“I have never seen you here before,” Zampano said, moving closer and thoroughly inspecting Sasha’s impossibly tight dress. “And I am certain I would have remembered you if you had ever been here before. So what’s a beautiful babe like you doing here?”
Sasha giggled. “Looking for entertainment, I guess.”
“You have come to the right place and the right person then, lady,” Zampano laughed. “My name’s Pietro.” He nodded in the direction of the gangsters sitting at the tables. “Most of those jackasses work for me. But don’t waste your time with them. You’re too classy for them.”
Sasha chuckled. “Good to know.”
“So what’s your name?”
“It’s Stacey,” Sasha lied and emptied her drink.
“Right, Stacey. Are you up for a real drink, perhaps?”
“Sounds exciting.”
Zampano grinned, then whispered something to the barkeep and escorted Sasha to a table in a corner. It was occupied by two men drinking beer, but after a curt nod from Zampano they wordlessly took their glasses and trotted off. A few minutes later, the barkeep brought them a cooler containing a bottle of champagne - the sort of which would have cost Sasha the better part of a week’s payment, including the tips.
They toasted and small-talked, all the while Zampano drew closer and closer to Sasha until she felt his body rubbing against her hips. She really wanted to punch him hard into his grinning face, but Sasha knew that tolerating a slimy murderer within her personal space would be the price for bringing down Jennifer’s killer. So she kept smiling even when he wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her close.
***
Zampano gave his empty glass a sad gaze. “How about we go to my place, baby? I have got even better drinks there. And a hot tub, too,” he whispered into her ear.
Sasha conjured up her best seductive look. “I thought you’d never ask,” she breathed into his ear.
Sasha had got what she wanted – an invitation to Zampano’s house.
***
“You’re not afraid that the cops might pull you over?” Sasha asked from the passenger seat out of genuine curiosity, while the white Lamborghini sports car was shooting through Vancouver at about twice the legal speed limit.
Zampano laughed and shook his head, while casually running a red light, cutting off a compact car’s right of way. “It happens from time to time. I just give them a hundred each and they let me drive on. No biggie. The law is for poor people. It doesn’t apply to you when you have money.”
Sasha clenched her fist. The only reason why she managed to refrain from slapping Zampano hard was that the man was sitting behind the steering wheel of a car driving close to 100 km/h. That and because a part of her realized that there was some truth to his words, regardless of whether or not she liked it.
After a few more minutes of breaking various traffic regulations, Zampano steered his car into the courtyard of what a realtor’s listing would label a ‘detached single family home’, but the word ‘palace’ described it a lot more fittingly. Judging by its size, the three story brick house had at least seven bedrooms. It stood in the middle of a park-sized lawn, was surrounded by a seven feet iron fence, and came complete with the best electronic security systems money could buy.
Zampano cut the engine and jumped out of the car to gallantly open the door for Sasha. He helped her out and wrapped his arm around her waist, then tossed his car key to a waiting guard, who caught it effortlessly from the air. Another guard opened the front door for the pair and nodded a salute to Zampano and his newest conquest.
He didn’t waste much time and ushered Sasha right into his bedroom. She cringed when she saw the tasteless arrangement of red and purple furniture that she would rather have expected to see in a cheap brothel instead of a multi-million dollar villa. She placed herself on the plush bed, watching her host fixing two stiff drinks at a bar cabinet and handing her a glass containing a generous helping of what looked like fairly expensive bourbon. At least this will buy me a few more minutes before I will have to fend him off me, Sasha thought when she toasted to Zampano.
Zampano downed his drink in one go and put his glass aside. He threw Sasha a gaze full of lust and desire before he rose up and trotted to a large cabinet. When he opened it, Sasha could see a medium sized safe hidden inside the cabinet. Zampano reached down his neck with his hand and pulled out a key-chain he wore around it, which he used to open the safe. Sasha smiled. Now she knew where Zampano was likely keeping the secrets she came for. She just had to make sure first, before making her move.
Zampano reached inside the safe, retrieved something from it, and slammed the safe shut again, putting the key-chain back over his head. With a quick flick of his hand he tossed a small item towards Sasha. It landed on the bed, just next to her legs. It was a money clip. Sasha picked it up, flipping through the stack of bills - all hundred dollar bills. The clip contained at least a thousand dollars, probably more.
I never asked you for money, but you still assume that no woman in her right mind would ever sleep with you unless getting paid for it. You’re a sad person, Zampano, Sasha thought, as she nodded a silent thanks to her host. She had to play her role for a little while longer, so she had to accept the wad of cash no matter how much she wanted to toss it back into his face. Her mini-dress had no pockets, so she stuffed the money clip into her handbag instead, which also gave her a few more seconds to think. Sasha realized that the most likely thing going on inside Zampano’s head right now was figuring out the quickest way to rip her clothes off her - which of course Sasha had not the slightest intention of allowing him to do.
Stall, Sasha, she thought and help up her empty glass. “That’s great stuff. Could I ask for another one, maybe?”
Zampano chuckled as he accepted the empty glass from her hand. “You’re a tough lady,” he said, while he refilled both their glasses.
