She’s shaking like a leaf, and her knees buckle. “Please,” she sobs, the word wet and desperate. “I have a kid. He’s only five. Please… he’s waiting for me. I won’t say anything, I swear on his life, just let me go home to him.”
My stomach twists so hard I taste bile.A kid. Five years old. Waiting.The words burrow under my skin, sharp and hot, and for a second, the knife at her throat feels heavier than any blade I’ve ever held.
I’ve killed more people than I can count. Not all of them evil or corrupt. Some might just be rivals, politicians, or obstacles, or poor bastards who were standing in the way. But never this sort of collateral. She’s just a night-shift worker who opened the wrong door at the wrong second. She’s nobody on anyone’s list. She’s nobody at all.
Except someone’s mother, which makes her everything to at least one person.
Panic is loud inside her, louder than her muffled cries. The desperation is familiar; everyone wants to live. But parents? They want to live harder.
The thought comes unbidden, a cruel little joke at my expense, and my head fills with the memory of my own parents. They didn’t get to live harder or longer. And we didn’t get to grow up in some warm, hopeful way either.
I breathe slow through my nose, steadying my grip.Kill her.That’s what the logical side of my brain’s saying. Leave no witness and walk. Clean job, as always. But there’s this fucking thread inside my chest that squeezes so damn tight with the thought, it’s causing me to think twice. Ineverthink twice.It’s logic, action, muscle memory, done. Move on and repeat. Second-guessing gets you dead. Or worse…sentimental.
So why can’t I tighten my grip and finish it?
“Please,” she begs, tears spilling freely.
“Fuck!” I blurt, and the woman flinches, eyes pressed tight. “You weren’t supposed to fucking be here!”
“I’m s…sorry.”
“Jesus!”
Assassin 101: Never leave a trail.That rule is carved into my bones. One witness, one loose end, one crack in the armor, and everything unravels. If I leave this woman alive, she’ll sing to the first cop she finds. She’ll describe the mask. The paint. The way I moved. And Valeria will know. Her claws go real deep into the system. She’ll know I hesitated. She’ll know I’m weak.
What’ll happen next is Valeria will kill this woman anyway. She’ll clean up the cops. She’ll find every single person this woman whispered to—neighbors, coworkers, family. And when she’s done with them, she’ll go for the boy. Valeria doesn’t leave loose ends. She has no problem killing a five-year-old boy if it means tying off every thread. She’ll do it cleanly, quietly, and she’ll make sure I know it was my hesitation that signed the child’s death warrant.
All because I couldn’t pull the blade across one more throat.
The thought sinks into me like ice water and gasoline at the same time—cold enough to numb, hot enough to blister. I look down at the woman. Her tears have soaked through my glove, her body quivering so violently the blade at her throat trembles with her.
Sweat breaks across my forehead, cold and sudden, then hotter, thicker, until it slides down my temples like something darker than water. For one sick, dizzy second, I think it might actually be blood—like the sweat of a man who once knelt under the weight of a choice that could not be unmade, begging for any other path, only to bleed instead.
The weight of the decision isn’t in my bones anymore. It’s in every vein, every capillary, every cell that still holds a minuscule trace of humanity.
If I let her go, her son dies.
If I kill her, he lives.
It’s as simple as that. Asfucked upas that.
“What’s your name?” I ask, letting go of her mouth some more, but not all the way.
“Allison.” Her voice quivers.
“Allison who?”
“Greene.”
“Where do you live, Allison Greene?”
She hesitates, and I press the knife deeper against her throat because fear is the best motivator. “Eight one five Oak Hollow Drive. Please, I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t kill me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No. No. No. Please, my son,” she sobs. “I’m all he has. I can’t…please.”
My jaw locks, her address committed to memory. “I’m sorry, Allison,” I bite out between clenched teeth, because it fucking hurts to say it.
