Sierra Carter had never been more scared in her life.

The time when she fell off the top of a slide at SixFlags when she was eight, couldn't beat this. Or the time when she moved across the world when she was ten, hadn't scared her like this.

Even when she watched her Father's body roll into an ambulance with two bulletholes in his head when she was nine, couldn't match the feeling of fear when it came to this.

"Sit down, Ms. Carter."

Sierra could feel her hands shake as she sat down, her fingertips brushing the edge of the table in the interrogation room. She came face to face with her supervisor, Agent Sara Khan. The reason for her nervousness was justified, as anyone in the Bureau knew that a meeting with Agent Khan meant you were in deep shit. No conversation with her ever ended well.

'You might as well hand over your badge now.' Sierra thought, her eyes burning into Agent Khan's own narrowed ones. The tension in the room burned thick, the brushing of a file ending the silence as it met Sierra's eyes from across the table. "Do you know why you're here?"

"No."

Agent Khan gave a threatening smile as her hand brushed the ominous file on the table. "When you submitted your security clearance four months ago, you stated that you had no siblings Ms. Carter."

Shit.

Sierra could feel her heart drop to the ground and back. "It's true. I don't."

Agent Khan pursed her thin lips into what looked like a solid line. Her black eyes staring into Sierra as if they were calculating her breathing patterns. Trying to catch the lie in every irregular breath of air. Knowing Agent Khan, she probably was.

"You know lying to the Bureau can result in your expulsion as an agent. Even on something as simple as a secret half-brother that you deigned to put on your own file." Khan raised a  brow, leaning back in her chair with her pantsuit still remaining impeccably crisp. "Why would you withhold that Thomas Carter is your brother?"

Half-brother, Sierra wanted to say but she kept her mouth shut. She couldn't lose her position as an agent-in-training at the Bureau. She didn't waste four years of her life training for this position, she didn't waste eight years before that across the world, waiting for her chance to become something.

"Thomas and I don't have a relationship." She said simply, watching as Agent Khan studied her. Technically, she wasn't lying. Her and Thomas had only met once, and that had been when her Father forced them to all go to a Yankee's game together. After that she never saw him again, only hearing his name whispered by gawking fan girls and on the top of tabloids.

"It's not everyday we discover one of our own agents has a celebrity brother." Her tone sounding on the edge of sarcastic. This was how Khan always played, her words relatively harmless with a biting tone. It was how she intimidated her suspects, leaving her with a perfect record as far as the FBI was concerned. And right now?

Sierra might as well have been one of her suspects.

"But that doesn't erase the fact that you still lied to us." She leaned forward across the table, staring her dead in the eye. "How can you expect us to trust you as an agent, to investigate and protect while you keep secrets yourself?"

"Agent K—"

"I should be taking away your badge right now." Her mouth curved after she spoke, "But I won't."

Sierra felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted off her shoulders, but then she remembered it was Agent Khan she was talking to. She never does anything without a price.

Khan slid the document that had been laying on the table over to her side, letting Sierra catch it with a quick reflex. "You're lucky that your brother happens to be one of the people we're investigating."

"Thomas?" She couldn't say she was exactly shocked. Though she didn't know Thomas Carter personally, she had spent her fair share of time reading the magazines and newspapers his face was always plastered on. His partying lifestyle and what seemed like a charming charisma(according to his many fan girls) probably had ended him up in some trouble. But she would've never guessed it would be on a federal level.

Khan shook her head, tapping her nails on the table top. "Not exactly, we have a reason to suspect he's an accomplice though."

Sierra looked at the document labelled classified, sitting right in front of her. "Then who's in the document?"

The woman shrugged. "His name is Nikolai Delacroix, and I expect you to know every single thing about him once you get off the plane that you'll be on in two hours."

The plane that I'll be on?

"You're assigning me a case?" Sierra asked, dumbfounded. She was only a junior agent, barely even graduated with her specialized training still under way. She had never been actually out in the field, with a real case.

Khan nodded her head slightly, letting her loose black waves fall slightly over her shoulder. She looked old enough to be Sierra's mother, but still looked young enough to switch-kick anyone if need be. "Protocol states that an agent shouldn't work on a case about a sibling, no matter how distant the relationship. But I think we're past such rules in this case, the Bureau is getting desperate."

"What do you expect me to do?"

"Using your connection with Thomas Carter, infiltrate the social elite and try to find evidence of the scam ring that runs behind closed doors." She nodded her head towards the document. "Try to find evidence that Nikolai Delacroix is guilty of every crime listed in that file."

Her breathing quickened and she wondered if Khan noticed. Infiltrate the social elite? Uncover a scam ring? Try to bring a suspected criminal to justice? This was stuff a trained agent should've been doing, not a twenty-two year old junior agent with barely four years under her belt. "But I wouldn't be going undercover."

"No." Khan smiled, her lips plastered red. "I suppose you wouldn't, we'd still provide you a proper cover. Enough to make you look like a typical heiress." Sierra had never inherited anything before.

Trying to uncover a scam ring? Even after her years of training there was still a lot of doubt in her stomach. Sierra was a good agent, always at the top of her class since preliminary period all those years ago.

"Look, I don't think it's in the Bureau's best interest to assign me to this case." Sierra admitted, her hand still resting on the document she'd been handed mere minutes ago. Why would they trust her with such a case, especially with a conflict of interest involved?

A cold trickle of laughter echoed from Khan's bright red lips. "If you don't I'll have to ask you to submit your resignation from the Bureau by this evening."

"You're blackmailing me?"

"We don't blackmail here, Ms. Carter. This is the FBI." Her eyes seemed to lull at her in annoyance, but the slight grin on her face told her that she was fully amused. "Either you complete the mission, do what needs to be done or the Bureau will see no need for you to complete your service here."

You spent your whole life dreaming about this job, She felt a little voice nag in the back of her mind. You promised that you would serve to stop the crime that killed him once, are you really going to let go of that dream?

She couldn't let herself fail. She couldn't let herself go back to Finland, to her exiled Mother as a failure. This was all Sierra ever wanted in life. While others chased after money, fame and love; all Sierra Carter wanted was to be an agent.

"I'll do it." She did not falter.

"Good." Khan nodded at her, slowly standing up while smoothing out her black pantsuit. "All the information you need right now is disclosed in that document, and the rest is waiting for you in New York."

New York. Of-fucking-course.

She wasn't shocked, but she couldn't say she was pleased either. "Do I have time to pack?"

The look in Khan's eyes already told her the answer before the words even came out of her mouth. "If you're going to be a socialite you might as well dress the part, Ms. Carter—or should I say Agent Carter? "

Agent Carter.

It even sounded amazing.

Sierra stood up herself, grabbing the document and tucking it under her arm. "Thank you."

Khan only blinked in response, looking her once over. "You're welcome."

Before Sierra could reach the door, she heard Agent Khan speak. "Oh and Agent Carter?"

"Yes?"

"You have twelve months to complete this mission, if you fail to meet the deadline I expect your badge on my desk the following day." Khan brushed past her. "Good luck."

Twelve months? To solve a case that usually takes years to solve?

She only hoped Nikolai Delacroix was a really shitty criminal.

..

And so it begins ;)

- Elle