Scratching her chin as several thoughts kept lingering on her mind while sitting down on a plush carpet:
"How can I convince Mr Beard to allow me kill this bustard Bob Lee? I know he won't let! Or, can I take it in my hands? It is just a matter of sneaking in damn shadows, put a bullet in his skull and the rest is history."
But then, Ishtar goes deeper in her thoughts. Recalling a late night lecture Mr Beard gave her back in the days when he was training her to become an assassin, she can't forget most of his words:
"An assassin moves like wind _ never expose your identity _ always avoid being recognized by anyone. And... even when a client defies any of the terms we give them, one essential rule; never unlive a client."
Mr Beard's lessons rung a bell in her memory including his last statement at the end of her training that day:
"Consequences will only arise if you ever happen to go against any of assassin rules."
Suddenly, Ishtar's mind arose, back from the flashback memories, and silently she trashed Mr Beard's words saying to herself:
"Rules are mend to be broken."
After all, blood is thicker than water.
*****
Ishtar thought that Mr Beard could get angry when she breaks any of the rules and then get over it afterwards, not knowing that he lied about being her father _ taking advantage of her amnesia condition.
Mr Beard was the kind of grown-up man who doesn't sow where he cannot harvest _ a selfish being who felt no remorse for his deeds _ a wolf behind a face of a sheep who only cared about taking lives and earn a living out of it.
This side of his, Ishtar didn't know because she was blinded by the breadcrumb smiles filled with lies that he showered her, to use her in fulfilling his obligations.
However, Ishtar's ignorance of the kind of person Mr Beard was deserved to be excused. When she woke up in the middle of thick woods beside him, remembering nothing about herself the day she was hurt, Mr Beard was the only person she knew as family after falling for his selfish lies.
*****
Like a stubborn alarm clock, the persistent ring of the doorbell shattered the silence of the hotel suite. The sound pierced through the heavy sleep Ishtar was deep in.
Reluctantly, she began to pull up, perhaps from the depth of her dreams and blinked.
Raising from a deep sleep, Ishtar sat up from down on the plush carpet were she had spent the rest of last night. Unknowingly, she had tiredly dosed off with her hand held on to the laptop after texting with Mr Beard when she had just returned from a sabotaged mission.
Face still covered with a hint of maturity _ a make-up appearance she had disguised her gorgeous looks, Ishtar yawned and stretched her arms out, making her joints yield a crack sound.
She wasn't at all familiar with waking up after sunrise, but on bright sunshine rays through the window of her specious grand hotel suite in Paris, her eyes shot with dimness. This got her to curse in a small voice.
"Dammit!"
A few moments passed before she finally pushed herself to get up on her feet. And as she bent over to pick her laptop off the plush carpet, the doorbell rang again, a plea that seemed to demand her immediate attention.
She wondered, expecting no room service because she had not made any calls to ask yet:
"Who could be at the door?"
With a laptop in the right hand, she rubbed her eyes with the left hand, trying to wipe off the remnants of sleep, and began to shuffle on the plush carpet towards the door. Glancing through the peephole when she got to the door, the blurred figure was unfamiliar.
"Who is it?"
Her hand hovering above the handle, Ishtar posed before opening the door, her mind racing through the possibilities.
"Who could it be?"
With a shrug of curiosity, she turned the knob and the door swung open. There stood her airplane pick play, whom she used as a sex toy and dumped. Jake, bright-eyed and beaming, both hands socked in his pair of jean pockets with a skin tight long sleeved black shirt sightly open from the neck button.
He exclaimed:
"Surprise!"
Ishtar's mouth fell open in shock:
"Jack? What are you doing here?"
Ishtar's heart raced _ not from excitement but from the sudden jolt of intrusion into her carefully curated solitude. She realised she had opened the door not just to an intruder, but to a superglue she thought the few hours connection with him on the airplane was long buried.
Jake's enthusiasm filling the tiny entryway:
"Shocked to see me uh?"
Before Ishtar took a deep breath and pushed the door locked as soon as he fully allowed himself inside, she said silently at the back of her mind:
"Let's see who the cunning fox and the foolish goat is here!"
Fully in guts, he comfortably sat on a coach and crossed his legs, feeling at home. All this was against Ishtar's approval according to how distasteful her gaze was.
"What do you want from me?"
"That's not warm especially to a special guest like me!"
Jake stood up with unwavering confidence from the coach and began to walk, taking short steps, easy and gentle, circling around her with his hands in jean pockets.
With high self esteem he added:
"Anyway, matter of fact, we both didn't start off on clear grounds _ perhaps we would have gone through a normal procedure of dating and not just pull down eachother pants on the airplane in the lavatory without going on... maybe two to three dates!"
Taking a stop infront of her, Jake pulled out one of his hands from the pocket and gave it in to introduce himself afresh, gently with a honorable handshake.
He said:
"Let's open a new page and rewrite our story. My name is Jake, for short am Jay...."
Not even wasting her own time to look at the hand which was stretched infront of her, with cruel eyes directed straight in his eyes, Ishtar said to him:
"You're not welcome."
"Aren't you curious about how I located you?"
On a serious gaze Ishtar replied to him:
"I don't care. What do you want from me?"
Jake put down his hand in shame.
Ishtar's cold response was too tormenting that, it dug out the pain which was boiling deep within Jake's soul right from yesterday when she dismissed his desire for closure on the airplane up in the skies.
Abruptly, like a switch on the wall, turning from a smilingly bright face which was filled with pretence, Jake busted out in chaotic anger. The softness in his voice switching to a very hot uncontrolled temper, becoming so rough and bitter.....