Irresistible

Kwan Moldrick, tall, handsome, and bold-a man who took everything seriously, even the silliest jokes his mother once told him. At a very young age, he experienced the worst thing that could happen to a man-he accidentally killed his brother and was despised by his own family.

To escape the crime he did, Kwan fled their town and live on the streets, where he learned to steal from ordinary vendors and use dirty tricks to fool people out of their money just to buy food and survive both the heat and cold.

Kwan had risked his life many times, and now he was standing in front of a huge mansion that belonged to his client, a notorious mafia boss who came from Beijing but moved to Western Europe for some reasons he didn't know, ready to risk his life once again.

Brein Loi (aka. Brandon), sitting on his throne, surrounded by armed men the leader of them all was about to meet the most wanted hitman in the west. As the door opened, he stood up and welcomed him.

Monsieur Denisse Lucresse, Brandon's cousin, who had come from Marseille, recommended Kwan to eliminate his enemies. Denisse assured him that Kwan had never failed a task assigned to him, yet Brandon remained skeptical.

Moldrick entered the dimly-lit mansion and asked, "Where's your leader?" He looked around and saw Brandon and his men, waiting for him.

The atmosphere was tense. The smell of cigarettes, drugs, gunpowder, and alcohol lingered in the air. The men were silence, but ready to shoot just in case something unexpected happen.

Brandon thought he would meet a creepy man, like a mysterious assassin, but the man in front of him has a calm, composed, and collected demeanor and a serious face without a single scar. He wondered could he act so calm despite being in such a tense situation, and he was all by himself?

"Mister Moldrick!" Brandon approached him. "I didn't expect you to come here alone. Weren't you warned that you might not get out of here?"

Kwan remained calm. His right hand was holding a cigarette, and the other inside the pocket of his long overcoat. A threat had been a normal introduction for him.

"I'm here for the money," Kwan said, emitting smoke, making Brandon step backward.

"As expected of the most wanted hitman," Brandon said, slipping his fingers inside the pockets of his jeans, conscious about what the price would be. He thought that his cousin Denisse might be wrong because this man seemed difficult to negotiate with.

"Twenty million; I'll do it quickly," Kwan replied brusquely, as if he were the boss.

"What a shameless man!" Brandon screamed in his mind. "It doesn't matter; I'm wealthy enough to buy someone's life-someone who's very important to disappear or might become a hindrance to my sovereignty in the east."

"I'll give you one month," Brandon said.

"Won't you offer a down payment?" Kwan demanded as he swallowed his cigar, the cinder slowly approaching his lips and smoke spiraling up in the air.

"Get the case!" Brandon ordered, clapping his hands for the men around him.

One of his men took the bulging, black attache case from the floor and dragged it near Kwan. The man opened the attaché case, while Brandon went towards his chair and sat down. He crossed his legs, leaned on his chair, and lit a cigarette.

"That's half the price, so you can't withdraw the deal when you accept that," Brandon said, holding a silver lighter and a cigarette in his lips. "You may count them to be sure."

Ten million was huge enough to support himself and the business he was going to build, but Kwan knew how valuable his conscience was. He spent a few moments in silence before making his final decision.

"Maybe you're scared of what can happen to you if you get caught by those cops." Brandon broke the silence and laughed derisively.

"I'll be back with her head!" Kwan made a promise, took the attaché case from the floor, and immediately went out of the mansion.

"Just make sure. Hahahahaha!" Brandon's devilish laughter gradually faded as the sun went down and vanished from view.

Far away in the east, where the sun always rose, the five-storey mansion of San Jose stood on vast, untouched land. It had a grand staircase leading upward with elegant, blooming flower beds and stone railings on both sides. Its steps were made of patterned stone.

A lovely lady in her mid-20s was assisting her parents in their garden when someone called their attention from the gate. A chariot stopped there, and a tall and handsome man came out. He was wearing ordinary clothes, a black tunic with a hood, black pants, and boots.

