Vale

Chapter 1

            Fun fact: necks are easy to break.

            That was lesson no.15 I acquired, and the most delightful lesson I'd acquired up until that point. Finally there's something that's easy! Then, as it was with most things, came the crushing disappointment.

            "Everything is easy, eventually!" my grandfather said with a wide smile as he demonstrated lesson no.15. He did make it look easy but when I tried it my victim threw me off their back before I could even make the bones crack. Where's the promised ease? "With enough practice, of course."

           Oh.

           "Then you might want to use the future tense next time," I huffed and puffed as my victim fell lifelessly to the ground from between my grandfather's hands. The thud echoed around the office but there was nobody around to hear it. "Because presently it's not easy at all."

           "Well, necks are easy to break in the future," he laughed then patted my back with. "Practice and patience!"

           "Yeah, yeah, I heard you," I waved him off. "Let's just go before I trip off an alarm or something. I can't wait until I don't suck ass in the future."

            We exited the bank swiftly, having just assassinated both the director and vice director of the establishment. I didn't get taken along on many jobs but I had to practice somehow and this assignment was supposed to be a good lesson.

            "You're too hard on yourself," my grandfather said after every failure. "You think you're lazy but that's just a disguise for your low self-esteem."

             A revolutionary notion.

            Our getaway driver, my grandmother, started the engine and we rattled and clattered down several cobblestone roads before reaching the district of the town where the streets were a hundred percent dust, and we could discuss what went right and what didn't.

            I hate this part; it made me feel like I was still in school. And my grandma would always start with "so which one of your strengths did you use this time?" like a teacher asking the class what their favourite summer memory was.

            My successes usually involved stealth. My grandparents always told me I was good at being unnoticed and that if I couldn't yet get a hold of the murder part then I should focus on my strengths to gain confidence so I can fill in the hole where I'm lacking.

           Even worse than this, I knew they wouldn't be acting like this after a job if I hadn't been there. Which is what I wanted; I wanted them to show me how it really was, not the kiddie version of it. But maybe I brought this on myself, after all I was acting and thinking like a bratty child and I really couldn't fault them for anything; they did what I asked them to do which was to take me along to assignments and teach me their ways. It wasn't fair to criticise the favour they were doing me.

            After the botched bank job – botched on my part at least since the marks did die – I pretended to be asleep when my parents got home and my mum snuck into my room to plant a kiss on my forehead and tell me that she missed me that day. I wanted to hear about their day but they wouldn't have told me much and I would've had to admit I messed up.

            During breakfast next morning I tried to look as small by the table as possible but even I couldn't hide from my parents. I was halfway through devouring every single hard-boiled egg on my plate when I heard their footsteps on the stone stairs as they arrived to the kitchen.

            My mother's glasses fogged up immediately from the steaming cauldron above the fireplace. It was untended to at the moment as my granddad was chatting to a neighbour outside by the fence and my grandma was still asleep.