Target Acquired

It wouldn’t be a lie to say that barista work wasn’t the most sustaining. The hours were long and the pay was mediocre, but first and foremost, Isa Moreno was content. And in that regard, she considered herself luckier than most. It was the simplicity of it all that made her enjoy the job in the first place.

But with that said maybe it was because Isa Moreno didn’t exist until three years ago. The person Isa once was had never had what could be considered a ‘normal’ life. Her old job and life was something she hoped to leave behind.

But despite the effort to leave, deep down Isa knew that one way or another that her past was going to catch up with her. She just didn’t know that it would come in the shape of a little black notebook.

She’d arrived home back in her apartment after work just like any other day when she saw the book sitting on the floor of her living room. Upon seeing it there, she swiftly and silently pulled her concealed blade from her boot and held it in a reverse grip; her first instinct was defence rather than offense.

The black notebook was something Isa definitely did not own. She had never needed such a thing. What she had learned quite extensively from her previous profession is that any materials like books or notes were to never be used. Objects like that that could leave a trace when the goal was to become invisible.

Isa scanned her apartment with her weapon in hand. After a careful and long search, she found nothing out of place other than the mysterious book. Whoever had left the book left no traces of where they broke in or how they got back out.

Glancing back down to the book she noticed that the book was slightly elevated from the ground. Without an ounce of hesitation she kicked the book.

There were four hefty wads of cash. Isa immediately scanned through the money. Not only was it real, but they were all hundred dollar bills. Even with a short look it became quite obvious that the money amount had to have been about 20,000 dollars.

Isa angrily threw one of the wads of cash against the wall with a frustrated shout. Not only was her new identity compromised, but by the look of it someone had also left her a job.

She slowly opened the book. It was on the first page that Isa found the one and only note in the entire book.

Phoebe Zoia, F, 27

Protect her.

234 Moria Avenue

“What?” Isa couldn’t help but say it aloud.

Protection was never in her old job description, it was elimination.

And what was stranger was that the address was one she recognised. It was a street over from the café she worked at.

Isa went over and lifted her coffee table. She pulled at one of the thick legs of the table. The leg had a false bottom and a black flip phone dropped out.

With a slow and heavy breath, Isa dialled the one contact saved in the phone under ‘Dio’. The phone rang exactly three times before a man answered.

“Morana?”

Isa couldn’t help but momentarily freeze at the address. Morana. It had felt like a lifetime since she had heard that name.

“Yeah,” she finally said. “It’s me.”

“I thought you—”

“Retired? I was—am. I…I’ve just called for a favor.”

“You’re asking me for a favor?” he laughed. “What kind of favor does the esteemed goddess Morana wish for me to do?” The sarcasm couldn’t have been more obvious.

“All I need is some info on a….” Isa struggled to find the right word for it. “….possible client.”

“A client? Someone found out where you’re hiding yourself then?”

Isa evaded the question. “Can you help me or not?”

He did.

In the end from the first surface round of info, Phoebe Zoia sounded like a no one. That’s to say she was what Isa would call an entirely average woman. She was born to her single Filipino migrant mother Cassandra Zoia. Her father was unknown due to her conception coming from was concluded to be a one night stand. She was born and raised in the same place, and currently worked as a florist in a flower shop owned by her family.

Isa thought that perhaps it had been a prank of some sort from an old colleague that found her location.

And yet still she still found herself hovering outside the address of 234 Moria Avenue. It was the Zoia family’s florist.

Isa stood outside the store staring at the only person tending to customers.

It was young average appearing woman with short and unkempt brown hair. The only thing Isa would consider unique about her appearance was that she was wearing a dress that looked straight out of the fifties.

Isa kept staring at the name tag.

Phoebe.

The woman was the target; the one that needed apparent protection.

Isa kept mentally berating herself. She kept asking herself why.

Why did she bother to entertain the request left in a suspicious little black book?

She could have just taken the money and that would have been the end of it.

Who would stop her from doing so?

The person had been foolish enough to leave money without setting up a proper contract in the first place. She never agreed to anything.

And yet there she was, standing and watching her Phoebe Zoia for the better part of an hour. Isa even had to ask a co-worker to cover for her at the café.

Isa wanted to curse at herself. While the money wasn’t something she was about to complain about, it wasn’t what kept her coming back. Her curiosity at oddness of the request is what kept her interest piqued.

If someone had the skill to leave no trace in her apartment other than payment and a notebook, then they had to have known about who she used to be. But instead of exposing her, they wanted for her to protect someone.

I will wait one more day, Isa told herself. If nothing happens then I will know that this meant nothing.

