a pen from my bag and going back to texting my friends with a little grin on my lips from their humor.

They always make my days better by a thousand percent. I love them so much.

After a few minutes of silence, apart from my stifled giggles, snorts, and texting, the lady taps my shoulder and hands me back my pen, thanking me for letting her borrow it. I flash her a smile and place the pen in an empty pocket while mentally noting to discard it later when we land. What did she write?

I try not to seem chary as she continues, whenever I seemed distracted, to borrow small items from me like my power bank, my compact mirror, or whatever she could use that seemed convenient to borrow at the moment. I keep my composure the entire time to prevent starting a fight on the flight, but my adrenaline is already rushing through my veins as my fingers tighten around my phone, ready to burst from irritation at any second. I don’t want to rebuke her for constantly borrowing my things so I slowly take a deep breath to poise myself before I continue to text, ignoring the lady's glances.

It's just the nerves about the marriage. Calm down, Seraphine. You can't lose your calm before you meet the man you'll be spending the rest of your life with.

Eventually, I relax against my seat and let the situation bypass my mind, and before long, I loll my head back, close my eyes, letting myself rest while keeping my guard up somewhat.

Obviously, she wouldn't strike me on a plane in front of people. I, at least, can relax knowing that fact.

After I let myself rest for a few minutes, maybe an hour or two, the plane lands, then I wait for her to leave to check my things to see if one of them had been planted with a tracking device ― the compact mirror. It was placed behind the mirror and I didn't hesitate to toss it into the trash while reaching into my bag for my g*n, reluctantly pulling it out to shoot her, scaring everyone around me into a frenzy, but the moment I was about to go after her, I feel something nudge me in the middle of my back, followed by someone whispering into my ear saying, "You're smart but you're not smart enough to know that you're not making it out of this airport."

I scoff, not moving my head as I look back to glance at her. "I knew you were up to something. That nice lady act didn't work on me."

"I knew it wouldn't. You were too transparent to let this opportunity slide so I risked getting my cover blown to kill you. I knew the Seraphine White was going to get married here, so I simply followed you here, sneaked onto the flight, and now I can finally kill you first." She hisses through her teeth, digging the barrel of the g*n into my back more, chuckling as she watches people struggle to leave the airport.

"Why are you wasting your time killing me? Did someone tell you to?" I ask, slowly taking my g*n out of my bag, but she pushes the g*n into my back more, making me groan from the amount of strength she was using.

"My missions are confidental, White. Whether you'll be dead anyway or not, I'm not telling you."

"Why not? It's not like my family cares if I'll be dead or alive after I get married."

"A kid like you wouldn't understand private matters."

"Article IV, Secton B, Line ten, all members of a strict organization are provided specific instructions to follow before handling a mission, but if the situation comes that the victim requests to know the information before their death, you are allowed to leak that confidental information if there is no sign of a wiretap to further leak the information to someone else."

"Of course you read the handbook," I can hear her sarcasm in her tone but she emphasizes her point by taking off the g*n's safety. "It's not like it matters though. You'll be dead."

"So I can't be told who sent you?"

"No."

I sigh and roll my eyes. That's what I get for being curious. "Fine." In one swift motion, I duck, take out my g*n, use my leg to knock her to the ground on her back, before pointing my g*n at her, using my foot to kick the g*n out of her hands while she's still discombobulated. "I can find out on my own. Though, it'll be a pain in the ass."

"You think you dominated this situation?" She sits up on her elbows and shrugs as she nods behind her to a group of men in suits pointing their guns at me. "I got backup, kid. You're not walking out of here alive."

"You think you scare me?"

"You're cornered. You can die quietly or put up a fight until you die. You choose."

I load up my g*n and aim it at her head. "I'll fight." I pull the trigger and shoot her in the middle of her forehead. I watch her elbows slide, causing her head to hit the floor below her. Blood pools from her bullet wound as she breathes her final breaths, her limbs barely twitching as her body dies. "I was anxious before but―" I load my g*n again and aim it at the men, watching them preparing to shoot me by surrounding me. "―you guys helped me feel less anxious about being married. I should thank you for this."

A bullet grazes me in time and I land on my side with a thud, hissing from the impact, and then shoot the guy in the heart before rolling away to dodge another bullet. I do a front flip to dodge another, landing safely. As I dodge the next few bullets, I shoot both of them, barely missing their hearts, so I load my g*n, avoiding further bullets, to shoot them dead. In between pants, I smile as I run to one of the guys, and after avoiding his shots, I hoist myself upon his shoulders to hang from the ceiling so that I can kill the rest of them instantly. Sighing, I watch the floor get painted in blood, slowly covering the area as I reluctantly let go of the beam I was holding onto, landing an inch away from the blood. I put the safety on and slip my g*n in my bag, frowning down at the dead men that sprawled across the floor.

