17 BLACK | HS

TWO

Miller Langley

You know, sometimes I think to myself– is what I'm about to do really gonna be worth it in the long run?

And right now I'm having a hard time remembering the end goal here.

"I swear to god if my jacket gets ruined because of this man..." I mutter to myself as I scoot around under his car, trying to find what I'm looking for. I can feel the gravel beneath me scuff up the backside of my legs, and I can only imagine how my leather trench looks right now.

Sure, I could've chosen a different jacket or a different way to take him out, but that's not important right now. What is important is that even if I get a little scruff on my coat, at the end of the day the Los Angeles population will be one man lighter.

The drumming of the rain hitting the topside of the cars around me makes it hard to keep my mind focused on what and why I'm doing this. I can feel myself slip into a trance with the sounds of falling rain becoming the soundtrack of my dark mind.

Crash.

"Mama... Mama!"

The blaring of the oncoming horn, the burn of the seatbelt on my neck, and my screams etched into my memory.

A small crack of thunder brings me back to reality. My eyes snapping open as I feel a chill run down my spine at the haunting memory.

Taking a moment to myself, I exhale the intrusive thoughts and realign my mind with the reason I'm here. Reaching into my pocket to grab my phone, I turn on the flashlight setting and aim it into the underside of the car in an attempt to find the right line.

I decided to keep my research on this guy very light– I still don't even know his name. I didn't want to draw any unneeded attention onto myself from my dad or from our two tech guys– who will occasionally help out with background research on targets.

Since I was a kid I was always told that if you want something done correctly you have to do it yourself. My father is a proud believer in making your own destiny and writing your own story. He taught me to work for what I wanted and to execute it flawlessly— no pun intended. So when I decided to handle this alone, I knew that at the end of the day, my father would still be proud of me in some regard.

That being said, doing this completely alone was a bit time consuming. So, like I said, I decided to keep it simple, and just follow him back to the station. Once I saw him get into his car– the idea dawned on me.

Cut to me now, at the fire station, in the parking lot, at night, in the rain, under Sparky's car trying to cut his fucking breaks.

I make my movements intentional and quick, trying not to let the flashlight stay on for too long. The last thing I need are a few uninvited guests crashing my little party down here.

It's been a minute since I've cut someone's breaks for one of my tasks. Dad usually leaves the execution of my missions up to me, unless it's a super high profile person of course. And where the route of cutting someone's brakes leaves a wonderful "accidental death" situation, I normally don't gravitate towards it since I like to watch my target's final breath. It gets a bit messy when you have to tail them to see the accident get carried out, but for some reason I didn't really care about that when it comes to our little paramedic.

"There you are..." I whisper to myself as I finally locate the break line I've been searching for. I turn my flashlight off now that I've found what I was looking for, and pull out the small pipe cutter I have to begin making the cut.

I'll admit, this situation isn't ideal but it's the best route where I can go unnoticed with my dad. He's never approved of using our skills and resources to take out "extras." Everyone we deal with is intentional and for our/someone else's need or benefit. And even if he thought eliminating this guy would be beneficial to us– I'd rather just do it myself. Car crashes happen all the time, and with the irrelevance of this guy to Xavier Langley, I think I'm in the clear.