Some days just suck.<br/><br/>Even if you woke up feeling bright and sunny, the day is against you–it’s wet and dark and gray outside, the clouds obscuring the sun, the rain more of a muddy drizzle than a pleasant shower. It’s one of those days that makes you want to crawl back into bed, but instead, you’ve got to get up and deal with whatever the world is going to throw at you.<br/><br/><strong>Cassie</strong><br/>Two hours ago, you woke up next to a dead body.<br/><br/>Now you’re at the club and it’s almost like a normal day, if you could forget what happened earlier. Your friend, the front of house manager Belinda, doesn’t seem convinced that you didn’t take Steve home, but she’s not hassling you about coming in late and you’re just starting to relax into the idea that you can pretend it never happened at all.<br/><br/>And then you turn around and there he is. Steve, still handsome, dressed like he was when you first met, except his eyes are empty and his jaw is open and slack, almost dislocated and his skin is a color of gray that living humans don’t have. He stares at you mournfully as Belinda rushes up to you. “VIP customer at table six, can you handle him?”<br/><br/>“Run,” Steve says. “They’re coming.” His voice is too much like himself, not a ghostly whisper, but the voice of a live, pleading man coming out of a dead face. “The exile…you’ve got to find the exile.”<br/><br/>“Cassie, table six,” Belinda, motioning to a table where a man with a crewcut and impressive muscles is looking at a menu.<br/><br/>What do you do?<br/><br/><strong>Xiaofu</strong><br/><br/>Your phone rings, no caller ID. When you pick it up, it’s one of Edgar’s crew, a woman named Sasha. She tends to dress in all designer clothes that are tailored to show off her assets. No one has ever bothered to tell you what her actual role in the organization is, but she seems close to Irons, close enough to assign you jobs for him.<br/><br/>“Hey, the boss wants you to go to this address.” She reads it out to you. “It’s an office called Exile Private Investigations. Toss his stuff, grab all of his files that mention the Scarlet Phantom’s or the name Steven Lane, then set the place on fire.” She sounds harried, for someone who you’d normally describe as bored and a little sultry. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t mess it up. The boss is in a damn poor mood today. You can do that, right?”<br/><br/>What do you do?<br/><br/><strong>Ellie</strong><br/>“A private investigator?! Shit, capo, you want me to take care of him?” It’s your bodyguard talking, tucked up against a wall where he probably thinks you can’t hear him. The new one, Giancono or Giovanni or something with a G, anyway. Angela tries to rotate them out to, as she puts it, ‘keep them from getting too familiar’. It doesn’t really help, though–you can tell this one would already die for you. There’s a tone you’ve learned to listen to, from both men and women, when they’re around you for too long. Once you hear that tone, you know you can ask them for anything and you’d get it.<br/><br/>Your bodyguard, speaking to your sister or one of her lieutenants, continues on with, “Yeah, Exile? No, never heard of it. Well, at least let me go over there and make it clear he doesn’t have any business tracking a member of the Gentili family.” It sounds like someone has hired a private investigator to look into you, maybe one of your stalkers–or more worrisomely, someone with a grudge against the family. “Right,” Your bodyguard sounds a bit crestfallen. “Of course I won’t leave her alone. Right.” It doesn’t sound like he’s going to get the chance to defend your honor, at least not without you there with him.<br/><br/>What do you do?<br/><br/><strong>Bryn</strong><br/>You’re in your office doing paperwork, waiting for cases, when someone strolls into your office without knocking. He’s a tall, skinny guy with a strangely long neck and a lopsided smile that doesn’t sit right on his face. Your instincts are pretty much right off telling you this guy is bad news. “This Exile Investigations? You’re, um, Bryn Toledo?” he asks, tilting his head the other way, too far, like a puppet with no strings.<br/><br/>He doesn’t really wait for an answer, either way, just shrugs, shoulders up to his ears. “Sorry, the King says you’ve got to die.” And then he’s lunging toward you, one hand on the desk and just leaping over it towards you, that same big, lopsided smile affixed firmly to his face.<br/><br/>What do you do?<br/>