"Oh! There he is!" Elfedio exclaimed in a happy tone, welcoming their guest. "Meet Emerson Bevilla, our new gardener!" He opened the gate and let the man in.

As he looked up after bowing his head to show some respect, the young lady's eyes met Emerson's. He smiled at her, but the lady just ignored him by looking somewhere else.

The young lady started thinking about the man's physical features: he has brown eyes, a high French nose, hard facial lines, and an undercut hairstyle.

Emerson's eyes didn't leave the lady, although she wasn't looking at him. He didn't know why even her long, curly, blonde hair, which wasn't even tied, seemed to be pulling him closer, and he was getting mesmerized as his foot brought him near.

Bernadette faked a cough to catch their attention and asked, "So, you'll be starting your work today?"

"Uh, um, yes, ma'am, sir," Emerson stammered in surprise as he shook his head while being freed from the mesmerization. "I will start working today."

"That's great. Child, why won't you show him around first?" Bernadette asked the young lady, her daughter.

"Why me?" The young lady asked in her mind. But there was no one else around, so she had no other choice. She acted like she didn't know where to go first, feeling uncomfortable. "Follow me," she whispered enough for him to hear.

Emerson cautiously followed the hem of her swinging white miniskirt. He couldn't help but secretly enjoy every glimpse of her small but perfectly trimmed waist, shapely legs, and flawless skin.

"Okay, Mister, I will leave you here. This is Mario, one of our agriculturists and the head worker. You may ask him if you need something," the young lady said as she hastily turned to leave, noticing that the man behind her seemed to want to commit sexual assault. "Why would Dad hire someone like him?" She wondered.

"But miss! I don't even know your name!" Emerson shouted, but the lady hadn't heard him, or at least she just didn't want to as she continued walking.

"She's Rebecca," Mario told him while picking up the trash from the ground and putting it in the wheelbarrow.

"What a lovely name," Emerson complimented. A sweet and charming smile appeared on his face.

"Yup, she was born not just beautiful but also wealthy. She's talented and clever, too. There's no other woman who can be as perfect as she!" Mario exaggerated as he continued his work.

Emerson fell into the snare of reverie for a while, thinking of what he heard from the headworker. He didn't know why he, himself, was showing a lot of interest in the lady-was he attracted to her glamorous beauty?

"Hey!" Mario exclaimed as he noticed Emerson was doing nothing. "Are you here for work or not?"

"Oh, I forgot that I needed to work!" Emerson replied, having freed himself from his own imagination. "Why does it seem that she's the only one playing in my mind?"

"Let's go to the front yard and help me trim the weeds there; then perhaps you will know. You must not be lazy if you want to stay here longer," Mario advised.

"Thank you for your advice, but I need to talk to Rebecca first." Emerson stepped out, attempting to leave, but Mario grabbed his arm, preventing him from going.

"F**k! If you don't want this spade to break your legs, stay away from the young lady of San Jose," Mario warned before letting him go.

Emerson was surprised by both Mario's demeanor, which suddenly changed, and the fact that he called Rebecca the young lady of San Jose. He remembered something: that he had found what he was looking for.

Mario pushed the wheelbarrow in a mad or envious manner, and to avoid any trouble, Emerson followed him to the front yard to help trim the tall weeds. It wasn't because he was afraid that he would break his legs using the spade.

While the two men were working in the extensive garden, from the window of her bedroom up on the second floor of the mansion, Rebecca San Jose was also staring right at them, especially at Emerson.

"He's not so handsome at all. He even looks like a swindler or as if he were just released from jail," Rebecca soliloquized. "Why would I be interested in someone like him?"

"Miss Rebecca, whom are you looking at?" The personal maid asked as she entered the room. She then peered through the window to see, "Oh! The newbie gardener? I think he's handsome."

"Of course not! I'm just staring at the garden," Rebecca defended, waving her hands in front of her face, denying everything, though her face turned red from embarrassment.

"I didn't ask if you were looking at him. It seems that you're really attracted to his popping muscles, aren't you?" The maid asked derisively and chuckled.

