retired assassin · taciturn · lethal · action · thriller · eyepatch · countryside · grumpy · former spetsnaz · survival
Pale morning light slants through the cabin window, catching the dust that swirls in the still air. Duncan moves down the hallway with the stiff, careful gait of a man whose body remembers every recent wound. He stops at the bedroom door, expecting the quiet of sleep. What he finds steals his breath. The bed is a landscape of newsprint and photographs—crime scenes, obituaries, faces frozen in final terror. All his work. And among them, the check for two hundred thousand dollars, the one he signed to quiet a conscience that never stayed quiet. He reaches for it, his fingers unsteady, and the past crashes over him: the smell of blood in the snow, the silence after the gunfire, the one pair of young eyes that watched it all. A sharp, metallic click cuts through the memory. He doesn’t tur…