Page 3 of Twisted Alliance

Shivay was trained in fighting. But before he could assess his attacker’s competence, he tapped his watch, activating an emergency signal before continuing to deflect the attacker’s blows.

The attacker didn’t hold back. It was clear from the cold rage and the way he held the three-prong metallic weapon the man’s intention was to kill.

Shivay no longer deflected the blows. He went on the offense. Lunging, he attacked the man by holding his hand with the weapon, grabbing him by the throat, and pushing him up against a wall.

The man struggled hard, and the dark brown beads he wore around his neck broke apart, dropping them all over the polished marble floor.

“Who sent you?” Shivay asked, continuing to grip the man’s neck in a chokehold.

The man remained silent as he struggled. Shivay noticed that the man’s face was covered with ash and not paint. On his forehead, underneath the ash, there were three horizontal lines with a faint mark at the center.

“Tell me who sent you,” Shivay demanded again.

The man looked determined but did not answer. Before Shivay could shift the chokehold, the man raised his free hand and blew something on Shivay’s face. A dust of gray covered the air, blinding Shivay and loosening his grip momentarily. The man chose that moment to pull out of the chokehold, and before Shivay could completely open his eyes, the man ran out of the restroom.

Shivay followed the man to chase after him, but barely a moment later, a series of gunshots were heard.

Fuck.

By the time Shivay reached outside, he saw a dozen local armed guards surrounding a prone body, and the shots continued.

“Don’t shoot!” Shivay ordered.

The guards stopped at his command, but when Shivay moved closer, he could see that he was too late. The man lay still with his eyes open, his body ridden with bullet wounds.

Anger and annoyance filled Shivay.

“Sir, you are bleeding!” Shivay’s assistant remarked.

Shivay ignored the pain in his arm and the concern in his assistant’s voice. Cold anger filled him at the thought that someone dared to order an attack on him.

“Are you all right, Mr. Thakvar?” the minister’s worried voice asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry there has been a security breach at my home,” the minister continued in a shocked, angry tone. “I’ll find out who was behind this attack and punish the culprit severely.”

Although Shivay had no reason to doubt the minister’s words, something about the attacker made Shivay think it went beyond the capability of the local government.

Shivay looked at the body of the tall man with a black turban and clothing. The face under the gray ash didn’t appear like a local either. His eyes then fell on the man’s neck, where there were visible bruises from where Shivay had held the man in a chokehold.

“The police are on the way,” the security head announced.

“Please allow the medical team to attend to your injuries, Mr. Thakvar,” the minister requested.

Shivay didn’t want to bother about the injuries, but he noticed that the cuts made by the sharp three-pronged weapon on his shoulder were deep, and he was bleeding down his arm.

For the rest of the night, he allowed the minister and the team of local police and medical professionals to attend to him. It was nearly dawn when he and his team headed to the private airport to fly back home.

Just as he sat back in the seat of his private jet while it prepared to take off to San Francisco, he pulled out something from his business suit pocket.

It was a small, dark brown wrinkled bead that the assassin had worn and had broken during the scuffle.

Shivay held the small bead in his palm and stared at it. It wasn’t a bead. It was a dried seed and looked familiar because his mother had similar ones in the prayer room of their home. Although the particular stone fruit seeds weren’t uncommon, they were usually worn by people from a particular country that wasn’t Africa or America. A country he had never been to in his lifetime.

He had already ordered a private investigation to find out who the assassin was and the person behind the attack.

Whoever you are, I’m coming after you.

---