Julian
It's early in the morning, past one a.m., when I get a ping on my phone alerting me to an encrypted email I can't ignore notifications from.
I'm not asleep. I haven't been able to sleep properly in years.
A long time ago, I learned the lesson that closing your eyes for too long in the wrong place can get you killed, and my brain has just never fully shut off since.
So I'm awake, sitting on the balcony of my Barcelona apartment with a glass of whiskey and a cigarette, watching the city lights blur into streaks of gold and white below me.
I open my laptop, log in with my thumbprint, and open the message waiting for me.
It's from Maddox. My broker. The man who's kept me employed for the last ten years, ever since I left the service and realized that the only marketable skill I had was killing people efficiently and without remorse.
New contract. High value. Details attached. Interested?
I tap the attachment and scan the information.
The target is a female, mid-twenties, living in New York. Wealthy family—very wealthy, based on the context Maddox provided. The payout is listed at the bottom of the message, and I pause for just a second when I see the number.
It's substantial. More than substantial.
It's the kind of money that would let me take a break from all of this for a while.
Take that trip to South America I've been putting off for three years.
Buy a place somewhere quiet, somewhere no one knows my name or what I do.
With this and a few more jobs, hell, I could probably retire and live out the rest of my life fishing on a beach or some shit like that.
This is the kind of money that means someone wants this woman dead very, very badly.
I take a drag of my cigarette and lean back in my chair, letting the smoke curl up into the night air.
The balcony is small, barely large enough for the table and two chairs, but it's my favorite part of this apartment.
The only part that feels like mine. The rest of the place is just furniture and walls, functional and impersonal.
Temporary. I'm not the kind of person to hang up paintings and buy plants, but this little spot on my balcony feels like the only home I've had in a long time.
I don't normally take hits on women. A man's gotta draw a line somewhere, and mine has always been families—I won't kill a man's wife and kids just to fulfill whatever grudge someone is willing to pay to have scratched.
But I've done a few jobs that were for women.
Usually, because they paid well, like this one does.
I should ask who she is, what she did, and why someone's willing to pay this much to have her eliminated.
But I don't. I stopped asking those questions a long time ago, back when I realized that the answers never changed anything.
People die for all kinds of reasons—revenge, greed, jealousy, fear, politics, money.
It doesn't matter. The result is always the same. A body. A payment. A job completed.
I'm not a moral man. I stopped pretending to be one the day I accepted my first contract. And I've never failed a job. Not once. That's why Maddox keeps sending them my way. That's why I can charge what I do.
I finish my cigarette and crush it out in the ashtray. Then I type my response.
Accepted. When do you need it done?
The reply comes back almost immediately. Maddox never sleeps either.
ASAP. Fly to New York. Name of the kill is Isabelle Montague. Don't worry about researching, I'll send full details when you land: name, photos, address, routine. Clean job. No witnesses. Payment on completion.
I read it twice, then delete the entire conversation. The app wipes itself automatically every twenty-four hours, but I'm careful. That's why I'm still alive.
Understood. I'll be there in three days.
I set the phone down and pick up my whiskey, draining the glass in one swallow. I've done this hundreds of times before—accepted a contract, booked a flight, eliminated a target, collected payment. It's mechanical now. Routine.
I don't feel anything about it anymore, not guilt or satisfaction or even curiosity. It's just work.
I stand and walk back inside, sliding the glass door shut behind me.
The apartment is dark except for the faint glow of the city coming through the windows.
I don't bother turning on the lights. I know this place well enough to navigate it blind.
The living room is sparse—a couch I rarely sit on, a coffee table with nothing on it, a television I never watch.
The kitchen is cleaner than it should be for someone who lives here, because I barely cook.
I eat out most nights, or I get takeout.
There's no art on the walls. No photos. No personal touches.
Just furniture and the essentials. I've never seen the point in making a place feel like home when I'm never in one place long enough for it to matter.
