Raven

I study the picture in my hands. My brows furrow in confusion.

My father studies me closely.

“Is there a problem, Raven?”

I hiss out a breath and angle my head.

“Father, I don’t want to question your judgment, but…. My father cuts me off

“You say you don’t want to question my judgment, and yet you go ahead and do it anyway” His voice cuts through the silence like glass, but I don’t back down. I put the picture on the table between us.

“I am the one who is going to have to find him. I am the one who is going to stick my neck out to get this person—” I jab my fingers at the picture of the hockey player for emphasis. “A one-way ticket to hell”

I bend down, bringing us to eye level. His cold blue eyes stare back at me, unblinking, filled with restrained rage, his hand tightens on his chair as if he is fighting the urge to strangle me.

Good.

“So excuse me if I have questions about what damage an ice hockey player poses to you.”

My father blinks, and immediately, all traces of his previous anger disappears. He looks contemplative for a moment before giving me an imperceptible nod.

“Nick is the son of one of our doctors”

My brows fly up. I straightened to my full height, clearing my throat, unsure of what I was hearing. “The um… The son of a doctor?” My voice is incredulous.

“The son of a traitor”, my father corrects sharply, some of his previous anger colors his voice. All at once, I understand the point he is getting at. In our world. Traitors were condemned to one fate. They are eliminated.

“I assume he has made threats” I ask, referring to Nick’s father. My father bare his teeth in a horrible mockery of a smile. The hairs at the back of my neck stand. I know I am not going to like whatever my father has to say.

“Deniz Gundeş has been fish food for almost ten years. I made sure of it.” The glint in my father's eyes tells me that whatever happened between the two men wasn’t over. It’d taken 10 years for my father to seek out the son of a man he killed. To my father, this wasn’t some detached sort of mission. To my father, it was personal. I’d seen what happened when my father took things personally.

A body rolling down the grand staircase in the foyer flashes through my mind. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to end well.

“So Nick has said something to threaten us then” my father notes my choice of words and nods in approval.

“He has not said or done anything out of the ordinary, however I have it on good authority that his father siphoned some information before turning rogue. Information of a rather sensitive nature.”

“So, this guy, Nick, has the information?” My question is met with silence.

“He has the information, right?” My father still remains silent, his eyes tracking my movements, his face completely devoid of any emotion.

“Father,” I start," your silence damns you. You want me to kill a man based on information he may or may not have, for a grudge almost a decade old?”

“Are you questioning my orders?”

My father's voice is cold, completely devoid of emotion. Right now, he is no longer my father but my boss, the head of one of the largest crime organizations in the country. Before me is the man who put a gun in the hands of a 7-year-old child and asked her to shoot a man to set an example, telling everyone that betrayal was only punishable by one thing: death.

He is the man who dropped a 14-year-old on a deserted island to see how long she could survive. The man before me has killed or tortured people for asking ordinary questions, and right now, I am the one who has questioned his orders and, without coming outright to say it, called him a fool.

But I also know who I am. I am the one who took the gun from my father's hand and shot the traitor. I was the one who survived on a deserted island without intervention for 6 months when I was only 14. I am the one who has the highest kill count in my father’s empire. I was clean, precise, and best of all I left no traces. I was irreplaceable and while my father might hate that I knew it, he has never denied it.

“I deserve an explanation” I say through gritted teeth. My father rises from his chair. Despite being 5’8, without heeled shoes, at 6’3, my father towered over me. Forcing me to crane my head up at him.

Bastard.

“You deserve whatever I say you deserve”

“You called me in here and asked me to kill someone. Now, unless you tell me clearly if I am about to kill an innocent man, I suggest you find someone else who you trust to finish the job.”

“You would willingly leave a loose end that could potentially damage our business by refusing to do what is right because of some power trip of what you deserve and what you don’t?”

“Are you going to find someone else?”

My father gives me a deliberate once over before finally answering.

“The information Deniz Gündeş stole was put into a flash drive. He gave it to his son before he passed.”

“Great”, I flash him a saccharine smile and pick up the picture, putting it in the file.

“One dead Nick Gündeş coming up.” I turn around and walk out of the office.

“Raven”, my father calls out. I tense, slowly coming to a stop at the threshold. I let out a breath and turn to face him. My father is already sorted, but the small smile playing on his lips causes my gut to churn.

“My condolences once again. "I am sure your Rachel was a pleasant girl….. To you” At the sound of her name, heat rises in me and I narrow my eyes, wondering where this was going.

“You hated Rachel”. My father was playing a game. I just didn’t know the punchline yet.

“Ah, yes I did, didn’t I?”

A roaring starts in my head.

“Yes, yes you did. You made that clear on numerous occasions.”

“It seems as though I wasn’t the only one to harbor such emotions regarding your friend. Our good friend, Nick Gundeş, was rumored to have quite the animosity towards Miss Harper."

“Yes, yes, I remember one other thing” my father nods his head empathically as his face turns speculative.

“He is also rumored to be an excellent marksman, quite a strange skill for a hockey player, don’t you think?”

The roaring in my head stops. And a strange calm comes over me.

“Yes, quite strange indeed” I respond and pull the handle of the door. I stand frozen as the door closes with a soft click.

Slowly, I pull out pictures of Nick from the file, observing them one after the other. My gaze snags on the one where he is smiling as he holds his hockey stick in both hands. His gaze is fixed on a point away from the camera.

I don’t know how long I stand there staring at his photograph. I was going to kill Nick Gündeş in the most agonizing way possible, but first, I would take his smile.

After all, I was my Father’s daughter and this just became personal.