Chapter 2: How to deserve a lifetime inside

Let's cut the bull here. My father was an assassin, a damn good one. My mother 'ran the business' arranging clients, taking the money, acquiring property, distributing weapons…As you can imagine it was frequently the case that my mother's job was more dangerous than my father's.

Arranging a hit on someone is surprisingly not complicated. If you know someone who knows someone who knows someone it can be done face to face. If not, then there's the 'dark net' – that weird corner of the internet where the creeps and killers live. This method is risky though – everything a person does on-line can be traced back to the person…After a hit has been arranged, the money is transferred and the target tracked down. This is when the waiting begins – unlike the myths that are shown on TV, not every target can be taken down by shooting them through a window from half a mile away. Sometimes you need to get a little more…creative.

Like anybody who engages in illegal activities, the biggest risk is getting caught. This is especially true if your job is to kill people. Not only will the cops be on your case, but so will the FBI and more annoyingly, SHIELD. Back before I was born, the 2 most annoying SHIELD monkeys were the Black widow and Hawkeye – 2 highly dangerous assassins. When I was 3 one of their 2 kids was killed in a car smash – after that their SHIELD activities dropped to zero. Their bad news was our good news. With the 2 assassins now allegedly taking desk jobs, my father practically had free reign. The rumour was that they were working in SHIELD intelligence.

I would love to say that my first job was a swashbuckling success and made me out to be the biggest badass in the whole of Boston. But that didn't happen. The target was a Boston man who'd stacked up a mountain of drug debts. His creditors had realised he was never gonna pay so they sought to 'terminate the contract' instead…I spent 5 days trailing his every move, learning his routine, looking for patterns, opportunities. What was clear was that he liked to spend a lot of time in his back yard. There was an empty property that overlooked it so that's where I set up my equipment. The opportunity came within the next 15 hours. He was ripping up weeds, alone. Perfect. Except I hesitated. It's one thing to shoot at a paper target with a face drawn on than it is to shoot at another living human being. Especially when that human has a wife and kids, the whole nine yards. That hesitation nearly cost me the job. I had to wait another 3 days before I got another opportunity and then I had to do it. I had no choice. You don't realise as a kid how much things you do will affect you, in the mind I mean. Kids aren't supposed to kill people. Nobody is supposed to kill people – it's not human. But it's what we do – what we have to do. Focussing on the job, the career and the money keeps us going, keeps us alive.

I went back to a shitstorm of criticism and anger, not what I was needing but it was what I deserved. I hadn't been training for 11 years to hesitate and nearly screw up the whole thing. That night my father visited me in my room and we had a pep talk. Apparently his first job had been a complete mess too. That made me feel better.

Over the next 2 years things progressively got easier. They never got any nicer (I was still taking life) but it got easier. Some jobs I did on my own, some I did with my father. Not all jobs were middle aged men – well they were all men but they varied in age considerably. The youngest was my age, a teenager. The oldest? I'm pretty sure he was in his 80s. Looking back I'd say they were 2 pretty good years, I'd even go as far as saying they were happy. It's a shame that my own attitude got in the way of the so-called 'happiness'.