I walk into the bedroom and strip off my shirt, tossing it onto the chair in the corner. The bed is unmade, and I sit down on the edge, staring at the wall.
Three days. Three days until I'm back in the States for the first time in probably a year, doing what I do best. I should feel something about that. Anticipation, maybe. Or dread. But I don't. I just feel... nothing.
That's the problem with this life. After a while, you stop feeling anything at all.
—
I spend the next day preparing. I wake up at six, like I always do, and go for a run along the waterfront.
The air is cool and damp, the sun just starting to rise over the Mediterranean, and I push myself hard, letting the burn in my legs and lungs drown out everything else.
When I get back to the apartment, I shower and make coffee—strong, black, no sugar—and sit down at the kitchen table with my laptop.
I book a flight to New York for three days from now, direct, business class.
I don't fly coach anymore—not because I care about comfort, but because business-class passengers are less memorable.
No one pays attention to a well-dressed man in seat 4A the way they might if he were in coach with the moms in leggings and the college kids in sweatpants and hoodies.
They're too busy with their own lives, their own problems, their own meetings to get to and deals to finalize.
I book it under one of my aliases. I have six of them, all with clean passports, credit cards, and backgrounds that would hold up under scrutiny. This one is Michael Brennan, a consultant from Dublin, a reliable fallback that I've used before. After that, I start packing.
I keep two duffel bags in the closet—one for clothes, one for tools.
I pull them both out and lay them on the bed.
The first bag is easy. Dark jeans, black shirts, a jacket, underwear, socks.
Nothing that stands out. Nothing memorable.
I pack enough for a week, even though I'll probably only need three days.
It's better to have options. The second bag takes more care.
I pull out the disassembled Glock 19 from the false bottom of my closet and lay the pieces on the bed.
The slide, the barrel, the frame, the magazine.
I check each one carefully, making sure everything is clean and functional.
Then I pack them into the bag, wrapped in cloth to keep them from rattling.
The suppressor goes in next, along with two boxes of ammunition.
Then the knife—a fixed-blade tactical weapon, seven inches, and razor-sharp.
Gloves. A burner phone. A small first aid kit.
Everything I need to do the job and disappear.
That will all be checked, and if a TSA agent questions me, I'll say I'm meeting a friend in the city and then heading upstate to do some hunting.
I zip the bag shut and set it next to the other one.
By the time I'm done, it's late afternoon, and I'm restless.
I want to get out of the apartment and stretch my legs—hell, with three days to kill, I consider stopping in a different country on the way.
The checked bag with the guns might be a bit of an issue, but I can come up with an excuse.
It's all legal; I have all the permits I need, even if questions are asked.
I open my phone and search for places within a couple hours' flight. One of the first results that pops up is Ibiza.
It's close—less than an hour by plane. I've never been, though I've heard about it—the clubs, the beaches, the hedonistic chaos of it all. It's not my scene, usually. I prefer quieter places, places where I can blend in and disappear.
But right now, I don't want quiet. I want noise and distraction.
That's not usually my scene, especially after years in the military…
loud noises aren't typically my thing. But I have a strange, restless itch in my blood, and I suspect it comes from taking a contract that involves killing a woman, something that always makes me feel a little uncomfortable.
And, now and then, I just get fidgety. That urge to get drunk and find some gorgeous woman—or two—and fuck until the sun comes up. That feeling that I want to remember I'm alive, which comes, I suppose, from being someone who deals in death.
If I want to get drunk and fuck, I imagine there's no better place than Ibiza to do it. I check the flights. There's one leaving in three hours.
I book it without thinking.
—
I pack light for Ibiza—just a small backpack with a change of clothes, toiletries, and my wallet. I leave the duffel bags in the apartment, with the intent to fly back and grab them before I catch my New York flight.
The flight to Ibiza is short and uneventful. I get a window seat near the back and spend the entire time staring out at the darkening sky, watching the sun set over the Mediterranean. The colors are beautiful—orange and pink and deep purple—but I don't feel anything when I look at them.