“I hope you don’t mind strong women,” Sasha teased him, neglecting to tell him that her body’s regenerative powers had the welcome side effect of absorbing alcohol very quickly. She could drink almost infinite amounts of it without even getting tipsy.
“The sort of strong women that’s wearing tight rubber dresses in my bedroom I certainly don’t mind,” he said and chuckled.
“Strong woman or not, I still love being in the company of powerful men, and want them to find me attractive,” Sasha purred, surprising herself by being able to deliver this line without even blushing. She actually despised power-hungry people more than almost anything else in life.
“Ah, baby, we’re a perfect match then. My organization pretty much owns this city.”
“You’re a gang leader?” Sasha asked, well aware that he wasn’t.
“Well, not quite,” he admitted. “But I report directly to the boss. He values me very highly. That - and of course I have a few really dirty secrets about him, he certainly wouldn’t want the cops to know about. So, my position in the organization is strong enough, let’s phrase it like that.”
Sasha laughed. It was just the sort of backstabbing attitude and intrinsic distrust she expected from a mobster. “That is always a good thing. I hope for you that all these little secrets are actually...well documented?” she probed.
He nodded towards his safe. “Indeed they are. That stuff’s my life insurance.”
Sasha smiled. Although she was sure that she did so for very different reasons than Zampano probably thought she would. He had just told her what she wanted to know.
And this meant she could end this charade now.
Sasha’s expression suddenly became very hard and cold. Before Zampano could inquire, both her hands shot up, fingers pointed at the gangster. Sasha drew on her magic powers, creating a strong electric potential within her body. A split second later, a multi-arced lightning worth tens of thousands of voltage shot out of Sasha’s hands. The electric energy struck the surprised Zampano into his chest, knocking him up from the bed and into the air. The strong
jolt tossed him all the way to the opposite wall, where he crashed hard against the wooden panels and slid down.
Sasha stood up and calmly walked towards the unconscious man, who had received the equivalent of a very strong taser shot. She reached down and tore his key-chain from him with a hard twist of her hand, then inserted the key into the safe’s lock and opened it.
Inside she found a few stacks of money in different currencies, a loaded handgun with extra ammunition, three passports issued by three different countries - and a letter-sized metal strongbox, which she took out and put on the bed. Sasha opened the lid and peeked inside. The box contained a few unmarked binders. She opened them one after the other. Each of them contained written orders to assassinate a different person. Her hands trembled when she opened the third to last one, looking at a photo of herself. It was the order that had caused the fatal shooting at her house, where Zampano failed to kill Sasha, but shot dead her best friend instead.
What she was holding in her hands was a serial killer’s idea of a diary. Zampano kept a tidily organised file on every single person he had ever assassinated, including photos of the subject, observation notes and the methods he used to execute them. And every single time, the order for the killing had originated from Roger Brooks himself. It was the very first time that serious crimes could be directly linked to him.
Sasha smiled as she pulled her cell phone from her handbag and called her dad. What she had found was court-proof evidence and would earn her unconscious wannabe lover a few life sentences worth of prison time.
***
Zampano’s villa was longer a quiet place to be. Cops were swarming all over the place, looking into every nook and cranny inside and outside the building. With Sasha’s evidence backing them up, they have had no trouble obtaining a search warrant for the entire villa. Sasha looked out of the bedroom window, her arms crossed in front of her chest, while she was observing the cops rounding up Zampano’s goons and leading them to waiting patrol cars. Behind her, two strong officers dragged an awake but still shaky Zampano to his feet and handcuffed him. Sasha turned around, meeting his confused gaze with the coldest stare.
“Why?” the killer asked. “I would have given so much to you.”
Sasha didn’t answer. Instead she walked around the bed, to where Zampano’s files were still piled up. She picked up her own file and retrieved a photo, holding it up just next to her face, for Zampano to see. The smile she wore on the photo showed an innocent happiness she no longer possessed, lost on the day Jennifer had died. But there was no doubt that the woman on the picture and Sasha were one and the same.
“Sasha Clarkson?” Zampano half asked, half stated as he realized the truth.
“To be honest, I am amazed that you didn’t recognize a person you were supposed to kill. But then again, you didn’t look at my face much, did you?”
Zampano uttered a number of mixed Italian and English cuss words that described Sasha in a fairly non-favourable way, as the cops dragged the struggling killer out.
Another cop entered the room when the group was gone. One she knew very well.
“Hi dad,” Sasha said to Superintendent Tom Clarkson.
The older cop mustered his daughter very intensely.
“I am not sure what scares me more: That you pull a stunt like this without backup, or that you have clothing like that in your wardrobe,” Tom said, shaking his head at Sasha’s dress.
Sasha just smiled and shrugged innocently before she gave her dad a firm hug. Then she handed the files to Tom. “It was worth it, though. This person will not murder anyone again, will he?”
Tom nodded in agreement. “On top of what you got here, we have found the machine gun that killed Jennifer, and his fingerprints are all over it. Not even Roger’s money will be able to bail him out this time.”