"Lucille, if you have nothing else to say, then get out!" The young lady shouted, showing her true colors.

"Oh, come on, I just got here; don't you want us to talk about the new gardener before I leave?" Lucille asked, making her young lady's eyes widen in annoyance.

"I said, get out!" Rebecca's voice grew so loud that even everyone from outside could hear it and wondered what was going on.

"Okay. Enjoy watching him," Lucille bantered before leaving. She knew Rebecca very well since she had been working here for almost five years.

Rebbecca emitted a long, deep, audible breath and stared back at the two men outside. She blushed, seeing Emerson staring at her too with a flirty smile as he winked. With hidden but arousing admiration, Rebecca smiled back hesitantly.

"Hey! What are you looking up there?" Mario asked as he looked up to where Emerson was staring, but he saw no one. He wondered if Emerson had lost his mind. "Are you still there?"

Meanwhile, Rebecca hid herself beside the window in her bedroom, as she didn't want others to think that she was interested in their new gardener. She tried to convince herself, but no matter what she did, she couldn't hide her true feelings.

Rebecca wanted to see how Emerson planted, trimmed the weeds, used the spade, hosed the plants, etcetera, etcetera. She wanted to make herself believe that he wasn't attractive, but in the meantime, the contrary was shown in the way she acted.

When everything seemed to be singing a lullaby with the tedious afternoon and everyone was having their siesta, Emerson tried to sneak out of their room quietly, but he had accidentally awakened his roommate.

"Where are you going again?" Mario asked.

Emerson stopped in front of the door, his hand holding the doorknob. "I just want to go to the toilet. Do you want to join? Or can you stop watching me? You're not giving me the right to act on my own. You're not giving me privacy!"

"So you now know how to complain, though you don't even know how to work here? I don't really know why they took you as a gardener, though you know nothing about it," Mario insulted, his tone full of contempt.

Emerson took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He might just suddenly spill the beans about himself and murder this man for underestimating his capabilities. However, he didn't want to lose everything he had planned just because of him.

"I have to be patient," Emerson thought. "Nothing comes easy in this world. Everything I wanted, I'd always have to work hard for it, and I had already gotten used to that."

"If you've got nothing good to say, then I have to go," Emerson stated as he opened the door. He got out and slammed the door back so hard, which caused the room to shake.

"Go! And never come back!" Mario exclaimed. "What a shameless man! I'm just asking, but look at that attitude."

Emerson left the dormitory and sneakily went to the mansion. He activated the espionage version of himself. It seemed unbelievable that the most-wanted hitman in the west would become a gardener just to further his task in the east.

In the very first hours after Emerson arrived, he had begun studying the place so that he could easily make a plan of how to kill his target, and then he started carrying out his plan.

Everyone else was currently asleep; he saw no one in the farmstead. Even the guards that watch the gate were napping in the sentry box. Emerson went to the backyard of the mansion and looked for ways to get inside Rebecca's room.

Without making any noise, Emerson jumped onto the roof of the mansion. This could be the reason why those cops couldn't catch him, for he made his work clean, always came up with a plan, and had a well-stretched body.

Emerson took another jump to the second roof above. He glided towards Rebecca's room and finally reached the open window, then got inside. The bedroom was quiet and empty, except for the uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, until someone made some footsteps towards him.

When the young lady passed by, Emerson had already hid himself behind the wall. He thought he already had the opportunity to kill her, but it wasn't the right time. He hid on the other side of the wall and watched her fix the curtains while humming a song.

Rebecca's miniskirt swung with the wind coming from the window. She had no idea that someone was watching her. She glimpsed outside the window. What good weather, she thought while touching her forehead, as if she were looking for someone.

Emerson became confused about what he felt. Rebecca looked so beautiful in his eyes that the moment he saw her, he forgot about his mission. The way her hair danced with the wind, he just couldn't resist the urge to get closer.

