Dangerous

My eyes hover all over my face through my handheld mirror. A slight smirk appears on my lips. It's such a crime to look so good. I've aged just like fine wine.

I look up when the car comes to a halt. The chauffeur soon opened the door for me.

There stood the empire I slowly built, brick by brick, Ixtab.

It's not smart to have a prominent hideout for the mafia, let alone right in the heart of the city.

The boys were very skeptical about controlling the operations of Ixtab at the heart of Ruphia, the city center of Miwori. But the police can be pretty dumb you know. It's pretty easy to get away with things when you can disguise your mafia organization under the impression of being a wine production company.

It also works for showing the banks where my money comes from. We don't want them to know where it actually comes from now, do we?

It's a pretty big area with vineyards, warehouses, and everything. We have people coming in from all over Ruphia to check out the wine-making process. I wouldn't say Dionysus Winery is popular (which is a good thing), but we're considered a kind of underrated gem in the industry.

Kuro meets me at the gate with a smile. He's the one who's in control of this establishment as well as making sure our perfect cover is not blown away at any cost. "Dressed to impress today I see.", he complimented.

"Oh, you don't have to flatter me. I know I'm getting wrinkly.", I tuck my hair behind my ears, trying to fish another compliment out of him.

He gives me a knowing look and smirks, "You don't have to do that to get compliments, you know?"

"Just shut up and give me what I want.", I roll my eyes and smile.

"Alright, alright. Madame Achlys, you are the prettiest woman I have ever laid my eyes on."

"So-"

"No, Madame Achlys. That's not an invitation to get married tomorrow. Now if you don't mind, we have a meeting to attend."

He knows me too well.

There's nothing out of the ordinary here at Dionysus Winery. Everything here looks how you would expect things at a winery to look like. The real magic is at the store closet at the end of the hallway.

With the door closed with both of us inside the dark store closet. My hands immediately finds it's way to the special red button hidden under a bottle of bleach. The room lights up with a green light as the wall in front of us splits into two, revealing another hallway.

"It's like I'm in a sci-fi movie everytime I open the secret hallway.", I say and we make our way towards the end of the hallway. I press on the right numbers on the number pad and step back to watch it split open to show the elevator.

"The only thing I see when we're here is your obsession with splitting walls.", Kuro sarcastically says as we enter the elevator. I throw a scornful look towards him and press the button to close the elevator.

Soon, we're here. It's not Dionysus Winery anymore.

This is the Ixtab HQ, where even the devil would be scared to set foot.

Without another minute of delay, we head straight to the meeting room where Damian and Farabi must be waiting for us.

"Alright, now that we've managed to get together for this important meeting, I announce the commencement of this meeting.", I say as I take a seat on my chair right at the head of the unnecessarily long table which Farabi insisted we have for the "aesthetics".

"Madame Achlys, I will start with intel on all the data I've acquired recently. I believe it will be very crucial to our ultimate goal.", Farabi stood up and said.

"Oh quit your fake formality. You were literally ready to throw hands at her this morning.", Kuro scoffed bitterly.

I send a glare towards Kuro. "Let's not bring that up now, shall we? I'm trying to save our asses here.", I say sternly. "Farabi, please continue."

Farabi looks at me with guilt. I smile to reassure him. "Don't think anything of it. You can start presenting your data."

He nods, "Okay so, what I have here is very crucial data or in other words, very juicy tea.", he says making us all cringe.

"Yep, he's gay.", Damien silently says making us all giggle.

"I'm trying to do something here okay?", Farabi scolds us making us all quiet down. "Anyways as I was saying…

I'll go over the Mr. Burton situation first, may the lord bless his soul. He leaked our plans, deals, and whereabouts for approximately the next 4 months so, whoever might be plotting against us is ready to counter our every move for that time period. Our sources confirmed that Mr. Burton booked a flight to Islydena two weeks prior to his disappearance and he stayed in Im Mingyuk's main building. He also had another flight booked to Islydena next week. I suppose he was planning to meet Im Mingyuk again."

I click my tongue, "Has Mr. Burton been buried?".

"Right beside his daughter like you wanted.", Farabi replied with a sad tone. "Can I ask some questions?"

"Do I have a choice?", I rolled my eyes. "Ask away."

