Later that night, Lady Memento arrives on Killer Queen’s property. She manages to avoid most of the traps and sneaks around the area unnoticed. With the help of her ESP, infiltration was easy. She made his way to the gates as she wall-climbed easily, going to the other side of the gate.

Quickly made her way to the house as she found a weak security spot and an unsecured window leading to his pantry. She used a small can of corrosive from her side satchel to melt the locks, and she dismantled the window silently. Setting the window side without breaking it, Lady Memento squeezed into the entrance gaining access to the house.

She used her nocturnal vision though her mask, so he could see and maneuver around in the dark. Quickly she made his way to the door, silently opening it. Making her way to the hall, she stealthily made a left and went three doors down to find the study room.

There, he did some research of her own. Wasting no time, she went to Shayna’s laptop and pulled her encrypted USB dongle. A nifty gadget that her husband built for her that can hack into ever firewall via scrambling signals.

Gaining access to the laptop, she went over Shayna’s particular files of his finances and current transactions. Most of them were wire transfers from European bank accounts and international stock holdings. In seven days, Shayna moved around $9.3 million and funneled it into one account.

Just yesterday, she cleared a check of 26.3 million in American. The purchase was classified as it was in the form of withdrawal from the bank. Downloading and transferring it on her encrypted server, she was about done with siphoning information from the laptop.

However, something was amiss. Nobody was here. Usually, she would have armored guards and better surveillance. Preparing to leave the study, tragedy struck as a fifteen-foot-high bookshelf came crashing down on Lady Memento, breaking everything.

The massive flurries of books and paper surrounded the room as an old female voice bellowed in the semi-darkness, “Okay, asshole! I don’t know what you’re trying to pull but come out here right now!”

Looking at the damage that was probably done to the infiltrator, she peeked inside the crevice only to see a broken laptop and a chair.

“There’s just no way,” the woman declared in disbelief while her beliefs will be understandably right as the infiltrator stands tall behind her, unharmed.

As the woman quickly turned around, Lady Memento grabbed her by the collar.

This startled her as she regained herself, only to recognize and make a revelation of her own. “Oh, dear goodness! You’re that Memento woman everyone’s been talking about!”

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Lady Memento wasn’t impressed by this assumption, “Abigail Grace, defense lawyer of Killer Queen Shayna Hu. Indeed, I am that ‘memento woman’ everyone’s been talking about, and why did you try to squash me with a bookshelf?”

“Sorry to answer your question with a question, but why are you breaking into someone’s house dressed up as some superhero angel in an evening gown?” the elderly woman wondered.

Touché, Lady Memento thought.

“If you’re looking for Shayna, she’s not here. She went back to the city,” Abigail confessed.

“Where exactly?” Lady Memento questioned.

“Brooklyn, there is a cargo shipyard there.”

“Cargo that she had stolen from the Blood Rose?” Lady Memento pieced together as Abigail nodded.

“Xerxes Valentina acquired and produced a lot of weaponry for his roundtable, the Blood Rose. I mean, there is not really an absolute number of the weapons that he had at his disposal. Most of them are still unaccounted for.”

The global war that never happened, Lady Memento thought. She let go of her collar as Abigail began to relax and continue her explanation.

“In Bernard’s firm, we had someone look over his financial accounts. We found at least six cargo crates in Romania under his— assumed name he frequently uses so no one would track him or his spending habits.”

“Cut the crap, it was under his name!” Lady Memento corrected.

Abigail lets out a sad sigh. “Yes, they were. When they tracked down the rest of his cargo that he stashed away by himself, we took the opportunity to… acquire it for ourselves. I literally had to liquidate most of Shayna’s assets, so she could actually buy the crates.”

“Eichner and Killer Queen needed help from the inside, using bribery and extortion,” Lady Memento added.

“It was a joint business venture. I thought it was a waste of time and money. Shayna should have been focusing on her health. Her diabetes is getting worse, and full-time care is indeed a viable option for her if she stops doing all of this.”

This made Lady Memento skeptical of her help. “Well, I wasn’t expecting someone’s defense lawyer to fold over so easily.”

Suddenly, an overwhelming sadness went over Abigail. “Shayna is sick. Not just mentally or emotionally… Also, she is deteriorating physically… She’s… I guess you can say it’s all three. It’s like she has given up on life, just waiting…” Abigail stopped the train of thought and began her pleas for help. “Memento, I’m not telling you this, not because I fear you. I’m doing this in fear of her own particular safety.”

Lady Memento, seeing her behavior, realized she was genuine for her safety. “You really do care about her, counselor.”

This made Abigail giggle a little bit. “Maybe the only person in her whole life. I have had a lot of flamboyant clients in my days of practice. Shayna’s rather tame compared to most of them. Sometimes when a broken woman like Shayna is so comfortable being broken, they never want to put back together with the pieces. The woman needs help. Serious help.”

Lady Memento felt sorry about the situation, but she decided to tell the truth about the outcome, “I can’t make any promises, counselor. Right now, somebody wanted to kill all of them, especially her.”

“I know this is asking for too much, Lady Memento. And I really don’t expect you to take Shayna into custody in one piece,” Abigail halfheartedly pleaded.

“In this world that we live in, counselor, without hope there is no living,” Lady Memento lectured while this put a false smile on her face.

“You are still young, how I envy you.”

Lady Memento scoffed at her pessimism. “Expect Shayna to be in the twentieth precinct, counselor. I do believe when she gets there, she would want her lawyer.”

As Lady Memento leaves the study, Abigail stays behind with her head down.