He was about to approach her when Rebecca stared right at the spot where he was hiding. Emerson was surprised and didn't know what to do in case she caught him stalking her, but he remained steady as she slowly walked towards him.

"Miss Rebecca!" Lucille called.

Rebecca halted and stared back at Lucille. "Yes?"

"Your mother asked me to bring you some snacks. It's your favorite apple pie," Lucille replied.

"Wow! That smells good. Just put it there on the table," Rebecca ordered as she turned around and continued walking towards her destination, sighing with relief when she saw no one.

In that immediate moment, when Lucille called Rebecca, Emerson found his way out of the situation: he jumped down to the other side of the mansion and hurriedly went back to the dormitory.

"Where have you been?" Mario asked, noticing the diffused sweat on Emerson's face and the dirt on his clothes as he entered their dorm. "Were you being chased by wild bulls?" he added derisively.

Emerson did not reply, knowing that it wasn't his roommate's business anymore, and why would he ask if he even wanted him to go and wouldn't want him to come back again? Emerson just continued walking towards their room and fixed himself.

"Are you looking for something?" Lucille asked.

Rebecca faced Lucille. "I felt so uncomfortable, like someone was watching me here a while ago," she replied in a serious tone while looking directly into Lucille's eyes.

Lucille walked towards her and also checked the spot. "Perhaps you're just tired, because there's no one else here except me. But don't tell me that you're uncomfortable because I'm here." She furrowed her forehead.

"I'm serious! It's not because of you," Rebecca's replied worriedly.

"Oh my gosh! You're so cold!" Lucille exclaimed after she touched Rebecca's forehead. "You can't have a fever too."

"But my head aches because of you," Rebecca told her. "Stop playing around. I'm serious right now, okay?"

"Okay, I will go now, so that you can eat your snack and rest. Perhaps you're just tired." Lucille got out of the room, while Rebecca sat down on the chair beside the table where Lucille put her snacks.

As she peered down through the ajar window, she saw Emerson cutting the tall plants. Rebecca observed that he did not appear to take a break. She looked back at her food, thinking about the question. "Who would watch me in my own bedroom?"

On the next day that followed, the feelings of insecurity went beyond normal. Rebecca hadn't even slept well last night because of the thought that someone might just suddenly get inside her room and do something she didn't want.

"Whoever that person was, he was wrong about the target he chose," Rebecca thought. She knew that stalking someone was a crime, and if she caught the person who stalked her, she wouldn't hesitate to make him pay for what he did.

There were a lot of disputes between her parents and their business partners; she wouldn't be surprised if someone wanted to kill them. Especially with their greatest rival, the cruel mafia boss from Beijing, Brein Loi.

Rebecca sprang out of her bed, took the winding stairs, and went outside the mansion. She hadn't even combed her hair or washed her face, but her day became more different when she saw Emerson watering the plants.

"Buenos dias, mister Bevilla," Rebecca greeted him in her Italian accent. A sweet smile appeared on her face. "Would you let me do that?"

"It's a pleasure, milady." Emerson handed the hose to Rebecca, but he accidentally wet her face, which totally awakened her.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Emerson apologized in surprise and bewilderment as he hurriedly removed his shirt to dry Rebbecca's face.

"No, no! I'm just fine!" Rebecca insisted, but she went lulled to see him naked. Her eyes were stuck on the hard muscles on his chest and abdomen.

"S'il vous plait. It was my mistake, so let me." Emerson completely used his shirt and gently wiped Rebecca's face while looking at her lips. "I'm so sorry. I swear, I didn't mean to."

"No, I told you, I'm just fine, and please don't get near me!" Rebecca exclaimed and attempted to run, but it was so slippery that she lost her balance.

Emerson's instincts showed up as he caught her with two arms. Their gazes met once more, but this time with something inexplicable that sparkled within, like a scene you would expect from a movie.

After that slow motion, Emerson was surprised to find himself naked; he had accidentally released her from his arms. Rebecca was surprised and afraid of what could happen to her. Fortunately, it wasn't too high where she fell.

