>>5406119“Something tells me that you’ve been doing more than just ‘research’. What trouble have you found yourself in this time?”
He sounds more concerned than anything else, though there is a shade of disappointment coloring it as well.
You chuckle a little, and it’s tinged lightly with bitterness.
Shows what you know for thinking that you’d be able to put one past the sharpest mind you know.
> “What gave it away?”“The eyes, they always do. You look awful, Sean; I mean that in the nicest way possible.”
There are a few beats of silence as you grapple about whether or not you should humor his line of questioning.
A part of you wants to tell him to piss off, that you’re not interested in sharing about what went down during your dust-up down in Venezuela.
That way, you can keep him insulated from any of the fallout that’s sure to rear its head.
But deep down, you know that you’re coming up with flimsy justification; the real reason is that you don’t want Bobo to realize just how deeply you’ve immersed yourself in the life of a professional killer and that you don’t have plans to retire any time soon.
> “For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right and that some dirty business went down; what of it?”“What ever happened to going straight, to leaving this kind of work behind?”
> “It’s not that easy. I’ve made a lot of enemies, the kind that’ll have me looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life if I don’t get to them first. I’ve got debts to repay, and I don’t mean the monetary. And…”The hardest part to admit is that you’re starting to enjoy this life, the freedom to call your own shots and walk away from the table whenever somebody or something rubs you the wrong way.
Not to mention the tight burst of adrenaline that pumps through your veins whenever it comes time to throw down with somebody well above your weight.
Put bluntly, you were never one for the tightly regimented standards of military life, of having some prick with a fancy education shoveling you into the meatgrinder so he can angle for a fancier uniform and a cushy position.
That’s why you established the Steel Wolves, to build a brotherhood built on shared values, brotherhood, and the desire to earn reasonable pay for unreasonable work. Where no man is compelled to fight for something he doesn’t believe in, where no soldier is tossed into the garbage bin as soon as their tour of duty ends and their utility wanes.
All of the good, with much less of the bad.
