Smoke and Mirrors

Chapter 6- The beauty and the beast

When Reso woke up this morning it was due to the annoying beams of sunlight shining through the wide glass front of his penthouse apartment. Someone had turned the switch of his electric widow shutters in an attempt to wake him.

"Good morning, Mr. Croix.", a deep, female voice from the door greeted him when he finally moved his legs over the edge of his king-sized bed.

"You didn't open the shutters, did you, Acarni?" he asked loudly while he tried to separate himself from the pleasant dreams he had just a few seconds ago.

"I would never do that, Mr. Croix..." she said with a sarcastic smile on her lips and walked over to Reso to hand him clothes. "Your mother was the culprit. And she demands your presence in the dining room."

An annoyed sigh escaped Reso's mouth: "Didn't I tell you to address me with my first name?"

"Repeatedly." Acarni confirmed and stepped into his line of sight with a confident grin on her face. "But my contract demands, that I address you respectfully, until you offer me a more casual basis to talk... sir..."

The last bit of what she said was definitely meant to tease him as she offered him his suit for the day. He looked up to her and sighed before taking it. He hated suits. They were like a cages of fabric, designed to make all men look equally boring and uninteresting. With an annoyed expression on his face he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and almost hit his head on her chin when he stood up.

"Whoops...", she said and took a step back. "I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's fine.", assured Reso her while checking her with the same curiosity he has had for her on the first day they had met.

She was an impressive sight of a woman. Her short, red hair almost disappeared below that ridiculous fedora she was always wearing. The rest of her body was stuck in a suit too, but hers was two or three sizes bigger than his and still tensing above the massive packs of muscle-mass on her arms and shoulders.
The things she wore also were not custom made and probably re-used more then a thousand times before finally being discarded. She was nearly two metres in size, brought more then hundred kilos of weight into a fight and probably the most trained women that Reso had ever seen. Her eyes had a deep, auburn-coloured shimmer that delivered anyone who dared to come close to her a sense of the threat that she could pose in a fight.
The rest of her face looked a little bit deformed, as her nose was flat like from a professional boxer and seemed to have grown together with her upper lip that hid away her long, sharp teeth.

She was most definitely an unusual person to have as bodyguard, but there was more then one reason that Reso kept her around at almost all times. Most importantly she was not just a stuck-up wardrobe that kept following him around in his private life, but more of a friend he could rely on. She was entertaining too, telling him wild stories of wars she had participated in and fights she had supposedly won. '
Reso was never sure which of the stories she told him about her past were true and which were a fabrication, but he was certain that she didn't experience much in terms of formal education as a bodyguard. She lacked the usual, professional distance that most bodyguards had to their protege'.
How she had ended up on a list with the countries most experienced and trustworthy guardians was beyond him, but she had done her job well so far.
There had been no major security breaches in his personal life for the entirety of her employment in his company. She was someone who teased him at times and then boasted around with whacky stories about her incredible deeds in the past at different fighting tournaments and military operations. As mentioned before, Reso wasn't sure what of it was true and what of it was just a fun story she liked to tell to make her life seen even more exciting.