Dammit!

This was getting ridiculous.

My lungs burned after all the running I'd just done. I was still fit, and twenty-seven was young, but I must have been going for maybe an hour. I didn't want to risk slowing down to get a vehicle, and I didn’t have one of my own. Usually, I just rented under some fake name, but I had someone to drive me this time, so I hadn't bothered to look for one.

Once I was sure I could stop running, I found a dark alley and walked into it, but not too far in just in case. The last thing I needed was to drive myself into a corner. I took a minute to catch my breath and then reached for the phone in my pocket. It was a burner with only one number, and I made the call.

It was picked up on the second ring. I didn’t wait for any pleasantries. The guy on the other end was waiting for the call anyway.

"Tell the boss the job is done," I said the seven words, then disconnected the call and dismantled the phone. I'd dispose of the parts later, putting them into different pockets. I took a few more minutes to catch my breath and then slunk out of the alley.

I had on a leather jacket over a hoodie, and I pulled the hood over my head as I walked down the street, keeping my head down and shoving my hands into my pockets.

At least I had good news to send back this time.

I was good at what I did. I didn’t brag—there really wasn’t anything to brag about being a good killer—but I had a good track record.

It was getting shot to shit lately, and that wasn’t normal. Not for me.

It all wasn’t my fault. My last two missions had gone so badly. Every time I was supposed to meet someone, they were not there, or there were a couple of people waiting for me. I was a paranoid kind of guy, so I didn’t go into situations recklessly. It was why I'd survived so long doing what I did. And today… I'd just made the kill when I heard voices getting too close and I had to hot-foot it out of there.

I remembered what it used to be like, being in the army, going on missions, executing them flawlessly. I served to the best of my ability and beyond, and I was good at it. I'd made the IRA my sort-of home until it came to a point where I didn’t agree with what the army stood for anymore.

And my old general, a man I had not quite trusted but I was forced to follow his orders because he was the leader of my unit, had decided I deserved punishment for my defection. He felt I was weak, and anyone that was defined as being weak in his eyes should be executed.

He’d hunted me down like a dog, and when he couldn’t find me, he went after my family. Finding him, taking him out, was all I lived for now. But it couldn’t shield me and I couldn’t live on that alone; I needed money and a good sum of it.

Then I ended up working for an Italian mafia boss in the US.

I knew the only way for me to survive was to be anonymous and with someone powerful. I got to know the most powerful mafia bosses in the States and chose Greco by chance. He'd liked me from the first moment he met me, supposedly, and a mutual trust was established between us both when I started working for him.

It wasn’t quite what I'd pictured for my life, but in a way, it was better than what I did before. So far, anyway. Greco hadn't sent me to anyone innocent. Usually, they were people he had deals with that either went bad or were dishonored. I didn’t feel sorry for them. But I wondered what I would do, the day he asked me to harm someone who didn't deserve it, simply because he wanted something that they either didn’t have or didn’t want to give up. I'd thought of it plenty, but I was going to properly think about it when I got there. No point in playing around with what-ifs. Until then, I would go about business as usual.

Not that what was currently going on could even count as that. Not every mission could be a success. Shit happens, there were coincidences, and plans go out the window.

Two missions in a row, though? And then tonight. I could feel my paranoia working overtime, but I didn’t think I was overreacting. Just because you were paranoid didn’t mean there weren’t people aiming for your back. It was a philosophy that had kept me alive in the time since I left the army, left my country, took on a job as a hitman.

I was starting to get suspicious that something was going down.

I didn’t need to go look for the boss. Typically, he would let me off for a day or so after a job, but I suddenly very much wanted to meet with him. I decided to head back and confront Greco about the failure of my missions. Maybe he would have something to tell me that made some sense.