“Hello?”

Isa flinched backward. The target was no longer in the store, but right beside her. Lost in her thoughts Isa had let her guard down for too long.

It was Isa’s first instinct to expect being attacked, but instead she found eyes staring back at her own.

It is said that a person’s eyes are the window to the soul. It’s a cliché often said, but it’s because it’s true. It’s basic psychology if a person knew where to look.

Isa had been around liars all her life; she knew when to spot when someone was being insincere.

But directly in front of Isa she saw in Phoebe Zoia’s eyes something she had never seen in another’s eyes before. There was no darkness. Isa could only describe it as light. And as Phoebe smiled, her eyes only appeared brighter.

Isa felt a foreign feeling stir in the pit of her stomach and suddenly she felt like she understood why someone wanted her protected.

It was in that moment that Isa knew that Phoebe truly didn’t know anything about why she was there. Phoebe was completely innocent.

“I-I….” Isa didn’t know what it was she wanted to say, but no more words could form in her mouth. Luckily for her, Phoebe didn’t notice and spoke instead.

“You know, instead of lurking outside the store staring at me, maybe you should try and give me one of these.” Phoebe pushed a purple flower into Isa’s hand. “I’m here 7-2 every weekday so you don’t have to keep standing around all day like that.”

And just like that, Phoebe walked back inside, none the wiser. Isa could do nothing but stand there, dumbfounded for a few moments. She had just been given a flower?

Isa looked down. She couldn’t say that she exactly had an eye for flowers but she recognised what it was; a light purple lilac.

Knowing that florists would closely use flowers as a language, Isa quickly searched for the meaning on her phone. Isa assumed that maybe it was a hidden message that she couldn’t tell her in the public eye.

Isa read the first result.

‘A lilac when in the color for which this flower is named, symbolizes a first love.’

That meant that the target Phoebe thought--

Oh.

Oh.

Suddenly in the corner of Isa’s eye, someone passed her and her instincts kicked in. She sensed danger. It was a man, dressed in all black. The man walked down into the skinny alley way beside the store where the back door to the shop was.

Isa quietly curved the corner not far behind him. The man wore a thick black leather jacket, but knowing what to pay attention to, Isa could see the concealed outline of a gun.

The street outside wasn’t busy with people and the alley was isolated and quiet. Isa utilized the element of surprise in a manner of seconds as she silently stalked behind him. In one swift movement, Isa had pulled his hand forward and twisted their two positions around and pinned the hand behind the assailant’s back. She pinned him against the wall with a monstrous amount of strength.

“Who sent you!?” Isa demanded, shoving him harder against the wall. “Why are you after the florist!?”

The man refused to speak. Isa immediately popped the man’s arm, dislocating it from his shoulder. His screeches of pain were muffled by the brick wall.

“Why are you after this girl!?” Isa asked again.

Once again, he did not answer her. Mercilessly, she covered his mouth with her hand and made a brutal and calculated low angled kick to his left leg.

His screams vibrated against her hand. His leg was now bent in a strange angle. It was broken. It wasn’t a surprise to say that he was a talker after that.

Phoebe Zoia was labelled as a coveted kidnap target as the newly discovered heiress apparent to crime lord, Yángé Bái. They wanted to capture her as a means of blackmail against him.

Isa knew a lot about the underground crime world. And she knew that members of the Yángé family had large collusions with the Triad.

In short, the underground crime families wanted drag an innocent woman as a hostage into their world at the slight chance that her birth father would care enough to keep her alive. They were after Phoebe because of a father she never knew.

Isa was born into that world and it had made her able to survive anything. But Phoebe was just a regular woman. She wouldn’t.

Isa made her choice. She aggressively grabbed the man by the face, pulling it close to hers.

“Listen close. You tell anyone and everyone that they can come if they dare to, but tell them that Morana is out of retirement.”

The man gasped and his voice quivered in fear, “Y-You? Y-You’re the Morana? The agent that they call….they call—”

“The goddess of death?” Isa couldn’t help but smirk. “I never missed a single hit. So, tell everyone that Phoebe Zoia is now officially under my protection.”

Isa once had only one rule and that was to never harm someone who was innocent, or didn’t do anything to warrant the sentence she’d serve. If she didn’t protect Phoebe Zoia then it’d have been the same as leaving an injured deer to hungry wolves.

Perhaps it was suicide mission, but remembering the light she had seen in Phoebe’s eyes, Isa knew she had to protect her.

Isa could only laugh to herself as she walked away from the injured man.

It would’ve been nice to have more than 20,000 dollars to protect your estranged daughter, Yángé Bái.