“Then my job is done here. I shall see you, dad,” Sasha said, grabbing her handbag.
She slipped back into her coat and walked out of the compound and down the street. At almost two in the morning, it was dark and quiet. Sasha could have asked her dad to give her a ride – or just could have used her magic powers to fly home. But she needed a walk and some fresh air right now.
***
Two blocks down the road Sasha spotted a sleeping homeless man lying on the cold ground in a dark side alley, next to a garbage bin. Sasha stopped, and regarded the man for a few seconds. Then she reached into her handbag and retrieved Zampano’s money clip. Careful not to wake the sleeping man, she let slide the money into his pocket.
Shooting the man a smile, she turned and walked away.
April 7th, 2011
The coffee had just finished brewing when Sasha retrieved the newspaper from the mailbox and put in on the kitchen counter. The local headline made her smile, which rarely occurred whenever she read the mostly dire, catastrophic and sad events that newspapers tended to report on a daily basis. She finished reading the article, and then carefully cut it out with a pair of scissors. Then Sasha finished dressing, snatched her car keys from their hook on the wall, and drove to the central cemetery.
***
Sasha stood in front of the grave and gazed down at the tombstone, like she had done dozens of times before this day. And like always a knot formed in her throat when she stood in this place, next to the resting place of the cheerful young woman who had to die long before her time, for no other reason than her being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sasha put the news article on the stone and placed a pink rose on top of it.
“I hope you can rest a little bit easier now, Jennifer,” Sasha whispered to her dead friend - the only friend she ever had. Then she turned around and left, wiping a tear from her eye.
***
Two hours later, a graveyard worker walked by Jennifer Myers’ grave and wondered why anyone would put a newspaper snippet on a tombstone, reporting that a gangster named Pietro Zampano had just been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
April 9th, 2011
Matthew Finch shrunk by two inches when his boss shattered his fist so hard against the table top that the two glasses standing on it toppled and spilled all their contents.
“I want her dead, dead!” Roger Brooks screamed. “How can it be that one woman, a former waitress, to add insult to injury, is allowed do so much damage to this organization? Do you have any idea how much those weapons she delivered to the police were worth on the black market? Or the drug lab that was your responsibility to protect?”
Matthew paled at the last line. Black Vortex was famous for two things. The first was generously rewarding people loyal to him. The second was an absolute intolerance for failure. People who disappointed Black Vortex usually ended up in English Bay, with a bullet hole in their head or two.
“And now she did this,” he yelled, pointing at the newspaper article covering the arrest and conviction of Pietro Zampano. “He was my best guy, my number one. Great assassins don’t grow on trees. He was much better than the rest of those clowns working for me combined. And now I have to look for a new one, because of this damn bitch.”
“Leave her to me. I’d be delighted to kill her for you. I hate this little slut at least as much as you do,” Matthew said, both because he meant it, and because he hoped that his enthusiasm would earn him back a portion of his lost karma in Black Vortex’s eyes.
The gangster boss snorted. “Don’t be silly. You’re no match for her. She’d eat you for breakfast with those powers of hers. And besides, you’re not a trained killer, Matt. No, we need a metahuman for this.”
Matthew Finch nodded. “Want me to look out for one?”
“Indeed I do. And make sure to recruit one powerful enough to break the little bitch in two halves,” Black Vortex snarled.
April 11th, 2011
Roger Brooks smiled when Matthew Finch led the giant of a man into this office. He had never seen the metahuman before, but he had to acknowledge that the man certainly looked impressive. The dark-skinned man stood at le
ast at six feet and four inches tall, and had muscles the kind of Roger had suspected until this moment only regular steroid abuse would ever grow. The bald man had only one good eye left - the other one was covered by a black eye-patch. But Roger knew from Matthew’s description that this disability wouldn’t hinder him much, for he didn’t drew his strength from physical prowess at all, despite he certainly possessed plenty of that.
Richard “Frostbite” Jones was able to breathe clouds of air so extremely cold that it would instantly freeze any living beings it touched, and create solid layers of ice on or around pretty much any object affected by it. Frostbite generally needed no muscles to harm and kill his enemies. He just froze them to death.
With a flip of his hand, Black Vortex slid the large man an envelope over the desk. Frostbite opened it and examined its contents. It contained a cheque worth five million dollars and a photo of White Sasha. He looked long at the number written on the cheque, and then nodded towards Black Vortex. “The amount is satisfactory,” the metahuman said in a dark voice.
“I am sure you noticed that it’s actually more than we agreed on. In return, I expect her to die within the next three days. And if you can, make her suffer in the process,” Black Vortex said matter-of-factly.
Frostbite regarded the photo and grinned, showing two rows of perfectly white teeth. “When I am done with her, her skin colour will nicely match her hair,” he growled while pocketing the cheque.
April 12th, 2011
Sasha roamed through downtown’s Pacific Centre Mall, enjoying the window shopping and the thought of the new pair of shoes she had bought a few minutes ago. The shiny black pumps would add another three inches to her six feet of body height, but she didn’t mind that. It was not as if she was going to wear them to a ball anyway - or to a date, for that matter.
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