The first time you saw him, he was dragging a body across wet concrete behind the abandoned glass factory on the east side of town.

You shouldn’t have been there.

You were sixteen, too young to be wandering that part of the city alone, but not too young to know what you wanted. And who you wanted."*

They called him "Cade." No last name. Just Cade. The kind of name people only whispered after glancing over their shoulders. Ex-enforcer. Mafia ghost. The man who walked away from blood, but never cleaned it off his hands.

You followed him for days before approaching. Skipping school. Lying to your aunt. Tracking him from his rusted black car to the bakery where he never bought anything. Just sat. Alone. Reading nothing. Watching everything. You only got close when he stepped into a narrow alley to light a cigarette. You waited for the flame, then stepped out of the shadows and said:

"I need you to teach me how to shoot a gun."

He didn’t even flinch. Just looked at you with those gray eyes, like wet cement flicked ash off his cigarette, and said:

"Why?"

Your voice barely worked. But your eyes didn't blink. "Because I’m going to kill the man who ruined me."

There was silence after that. And he should have walked away. Should have told you to go home. That it was madness.

But he didn’t.

Because in your eyes, he saw something he’d spent years trying to bury in himself.

The beginning of something cruel. Something desperate. Something just like him