Shayna had officially run out of things to do. She paced up and down the gigantic ballroom, each impatient footstep echoing off the marble walls.
She checked her phone.
No notifications.
Frustrated, she set it back on the table. Shayna was used to being busy and knee-deep in work and problems.
But she never thought that being idle would gnaw at her brain.
She had done everything she could. She had already slept for three hours, checked regarding any underworld work, and gone around the neighborhood.
She had ogled a few shirtless neighbours she'd previously recognized from magazine covers before deciding they looked significantly less impressive in person and even played Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of teenagers who made her want to strangle them for their pickup lines.
She almost regretted not going to work.
There, at least I could stare at the ridiculously good-looking new hire for a few hours.
She picked up her phone again, with not much else to do.
Might as well hack into a food delivery app and get herself and Rebel some burritos while she's at it.
Her phone finally lit up with a notification.
A message from Munay.
She opened it eagerly.
It's going to take me a couple more hours.
Shayna sighed, frustrated. Munay had urged her to stay back while she sorted out the business herself.
As if she were a child.
Shayna huffed, grabbing the fried bacon from the table.
She could probably get done with the work five times in that period of time.
In fact, I'm going to.
The only issue was that she could not contact Lynx as Vixen. For all she knew, he could give out that information to her perpetrator in exchange for money.
In the underworld, Lynx had the reputation of a gold digger and that he would do anything for the right amount of money.
I mean, with the amount of money she had heard he charged for his services, the rumour was not entirely wrong.
She snorted as an image of a twenty-five-year-old Lynx wearing golden lingerie and a push-up bra while pole dancing for stacks of cash invaded her imagination.
Probably not that much.
And she could definitely not with her real identity. According to any government report, Shayna Hazel Alonso was a model citizen, with a completely clean record.
She knew that nobody would be able to track her whereabouts until she wanted them to, but she was still unwilling to take the risk.
The only other option left was her birth identity, but it came with an issue.
Seera Darmos had technically been dead for over five years.
Burnt alive in a factory explosion in a small village in Inverie.
Shayna let out a string of curses under her breath.
I'd probably be safe until Lynx goes ahead and tries to verify my identity.
Which he definitely will.
A small streak of competitiveness arose somewhere near Shayna.
Lynx was definitely good at his job, but he could not take out Vixen in her field of expertise.
....
Shayna squinted her eyes in disgust.
Why do men watch so much porn?
Every part of the page was littered with porn videos (thanks to her old roommate), making Shayna unexpectedly uncomfortable. Just old wrinkly men somehow doing the same motion with weird ass captions.
It was like I was back in my old house all over again.
A notification popped up on the page.
Do you want to do things to the sexy, hot Adela? Just pay the price of 5.8 Euros along with 17000 others to have the slut fulfil your desires.
I'd pay one million to get this entire shit away from my eyes.
Shayna scoffed. Despite not being particularly in favour of it, she was not one of those women who judged prostitutes or sex slaves.
Like a girl has needs, right?
What gave her the ick were the whole 'slut' and 'whore' comments.
Even though she knew that many women liked that and found it kinky.
It should still not be directly on the main page, though.
And then she remembered that she was literally scrolling through the dark web. The hub of the most sadistic, cruel and misogynistic men in the world.
She scrolled under, notifications popping in and out on the page, before she finally reached her goal.
A small red dot appeared on the page as she clicked on the specific square.
Please enter password.
Shayna leaned back on her chair, disappointed at the dead end, before the obvious thought struck her.
It wouldn't work, most probably, though.
Shayna opened an adjoining tab with Lynx's past malware and leaked databases. Every password was different, strong and utterly random.
Damn, this idiot is good.
She dug through them, desperate to find any password that would appear like a normal birthday or a name.
Half an hour later, she finally found it in the last place she'd expected.
His fucking email address.
From eight years back.
Shayna slapped her head from annoyance. If she had not overestimated him so much and thought of him as a normal civilian, she would probably have finalised the freaking deal by now.
But it also created an unexpected thought in her.
Was Lynx just an average kid eight years back?
She stared at the confirmation question that the eight-year-younger Lynx had filled out.
What is your favorite colour?
Glossy chrome silver.
She thought about Lynx, probably the most feared assassin in the entire underworld. Although they were not in the same line of work, she was quite aware of his presence and respected him nonetheless.
From what she had heard, Lynx, like her, was not a part of any powerful mafia family. Hence, he had not received any training of any kind.
He had just risen through the ranks like her, Rebel, Munay and Cobra, adapting himself to the bloodshed.
She smiled.
It was not easy for the people at the bottom of the hierarchy of the underworld. Not many people from outside the underworld survived rising through the ranks.
In fact, even after years of service, they remained just as disposable for the mafia families as they had when they started.
Perhaps there was a reason the man was a gold digger.
Anyways, why do we have to be loyal to people who barely thought of us as humans?
Might as well bleed those fuckers dry.
She quietly logged out of the browser, deleting any evidence of her being there.
Her fingers switched rapidly to the earlier page. She knew that logging into the portal twice would create immediate suspicion.
So, she had very little time to reach him.
She sent in the standard request, ignoring her intrusive thoughts of just trying to hack his location.
It's way too risky.
She checked the message. Again, it had already been read, but the person on the other end ignored it completely.
All the good thoughts she had about Lynx went out the window.
He's a fucking asshole just like everybody else there.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
Then thirty.
Soon, forty-five minutes had passed since Shayna had sent her last message. She checked it over and over again.
No reply.
Shayna had half a mind to call Lucas and tell him to cut off Lynx's fingers and tape them to the fucking keyboard.
Motherfucker.
Probably jerking off to the fucking porn videos.
Just as she thought that aloud, three dots appeared in the text box.
About fucking time.