Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 52592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
The mark joins the other man, who already has the barrel of his gun up against the back of my brother’s head.
“Drop your weapon,” the mark says as he walks straight up to my brother without fear of being shot.
But instead of doing what he says, or even acknowledging him at all, my brother stares only at me. “Do you remember what I always tell you, Nico?”
I don’t answer him because I’m frozen in place.
“Don’t get invested in any mission or any target,” he says as if he’s imparting his last words of advice to me. “That’s the key. Stay silent, and feel nothing.”
What happens next happens so fast that it blurs in my head. My brother, the exceptionally skilled Ghost, lifts and fires his weapon at the mark before either man can do anything to stop him. His aim is perfect, and the target dies from a bullet to the brain instantly. He completed the job and eliminated the target. The Bratva will be pleased that he achieved the mission.
But as soon as the shot is fired, the other man fires too. He shoots my brother first in the foot, and then the other, making it impossible for the Ghost to get away. Even in response to such pain, the Ghost doesn’t make a sound.
The other man looks at me with a sick smile on his face.
“You should have heeded your brother’s words of wisdom, young assassin,” he sneers. “He is right. I would have killed him quickly, mercifully, with a clean shot to the skull. But now I can see that a lesson needs to be learned here today. Consider it the last lesson that this life will impart onto you.”
After my rash action, I’m now terrorized into inaction as I can do nothing but watch the man shoot my brother in one body part at a time. He chooses the most painful places first and laughs each time he fires his weapon. There’s nothing I can do. I have no weapon on me, and no way to stop this. I can’t run for help because my brother will be dead before I return. All I can do is stand here and watch as the man violently murders my older brother, one piece at a time, right before my eyes.
Finally, I practically beg for his death, just to relieve him of all the pain. It’s the most traumatic moment I will ever experience in my life, and it ends with a final shot to the heart.
“Your turn,” the man says as he comes for me next.
Instead of turning to run, I straighten and face him. I feel something I’ve never felt before. The desire to kill. It’s so overwhelming that as soon as he reaches me, I lunge forward and surprise him by grabbing the still-warm gun out of his hand.
He laughs again and taunts that I'm too afraid to use it. “You’ve never killed before, boy,” he chides. “Tonight won’t be your first kill either. You need to keep me alive so that you have a vengeance quest to give you purpose now. Otherwise, you’ll only wallow in the guilt of having caused the death of your brother.”
But he’s wrong. In this horrific moment tonight, I've already found my purpose. He’s also wrong about tonight not being my first kill.
I aim the gun at his chest, knowing how to aim perfectly to ensure a fatal hit, and pull the trigger. Blood splatters back up at me, and I finally feel the lesson my brother had been trying to teach me all this time sink in. It sinks into my very flesh and bones, and as I stand there covered in the warm blood of the man I just killed, I know I will no longer have a hard time detaching.
I drop the gun and go to my brother’s side. He is mangled and gone. Beside him on the floor is his gun. Carefully, I close his eyelids with my thumb before picking up his gun and sliding it into my pocket. For a moment, I stand over him.
“I'm sorry, brother,” I say, letting the guilt swallow me for a moment before pushing it so deep down within myself that it will be as if it has its own locked cabinet inside my chest. “I failed you tonight. But know that I will not fail again. I will live the lessons that you taught me, and I will be the best now in order to be who you would have been. I will be The Ghost now.”
Adopting my brother’s title after witnessing his violent death is more than just a way to honor him and a coping mechanism for me to move past the night that has changed who I am forever. It’s also what now shapes me into assuming a cold, calculated, emotionless person. My brother’s infamous identity is now my mantle to carry, and it will forever shape my detached life.