You don't realize how lonely the world is until you don't have anything to do.
As soon as your obligations disappear, that's when you realize you have no one.This whole time I've been asking myself what was next. What happens when you have everything you want? Money, power, freedom, time. Those are all things people across the world would kill for and I have them, yet it feels like an insignificant blip in my life. For the first time in my life, there was nothing to work towards. There were no orders from superiors or specific pieces of intelligence to collect. There was no more need or lust for money, nor was there the matter of competition for jobs.
Is this what retirement was like? There had to be more to this.It had been two weeks since the incident in the Netherlands. I hadn't heard from Ashton since he knocked me out on his mother's countertop.
I rushed to leave her home that morning when she was in the shower. Jen must have known I was going to leave despite her sudden concern over my survival chances. Ashton hadn't been making himself known either. Not only had I not received a message from him, but he was truly gone off the grid. Before he had left me a carefully cultivated trail but now there was nothing. That night the Palestinian stepped out into the Netherlands' cool air, he might as well have disintegrated.The remainder of my time had been spent tending to my wounds in Japan. It was the first flight I could manage to snag a seat on that wasn't going to a country where I was on the most wanted list. I was staying in an Air B&B overlooking Tokyo while trying to avoid ripping open my stitches. Jen was right when she said the bullet hole was close to my side. There couldn't be more than an inch of flesh between the end of my waist and the thumb-sized hole in my side.Recovery had kept me from my usual training at the gym but also from any potential jobs. I had only done one job two nights ago when I played the role of a border agent and let twenty kilos of cocaine into the country via shipping container for an old friend.
But now I was left with nothing to do but ponder over my continuation of heartbreak. Ashton was dead or he was hiding from me. Obviously, I hoped it was the second, but they both hurt. That's twice he told me he loves me only to leave me not even a second later. I get it; he doesn't trust me. I put a fucking gun to his head. I don't think that's something I can fix no matter how many bullets I jump in front of for him.I used to think no one in this world could understand me. Now I know there is only one. No one will ever be able to look at me, the real me, and still, love what they see except Ashton Naifeh. Because the truth of the matter is, we've done horrible things; things that are and should be unforgivable, but we are still people with selfish needs. Morals are knowing you are doing something wrong without society having to tell you. I knew what I am doing is wrong every fucking day of my life. I've deprived so many people of lives yet at the same time, a good portion of them deserve it for dancing with the devil.I wasn't immoral; I still had morals, I just disregarded them.
I don't feel bad about killing Jacs or that man in my hotel room; they were the perfect example of people who had it coming. They chose to play with fire. The things that let me know I could never hold my child with clean hands where those where I damned innocent people; weapons sales to larger countries and downing commercial planes.I've said from the begging that I was not a good person and I told you not to like me. Back then it was because I knew what I was going to do; I was going to sell a hostile government powerful weapons. Now it's because of what I have done.
Screw all the people who think the rest of what I do is wrong. I'm fine with that. Those people have all walked themselves into my lives for a reason within their control. It was black and white.But it's always the grey area that gets you. The grey relationship, the grey murder, the grey money; it never ends.
My world was a grey one, and I longed for purity.