"Did he never get naked before to act like that?" Rebecca wondered, while Emerson immediately headed to the dormitory.

Bewildered, Emerson stared at anything, like someone who was looking for something he couldn't find, as he thought that someone might have witnessed what he did. He wasn't ashamed that someone may have seen him naked, but rather of holding the young lady in that situation.

"How careless I am," Emerson thought while looking at his reflection in the broken mirror. He seemed to have just taken a shower, profusely sweating, but he didn't know what could happen to him if Bernadette and Elfedio knew this.

"I wish too that nobody saw me," Emerson soliloquized. "Or else all my sacrifices will turn into nothing. How unlucky I am if that happens."

When he came back to his normal thinking, Emerson prepared himself to face Rebecca and the punishment that might be waiting for him. He put on formal clothes-the ones he wore when he arrived and might be the ones he'd use to leave-thinking that he would no longer be a gardener for San Jose.

"Mister Bevilla!" Elfedio exclaimed. He and his wife were waiting outside the dormitory. "Someone reported that you did something."

"I'm so sorry, sir; I didn't mean to do that," Emerson apologized sincerely while bowing his head in front of his bosses.

"Huh? What are you apologizing for?" Bernadette asked, as she didn't really have any idea what Emerson was talking about.

"Yup, why are you asking for forgiveness if we found nothing wrong with what you did? In fact, we're glad you're so hardworking. And because of that, we're hiring you as the new head of our workers," Elfedio said.

"What?" Emerson screamed in his mind. "So, it's not over yet?" He wanted to say something, but his mouth dropped. He wanted to jump, dance, and scream but couldn't pronounce any words and was totally cut off when Bernadette interrupted.

"If you don't understand the work of a head worker, we're inviting you inside the mansion to discuss it," Bernadette added.

Emerson was very surprised and relieved that everything was different from what he expected. Perhaps there was nobody who witnessed what happened, and if there was, maybe that person chose to remain silent.

Bernadette and Elfedio walked towards the mansion, and so did Emerson. He followed them and met a lot of guards, servants, and maids. It seemed impossible that none of them saw that embarrassing thing; he still didn't want to be complacent.

Inside the dining room, by the huge table filled with delicious food, beverages, and freshly picked fruits, Emerson and Rebecca were sitting on the chairs at both ends. Emerson couldn't look directly at Rebecca's face, whereas she could.

It wasn't a big deal for Rebecca to see his muscles, although she hadn't seen any before. The only annoying thing he did was let her fall. Sure, there was a reason why he did that, but what?

After the servants offered everyone a glass of wine, Elfedio asked them to make a toast. Emerson joined them reluctantly, although he thought that this routine with a lot of food to be wasted was just a lack of common sense.

Emerson didn't like how they acted like money-minded people. He was not accustomed to a wealthy life either, because ever since he was little, his parents couldn't even provide for his needs.

He dropped out of school, he remembered, because of his vices. Thereafter, he could do nothing but work and support his family's needs without telling them where he got his money.

Emerson's priority was that they could survive, however bad the situation was, and that nobody would oppress them. He knew what it felt like to be oppressed by wealthy people; he also experienced that, and he didn't want to remember those things anymore, especially the biggest mistake he made.

Hearing Elfedio's laughter, Emerson became more uncomfortable, so he made an excuse but didn't provide any reason. He was thinking that it was not important to be hired as a new head worker.

Emerson was surprised by what he found when he entered the dormitory. Someone released a blow to his forehead, and he caught it unprepared. He was shaken like a drunken man as blood began dripping from his nose.

"You piece of garbage!" The man exclaimed angrily. "How dare you snatch my position?"

"Mario?" Emerson inquired, perplexed, as his roommate gradually came into view. "I'm sorry if you think that I snatched that position from you, but I did not." A worried expression was shown on his face.

"Tell me another lie, and this is what you will get!" Mario was ready to release another blow, and perhaps he could no longer prevent it from going with the gust of his feelings.