PART ONE: If your right hand causes you to sin.

A long shadow was cast on her bed, rippling over my thighs, onto her pale skin. A voice that hissed, a snake's voice, echoed in the room.

"I must say, I did a hell of a job. See how clean everything is, honey," the silhoutte, leaning on the doorway, teased. A woman's figue. I could tell, a very, very seductive woman. "No blood on her sheets," she whispered, "she didn't even scream. Dumb girl. Just like her mother."

I couldn't see her. She was a shadow in the doorway, brilliant light in the background creating halos in my vision. Nothing but breasts, hair, and an ass that could spark a religion. I sensed the metallic twang of blood on her hands, I could see her cover Miki's lips as she rested the dagger's tip on her forehead. In my imagination she whispered something cruel to a shocked seven-year-old. You deserve this, little one, or a gift from me and your daddy. Then I saw the blade pierce her skull, a soft spray of red lifting between her eyes, stark red, red, red in the shadows of a black night, only thing radiating light were eyes, a pair from the assasin, and a pair from my daughter. Eyes stolen from her mother. This bitch killed Jaclyn all over again.

"Seriously, though, it was too easy, sugar," her pronunciation of sugar listless, leaving the "r" in the end hanging. Sugah. Words rolled in her mouth, poisonous, toxic words that hit you like a hammer and remained in your bloodstream like a parasite, eating away at your life. "A little girl. Ugh."

I wanted to rise from the bed, stop her tease, but experience demanded patience. The slivers of light bouncing along her belt proved her inventory of twin daggers, curved at the tip, on both of her sides. Twenty years ago I would've jumped, grabbed her daggers, held them to her throat and demanded who the hell "A" was. Who sent her. She would scream and surrender in terror, then I'd cut her neck anyway, stab her in the eye, I'd carve "Love, Regan" on her breasts and thrown her back to her employer, cut fingers in her mouth.

But I looked at her, studied her. She couldn't even be nineteen, and I knew myself, balding, green veins on my hands, back spasms while picking up Miki's toys. She probably still had baby teeth. If someone sent her, she'd be damn good. I haven't fought in so long, I'd be rusty, she'd cut my chest open like she already has and stab at my beating heart before I could lift my hands in retaliation.

So I sat there, taking her abuse. Her words hit me like a stampede of goats, I was on the ground, hooves bearing the words "just like her mother" on my face.

"So." I said, cloaked in a facade that appeared as if I wasn't sodomizing her with her daggers where she stood.

"So. What do you think?" she asked, from her doorway sanctuary. "I have to kill you now. I had to do the brat first. It was in the contract. You can use the knife on your kid's head," she said, "just to be fair. I mean, you've got to be at least sixty. You might just give yourself a chance if you had a weapon."

Then she added, "but I doubt it." And her daggers came unsheathed, one in each hand. There was a whir, she spun the daggers in her fingers in a circle. I couldn't do that.

My fingers crawled around the dagger's hilt, I had some training with this, lightweight, backup weapons that Prontera outfitted you with, for close combat. But my training was what, 40 years ago? I closed my eyes as I pulled the blade, the rippling of blood from Miki's forehead filling my ears.

I stood up, my weapon in my right hand, I was testing its weight. I knew what body parts to attack, to cut, to maximize damage and blood loss, but I wasn't going for those. This assasin would die a slow, lingering death. I'd cut her tongue and ears out, chop off her hair from her scalp. I won't cut any major arteries, not the one behind the ankle or the one in her neck, or the one in her elbow. She was going to suffer. I'd pierce her liver then break the blade off, then I'd wrap her in a quilt, her head in a bucket, and hang her upside down to drown in her own blood and bile.

She spat on both her knives, her spit the venom enchanting her weapons. She took a pose, and I saw her body as she stepped into the light. What a beautiful woman.

I dropped my blade, and she reacted as I hope she would. She was shocked, and cocked her head back, about to tease, to say something to provoke me, to piss me off, like "can't carry your own daggers? You're that old?".

When I saw her head tilt back, I jumped forward and my fist landed in her face. Her blood immediately covered my right hand, and she was clawing at the floor, face covered in the same, nails scratching the ground looking for her daggers. She was screaming. I liked it. My little Miki didn't scream, now this assasin was screaming for her.

I picked her up by her hair, her "you bastard" shouts filling the room. I grabbed her head, placed my thumb over her eye. A crunching sound, and she was half blind.

"Who sent you?" I asked, my words hitting her like a stampede of goats.