Roan (The Henchmen MC 17)

As the years passed, my confidence in my ability to take a life grew because, well, I had needed to do it. Never by choice. Never because I wanted to. But to save my own ass, to get someone out of a bad situation? Yeah, I had pulled a trigger. I had thrust a knife.

There were times, though, when I wasn't good enough, fast enough, trained enough, strong enough. There were gaps in my expertise brought on by my rush to get down the basics, the fact that I was always hopping countries, never sticking to any one program long enough to become lethal in it.

And, well, I was smaller, weaker. No matter how much I worked out, there was simply no way I could fight off someone who had over a hundred pounds on me.

Which was how my back got whipped raw one day when I'd been caught spying on a small-time importer, trying to figure out where he was bringing in the girls, so I could track down one whose parents were paying me richly to do so. And hopefully save the others as well.

But I had been pulled in, beaten, then had my shirt slit off, and whipped as a form of interrogation.

Torture is an unreliable way to obtain information.

Which he learned when I convinced him that I was trying to sneak past his guards to tell him that I had some information for him, for sale, of course. About a threat. Then let him know the cops were onto his new shipment coming in.

Which, of course, they weren't.

But criminals were stupid and paranoid.

Exploiting that paranoia works every damn time.

So when he inevitably rushed to the docks to handle the situation, I made sure the cops were there when they tried to move the girls out of some old storage space in the back behind the main office.

The pain and scars were a small price to pay to save some innocent girls.

Those were long, lonely years full of exhaustion both mentally and physically, trying to figure out the job, punishing my body into a new, stronger shape, honing my skills to allow me to move more quietly through the world, to shoot more effectively, to build connections with both good and terrible people equally, giving me a leg up in both worlds.

There was a certain sense of satisfaction. I saved people sometimes. I reunited families. I offered people hope and resolutions, closure even if some people could only be found in shallow graves, or dead with needles in their arms in some abandoned building somewhere.

It was good work, challenging work, something that gave my otherwise empty life meaning.

But there were times, when I was out of clues, when I was twiddling my thumbs, when I was trapped in hotel rooms in countries where I didn't speak the language, isolated, more alone than I had ever felt, when there wasn't enough work satisfaction to go around, when there was simply... nothing.

Just my hollowness, just my misery, just the fickle flame of revenge.

Those nights I would find myself wondering if there had been another option for me, if I had maybe gotten the help I could have used, if I had gone to the therapy, if I had let someone in, let someone care, let myself trust someone again.

Maybe I would have still sold the bank, left the country, wanted to cut ties with that life - and all the misery it had brought me - but perhaps I would have taken the money to start over somewhere else, somewhere with no ties to my old world. Maybe I could have found a fulfilling career. Maybe I could have found a man, settled down, started over.

Been happy.

Happiness, in this life I had chosen, was a foreign concept, was something I provided to others without having it ever touch me.

As time stretched on, as life got longer, colder, harder, even the memory of that happiness started to blur around the edges like a dream upon waking.

It came to a point where the only happy I was familiar with anymore was the happy I had known around Mikhail - someone who didn't even exist.

Which complicated the feelings I had with finally moving in, finally confronting him.

Did I want to hurt him to make him pay for how he had hurt me? Did I want an explanation? An apology? All three?

I had no idea.

Genuinely none.

All my feelings regarding him were so twisted that I wasn't sure it would ever be possible to untangle them all, to make sense of it.

But then, suddenly one day, he was out.

Out.

Burned.

Tossed back into a life he had never lived before.

His own.

Using his real name, no support, no money in his bank account.

I had come across several ex-spies across the globe. All of them had settled into a handful of careers in their life after. They were private security, investigators, mixed martial arts instructors, or criminals. Those were the jobs that being in espionage prepared them for.