I stayed on with the wife until I was fourteen and then I ran away. I started stealing stuff again. It was easy really. Growing up in a Russian ghetto had been survival, but making it alone on the streets of New York City was child's play in comparison.
I killed my first man when I was sixteen. It was the easiest money I ever made, more followed after. I educated myself with the money I made. I even went to college under an assumed identity with the money I made off of killing people on the side.
I was in every way as cold and dispassionately out for my own gain as the man who injected you with that acid was."
"What made you change?" Anna asked, her words slightly muffled against my chest.
In some ways I couldn't believe she was still against me. Let alone in the same room with me. "It was a couple of years later after college, when I came up against the wall.
I was given a target to take out and offered a lot of money to do it. Much more than usual. I inquired why that was and was told that I could expect resistance from other interested parties. Well, the interested parties got the better of me or I should say one of them did, an old man.
I was full of bullet holes and bleeding out on the concrete floor of an old warehouse building. As I lay there dying I reflected on how glad I was that life was almost over.
The older man that had outfoxed me came up to me. I thought he'd come to finish the job, but he just stared at me for a while and I at him. He stopped the bleeding then and somehow I survived.
He took me to his estate and I started the long process of recovery. It took a while. When I was to the point that I could've walked off under my own power I went to him and asked him why he had saved me. He didn't answer my question directly at first.
He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'You work for me from now on boy. You're good at killing, but you only kill those from now on that need killing, and you won't do it for money anymore, but rather for the greater good. I'll see that you have the money you need to live comfortably, while not on assignment and in return I expect absolute loyalty from you.' He started to leave me then and I grabbed his arm to stop him as I asked again, 'Why?' He looked at me for a long moment, 'Because I thought I saw something worth saving in you. Now don't disappoint me or I swear that I'll put a bullet between your eyes myself, so help me and finish the job I started!' And that was that. I started working for him and the agency he runs. It hasn't all been killing, but there has been a lot of it. He paired me up with Flint and Galloway. Flint you know. Galloway doesn't have a serious bone in his body and gets on my nerves a lot, but he is still very capable in his own right. His effervescent mood is in some ways a cover that helps put others to sleep in regards to his true threat to them. It took me a while to realize that the dumb ox wasn't so stupid after all. Flint is the consummate man in almost every aspect and if given the chance in another life I would very much like to have been a lot more like him. He's even got me half convinced that forgiveness and a ticket to heaven are still options left open to even someone like me."