"It's about lying to Mr. Burton about Juli's whereabouts. Why did you do that?", he asked with unsurety in his voice.

"Im Mingyuk wanted Mr. Burton to become mentally unstable. We all know how much important Juli was to him. Imagine coming back from a 4-month mission just to find out your only family is dead. Plus, if we did tell him about it and he did go crazy, that would be fulfilling Mingyuk's objective. We still needed his guidance to run the mafia. I wouldn't risk our safety in the long run like that.", I leaned back on my chair and stared up at the ceiling. "And those letters, they were to make sure Mr. Burton was never suspicious."

"Why did you time Juli's end-of-university with his contract duration then? Were you planning on getting rid of him anyway?", Kuro asked as he got up from his seat and headed toward the alcohol cabinet. "Fancy a drink anyone?"

My eyes perk up at the mention of alcohol "I'll have the 10-year whiskey."

Damien raised an eyebrow, "You didn't answer Kuro's question, Madame."

"Oh sorry, I got too excited there.", I said and politely took the glass of whiskey from Kuro. "Well, Mr. Burton knew too much. The moment he would retire, the news would spread like wildfire. His life would be at risk. So, to minimize his suffering, I was planning to just pow and send him off to his daughter, painlessly."

Kuro sipped on his glass of whiskey and chuckled, "I forgot that we're sitting in the same room with the most dangerous woman in Miwori for a moment.", he said and set down his glass. "Farabi, what else do you have in store?"

"Thought you'd never ask. I got a lot more actually.", Farabi started walking in circles around the table slowly. "I got to know from one of my connections that Im Mingyuk is trying to acquire more information on Madame Achlys. He went as far as trying to plant some bugs among us."

I frowned, "Bugs? Honestly, I'm not even surprised. Did you identify them yet?"

Farabi straightened up and puffed his chest proudly, "I took care of them the moment I got to know about the matter. I also remembered to squeeze information out of them before sending them off."

Kuro raised his eyebrows, "You're always searching for an opportunity to impress Madame huh?"

"Shut up.", Farabi glared at Kuro. "Anyways, I kind of have a guess on why Im Mingyuk is trailing on us again."

"Oh, I know.", Damien spoke up. "It's just like always, he's not approving Madame's way of work."

"Ah…is this related to the meeting I wanted to have with government officials?", I asked and everyone nodded. "Why's he bothered with it then? I don't see anything wrong with it."

Kuro shrugs his shoulder, "Well, it's the government we're talking about, They want us in jail.", he pours himself another glass of whiskey and takes a sip. "You're the leader of Ixtab, undoubtedly the strongest mafia family out there. It's only natural other families are worried about your affiliation with the government."

"But like seriously, are we doing any harm to them? It's not like we'll get them taken down with the government's help.", Damien said nonchalantly. "Hey, Kuro pour me another glass of that."

"Eh, I don't honestly care. As long as our meeting with that scrawny government agent goes well, I won't have any concerns.", I finished off my glass of whiskey and put it down. "We're supposed to meet when? At 2 am next Saturday?"

Farabi takes a seat and grabs the glass Kuro poured for Damien out of his hand. "What an obscure time to have a meeting. I say we keep our troops ready just in case. The intelligence division is keeping an eye on all police stations and roads.", he says as he takes a sip out of the glass, a disgusted expression appears on his face. "Why do you like this stuff? Go pour me a glass of coconut rum."

"Well fuck you.", Kuro took back the glass with a scowl. "Do it yourself.", she said and handed the glass to Damien.

Farabi leans back on his chair with a sultry look, "I'm down to fuck. When and where?"

"You're done."

And like the two break out in a catfight with Damien recording the scene on his phone from his seat, sipping on his whiskey as he enjoyed the fight.

"I'll make you both balance an apple on your heads again during the beginner guards' shooting practice if you don't stop right now.", I scolded them making them sit back down immediately. "Good."

The central telephone of the meeting table suddenly rings. I signal Damien to pick it up.

Damien nods and picks up the telephone, his eyes go wide at whatever the person on the other side said. Soon, he puts down the phone and looks up at me. "We need to go to Islydena right now."

"What happened?", I stand up from my seat with a puzzled expression, my head pointing out all the possibilities of danger.

"Im Mingyuk declared war."