Livia watched and lost herself for a moment again. There was something about Zephyr that made her lose focus. And she wasn't about to let that continue. "Try not to overdo it. You still have that sedative running through your body from last night. If you start to feel strange," Livia scribbled on a piece of paper, "call me. You never know what kind of reaction you could have to it. Well, I'm off," she said before departing.
Livia left the hotel and headed to her house. She went to the basement and into the greenhouse. There, she carefully selected about a week's worth of poison from the belladonna plant. She would start training him with a light poison made from the leaves, and gradually move him up to the berries and finally, the roots, which were the most toxic part of the plant. He would spend almost two weeks on the leaves. If this were a normal belladonna plant, it wouldn't be quite so long, but this was her specially grown plant. She's nurtured this plant into being five times more toxic than any of the wild growing plants. In normal belladonna, three berries would kill a full sized man. In this plant, it only took the juice from one.
She harvested a few leaves and took them to her prep room. There, Livia dried them and ground them into a very fine powder. This was the powder she sniffed on missions to enhance her sight. Half of the powder went into her vial for her personal use, and the other half into ten pre-measured doses, for Zephyr. Each one had a bit more than the first and in the beginning dose, it looked like a pinch of brown salt. Still, that pinch was going to wreck havoc on his body. She packed up her things and then headed to her father's intelligence room.
Mobs didn't actually run like they show on T.V. If they did, they would be caught and charged in a matter of minutes. No, mobs were smart. They had men planning and carrying out their tasks carefully. The people knew who was in charge and running things, but there was nothing they could do legally. Which is why crime was so wide spread through Kardanthia. It was a city filled with scheming criminals and corrupt politicians.
When she entered the room, the men stood to attention. It was a sign of respect, but Livia hated it. She walked over to the man in charge and told him she needed some information on the Shawnee looked up. She wrote down the word and handed it to him. "Call me when you figure out what it means. And I also want some general knowledge of the tribe's reservation. Go over info on the last fifteen years. I want to know if you find anything interesting."
Back at the hotel, Livia reminded herself that she was now Belladonna. An assassin that needed to focus on training this man's body against poisons. Of course, little to his knowledge, she had already done so the night before. Her body itself was slightly a poison. Not surprising, considering the amount of various things she ingested on a daily basis. It was in her sweat, bodily fluids, and even her natural scent. It probably wouldn't be enough to kill anyone, but if someone was too exposed, for prolonged periods of time, they would probably pass out. Still, technically, Zephyr's body has already had exposure to the belladonna poison, just from doing missions. And her close contact with him last night, was just more exposure. She would try to be as physically close to him as she could be for the next week. Physically, but not emotionally. She had already gotten too close to him for her own comfort.
At the front desk, she checked to make sure there had been no problems. The clerk addressed her as Miss Livia Jones, which caused Livia to nearly tear his head off. "It's just Miss for the next month. Don't mistake that or it could mean your job!" she huffed. "I'll be having a guest tonight, a tailor. He is to be shown to my room and then shown out immediately following our meeting. Have a staff member stand by in the private elevator to await his arrival and departure." Livia headed upstairs to meet Zephyr.
She walked in and heard the shower running so she went to the bedroom to change her clothes. This was, after all, one of her private suites, so she had her high end clothes in the drawers and closet. She stripped down to her underwear and started rummaging through her drawers. Her mind was focused on what to wear, so she didn't even notice when the shower was turned off.