"I forgot not to kill them. Shit." I roll my eyes and groan, remembering the scolding the luminary gives to me every time I mess up, before trying to maneuver around their bodies to get to my luggage while making a mental note of the incident. After I grab my luggage, checking to make sure nothing was placed on it, I walk through security, who obediently stood firm in place, unfazed by the incident. I smile at them and walk towards the exit that has broken glass and lost items scattered around it from the stampede of people earlier.

I take in a deep breath of the air and I look around for my ride. My eyes land on a guy leaning against his driver-side door, shuffling solitaire cards with a straw in between his teeth. I roll my eyes at my family's choice of transportation. It's my brother, Gin, someone that will do anything for some cash, regardless of who he's doing the job for.

He doesn't hate me nor loves me. He doesn't have any emotional ties to any of us or anyone else for that matter. He has been emotionally detached for all of his life, even mom struggled to raise him, so dad had to raise him instead, but once Gin turned eighteen, he withdrew all of his savings, moved out, and told us not to contact him unless we're paying him to do a job.

He still has a room in that house, dad strongly believes he'll return to become a g**g leader, and since my parents thought of him as an heir, they had let him do whatever he wanted for years. My sisters have my parents wrapped around the same spell but they are expected to do missions while young like me ― well I started doing missions at ten and they started at thirteen or whenever they wanted but the point is still there ― but unlike them, I never contacted my brother or personally knew him, but each time he called to discuss a job, I would hear him from the cloistered office and wonder how he ever survived in this oppressed world.

"You took long enough, sis." He mutters, putting his deck back into the box before looking up at me then his gaze trails down at the blood that managed to get on me. "I'm not staining my car, change into something else."

"Sure," I mumble, walking to the other side of the car to change my clothes. I glare at him before stripping off my clothes, tossing them beside me on the ground, then slip on a dress to waste less time getting changed. I use a wipe to clean any residue of blood off of me and toss that on top of the clothes. "Finished, can I get in now?"

"If dad heard you, he would beat you dead." Gin grabs my luggage once he rounds the car and tosses it into his backseat. "Though, if you need your a*s protected, that'll be one thousand dollars."

"Are you going to tell him?" I ask, sliding into the passenger seat, closing the door behind me as I watch Gin get into the driver's side.

He looks at me then in front of him, starting his engine. "Just to keep you alive so I can continue getting paid, no, but don't treat this as kindness, sis. I'm simply watching out for my income, that's all."

"I never met you before though."

"You have." He reverts out of the parking lot as I toss a lit match out of my window to light the clothes on fire. "You're just too stupid to remember."

I put on my seatbelt and hum in response. "You probably did something for me to not remember."

"If you think I laid my hands on you like they did, think again." He drives away from the airport. "Besides, you were the least annoying kid in that house. You were quiet and knew what personal space was. A real surprise from a kid like you."

I roll my eyes. "I'll take your word for it."

"But," he turns on his blinker and drives into the street, "to keep your a*s alive, let me tell you what you should and should not do with your husband beforehand."

"Do you know him?"

He snorts. "Joshua? Duh, I know him. But our business is confidental behind contract so don't bother pestering me about that, though let me tell you what you should know. Listen close because I'm not repeating myself."

"Okay."

"Joshua does not tolerate nagging females, so don't scold him for s**t or try to tell him what to do, it'll only piss him off. Don't start a conversation with a question unless it's urgent or something he can answer without getting pissed off, got it?"

I nodded.

"If you try to cook for him, make sure you don't mess up or else he'll kick you out of the kitchen."

"I know how to cook. I was forced to cook every morning anyway."

"Good, cause last thing we need is a dead sixteen year old on our hands."

"What else do I need to know?"

"Keep yourself looking flawless. He's obsessed with keeping his image clean."

"I can do that."

"Also," he stops at a red light, taking the opportunity to glance at me. "Don't ask him to join you on missions."

"I work alone anyway."

"Just keep those things in mind, sis."

"For a second there, I almost thought you cared about me."

He flicks my forehead and rolls his eyes. "You're just the source of my income, okay?"

I rub the spot he flicked and let a giggle escape my lips. "Okay."