The Golden Bond

Chapter 46

It all began the next morning. The first two days, I was just a bird in a golden cage. Now I was a bird with a ball chained to its leg. The ball's name was Adam. He appeared next to me at breakfast, I was sitting at a table with Valentina again and this time he joined us too.

"Good morning, ladies," he said chirpily before sitting down.

Valentina spontaneously reached a hand out to him and he kissed it. He was apparently about to do the same to me, but I stubbornly held a fork in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, accompanied by my cheesiest grin which turned into a bored expression a split second later.

"You promised you wouldn't be nasty to me any more," he said, still smiling. If he hadn't been a maniac and a diabolically vicious Umbra charismagician, he would have been truly charming.

"Have I said something wrong?" I asked innocently while daintily nibbling at my yoghurt sponge cake with fresh fruit and washing it down with a delicious latte.

Adam looked at Valentina and answered the question in her eyes: "Don't worry, Gran Maestro, Miss Sofia will soon adore me."

Valentina grinned humorously, like a mother shaking her head at the mischief of her beloved pubescent son. Straight after that, she began to devote herself to me. "You have another important task today, dear."

"And what would that be?" I asked, for some devious reason, curiously.

"Our Masters' Council has fallen out of love with one of the Prime Ministers. His thirst for recognition and a desire to rule everyone and everything is too great. We prefer people with more agreeable natures. We need to get rid of him. You, Josh and Remo will find a way how. They'll explain everything to you, they already have the assignment. That should be all for today, unless Massimo has any other little things for you."

I nodded and finished of my cake. I'm going to ruin somebody's life today. I felt like a dealer of karma. I was going to do to others what someone had done to me. I didn't deserve it. Do they deserve it? Was it possible to answer that unequivocally? As some smart person once said, everything in the world has its purpose.

I stood up to leave, so did Adam. "Didn't you say he wouldn't escort me in the data centre," I turned to Valentina accusingly.

Adam laughed and rolled his eyes. "God, don't be so nasty. I'm going my own way, we'll just share the lift!"

I felt like I might even have offended him.

"Well, go on, kids," Valentina said and went on enjoying her breakfast, intolerably slowly.

So I walked to the lift. Adam was right behind me, like a proper ball. While we were in the lift, I couldn't escape him, so he used that to give me some further instructions of his own.

"When you've finished for the day, knock on my door, my room's right next to yours and I'll take you somewhere nice." That crafty smile again. He was leaning against the lift door, his posture radiating dominance. It didn't have any effect on me though and adjusting to that was a big challenge for him.

"OK," I replied dryly.

Then the lift stopped and I got out. Adam continued downwards. When I entered the administrators' room, it was as quiet as a graveyard. IT people terrified me in a particular way, apart from these two who were already waiting for me by the main workstation.

"Hi, Tinky," I heard from a distance in stereo. It made me laugh.

"Good morning, Tom and Jerry," I returned the greeting. I'm not gonna be the only one here with a comic alter-ego!The boys laughed at my embarrassing attempt at a joke and then started to explain today's task frantically.