We were in Chicago doing work for some Italian motherfuckers who I personally thought were disgusting. They would always try to do some messy hits. They even wanted ones where kids were in the line of fire and I hated that. Talking about they wanted to send a message that anyone could be touched. That is bullshit. Now I would shoot a woman without a problem. You know where the money you are spending comes from. You know the life your man lives. Death or Lock up is how the game ends. Killing kids was a no. Kids were innocent of the bullshit their parents did.

Saint knew how much I hated fucking with them so I wasn’t even sure why he brought me with him. We were on the second floor of an apartment we rented across from the target’s safe house. We didn’t always have to do this much recon but this target was heavily guarded. 

He was the bookkeeper for one of the underbosses that controlled the family’s drugs faction. Supposedly he got popped on a dumb ass vice charge trying to pick up a hooker who just happened to be a cop. He probably would have been alright if he hadn’t been planning to take her to a party. This fool had enough cocaine in his car for 8 years mandatory on possession alone. Two days later he was walking around like nothing happened. Rats deserve to die, so there we were.

We had a very small window to get him before he was going to testify for the grand jury. This was the first time that he had been in our view since the contract was made. Saint told me that he wanted us to both have our rifles ready in case something popped off. Nothing had ever popped off before so I knew something was odd about the request. I had too much respect to question him. I just decided to ready for whatever.

As the target walked out of the building a calm came over me as I waited to see him fall under Saint’s shot. After milliseconds that felt like minutes, I looked over to see that Saint’s finger was shaking on the trigger. Without hesitation, I focused my sights in my scope and took the kill shot. As we packed up our gear and got ready to get out the area, neither of us said a word. I handled the jobs that were already set up for him, but Saint never took a shot again.