"You want me to join the Assassin Brotherhood — and then take the position of Mentor?" Bella had to hear it confirmed.
Gavin Banks nodded decisively. Exactly what it sounds like. I'm not joking.
Her first instinct was that the man was messing with her.
But his expression held nothing of the sort. Nobody went to this kind of trouble to pull someone's leg. What would even be the point?
If he'd shown up asking her to join as a rank-and-file member — to run errands and take orders while her actual life got put on hold — she'd have said no without blinking. She was too busy for other people's fights.
But Mentor was a fundamentally different proposition. Leadership of the entire organization.
She had to admit, the offer had scale. Enough scale that her usual objections didn't quite hold.
She ran the calculation carefully, and something in her began to shift — not a decision yet, but movement in that direction. Still, not today.
"Mr. Banks." She kept her voice level. "If I understand the situation correctly, the Assassin Brotherhood is in a very precarious position right now. Many of your members were exposed by this traitor." She nudged Daniel Cross again with her foot. "Your overall strength has taken a serious hit. That's accurate?"
"Miss Swan, you're right." Gavin Banks was honest about it. "The Brotherhood is on the verge of collapse. We had no choice but to look for outside help."
The subtext was plain enough: If we weren't desperate, we wouldn't be offering the top seat to someone from outside the order.
Bella thought aloud, slowly: "The Brotherhood, however diminished, is still... a formidable organization. Centuries of infrastructure. If I accepted the position of Mentor, I'd have access to the Brotherhood's intelligence networks, personnel, financial resources, and the accumulated knowledge passed down through generations."
Gavin Banks didn't respond to that. He waited.
"But those are things that belong to the Mentor by right," Bella continued. "They're not a bonus you can offer me — they come with the position. You can't use a Mentor's inherent resources as a bargaining chip. That's not a fair trade. That's just the job description."
The middle-aged Assassin tilted his head slightly. "What exactly are you saying, Miss Swan?"
"I'm saying this: your company is close to bankruptcy, so you need a new CEO. Someone willing to manage day-to-day operations and absorb the risk. When a headhunter brings in a candidate, what's standard practice? You pay a signing bonus. Relocation costs. Compensation for leaving their current situation. That's the legitimate process." She pointed at him directly. "You can't offset that by waving around the salary the job already comes with."
She held his gaze. "You're my employee. Setting aside what that means going forward — right now, at minimum, I wouldn't call us friends. I have no reason to risk my life for your cause out of goodwill. This is a transaction. A mutual negotiation. You've been watching me, and now you've decided to approach me — which means you've already concluded that I'm worth it. So now it's your turn to demonstrate your own value."
Gavin Banks considered that for a few seconds. He'd followed her meaning completely. "What would you like us to do?"
Bella held up one finger. "I need the Brotherhood to find me an Isu artifact."
"Which artifact?"
"A diamond. The most beautiful diamond in the world, if the old records are to be believed — one that can only be fully used by a woman with extremely high Isu genetic concentration." She touched her own face with an expression of absolute self-assurance. "A gem that beautiful deserves to belong to someone who can match it. The diamond is called the Koh-i-Noor. It was once part of the imperial treasury of Nader Shah, ruler of the Afsharid dynasty of Persia."
Every employee at Yutani Corporation had been asked more than once, "Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?" Gavin Banks was no exception. The first time, he'd been bewildered. By now, he was thoroughly immunized.
Honestly, he found it reassuring. A saint as Mentor would have been harder to trust.
He searched his memory carefully. There was something — a faint trace of information about that particular stone.
"One detail." Bella leaned back slightly. "The last confirmed location of the Koh-i-Noor was early twentieth century, during the Spanish Civil War. It was reportedly in a church somewhere in Spain. Beyond that, I can't narrow it down further through my own methods. Your people will need to do the legwork."
She added, without any attempt to soften it: "Yes, I have ways of knowing things. You don't need to ask how."
"The Assassin Brotherhood will find this Isu artifact." Gavin Banks' tone carried real weight. "And prove what we're capable of."
"I'll look forward to it."
With a known timeframe and a rough geographic starting point, the Brotherhood threw itself into the search. Archivists combed through historical records. The handful of field operatives still operational were quietly redirected. It took a little over half a month.
They found it.
Gavin Banks brought it to Bella personally at Stanford — a small case. He placed it in her hands.
"Please be careful. The diamond seems to affect the mental state of whoever handles it."
Bella opened the case. Inside sat the Koh-i-Noor — a diamond roughly the size of a fist.
"That happens because of low bloodline concentration," she said, studying the stone. "And because you're not the right gender for it either, for that matter. What's actually inside this diamond is a fragment of consciousness — an Isu woman's awareness, preserved in the matrix of the stone." She paused. "Her name was Durga."
Gavin Banks desperately wanted to ask how she knew that. But he'd learned, working around her, that Bella had methods that defied easy explanation — and the Brotherhood had dealt with practitioners of esoteric arts before, across its long history. Some things were better left unquestioned.
Bella closed the case.
Not the time to deal with this.
"The Brotherhood has proven itself," she said, setting the case aside. "As far as I'm concerned, we're on the same side now. But before I agree to take on the role of Mentor, I have three questions."
"Go ahead."
"First: is this decision yours to make alone? The other Brotherhood chapters — their remaining leaders — do they have any say in this? Should they be consulted?
Second: as Mentor, what actual authority would I hold?
Third: what is the Brotherhood's current operating philosophy, and what are its goals going forward? What do you actually expect from me — continued conflict with the Templars? An all-out counteroffensive to avenge what they've done?"
There were more questions running through her head, but those three were the ones that mattered most. Everything else could follow.
Gavin Banks had anticipated this. He answered each in turn.
"The Brotherhood's organizational structure was devastated after the betrayal. The Osaka chapter was led by my teachers, Kenichi and Sarako Mochizuki — a husband and wife, both killed in the recent fighting. Leadership fell to me by default. At present, the only person who holds comparable authority to mine is a chapter leader in the United States. We are both willing to accept you as Mentor. The reason is..."
He paused for a fraction of a second.
"...because there's almost no one left."
No deflection. No spin. Bella could hear the weight of it, and it landed clean.
This was the real reason they needed an outsider. The Brotherhood's internal bench was empty.
That was Gavin Banks' calculation.