Your past will Hunt you forever
Mostang sat on the edge of the bed, cigarette ash falling in a slow, indifferent rain onto the stained sheets. The room smelled like burnt tobacco and regret. He stared at the ember as if it might answer the question he couldn't: how did a kid who swore he'd never cross certain lines end up here?
A memory flickered — His mom screaming out of fear, a father who came home late and never smiled again, always drunk. He'd learned the rules young: obey, survive, never get soft.
The door slammed open.
His boss filled the doorway like a shadow with money. Perfume and cheap cologne mixed with the metallic taste of orders. He didn't bother with pleasantries. He walked in, eyes cold, jaw like a vice.
Boss (snarling): "You let her slip. You let her live. Do you know what that makes you, Mostang? A liability."
He walked the room slowly, hands behind his back, each step a sentence.
Mostang leaned back, blowing smoke into the air, feigning indifference. It didn't fool the man in the doorway.
Boss: "You heard me. Do you want to keep breathing in my world? You fail once more and there won't be a comeback. You know what happens to liabilities."
The boss flicked an imaginary ash from his cuff, face hard as flint.
Boss: "I don't care about your code. I don't care who you kiss on rooftops or what lines you swore to keep. Orders are orders. You go. You finish it. Even if she's a fortress. Even if she looks like an angel made to ruin your head. Kill her. Make it clean. Make it final."
Mostang's jaw tightened. Somewhere under the smoke and the bravado, something like anger — or maybe fear — moved through him.
Mostang (quiet): "You don't understand her."
Boss (cutting): "I don't need to understand her. I need her gone. You either do it, or I find someone who will. I set the clock if I have to. And trust me — you do not want me setting clocks."
He slammed a photograph onto the table — a grainy shot of Emma fleeing on the motorcycle, dirt spraying behind her. Mostang's finger hovered over it, then slid off.
Boss (leaning close, voice low and final): "Tonight. You go back. You finish. Or you disappear and don't make it past sunrise."
Then the boss turned and left as abruptly as he'd come, the door closing like a gavel.
Silence folded back into the room. The cigarette burned down between Mostang's fingers. He crushed it out in the ashtray, the motion deliberate.
He stood, ran a hand through his hair, and for the first time in a long while, he tasted the full weight of being trapped between what he was told to be and what he refused to become.
Mostang (to himself, barely audible): "One night. One chance. Don't make me hate you."
He went to prepare.
---
Mostang found her again, standing in the shadows of a quiet alley. His hand twitched near his holster, but this time he didn't draw. The smoke of his last cigarette still lingered on his coat.
"Why are you after me again?" Emma's voice was calm, unreadable,
He didn't answer right away. His orders echoed in his head: kill her, no matter how tough she is. But instead of lifting his weapon, he exhaled.
"I want to talk," he muttered.
Emma raised an eyebrow. "Talk?"
Mostang stepped closer, lowering his voice. "What do you want? What's your endgame?"
There was silence for a moment, then Emma's gaze hardened, but not with hostility—with conviction. "The same as you. To clean this rotten world. But I need people. Strong ones."
The words struck him. He expected defiance, not alignment. For the first time, Mostang hesitated not out of doubt, but out of recognition.
Night, a ruined loading dock. Fog rolling in off the water. The city behind them glows low and indifferent.
Mostang stands with his hands shoved in his jacket, He looks like he's ready to be two things at once: killer and negotiator. Emma leans against a rusted crate, coat zipped, eyes like a blade.
"Alright," he says. "You want to clean the city. That's...ambitious. What do you actually want from me?"
Emma doesn't smile. She lists, flat and precise:
"I need people who can find things I can't. Muscle when I need it. Eyes in places I can't go. Logistics — weapons, safe houses, forged docs. I need loyalty. No loose mouths. No cops, no snitches. And I need someone who knows how to move without being seen."
Mostang snorts. "So you need a little army." He looks her up and down. "What do you give in return? Glory? A place at the top? Or... freedom from the men who own you?"
"Everything that matters," Emma answers, voice low. "Vencor dies. His network falls. You walk away clean, with enough to disappear if you want. Or you stay, build something new. No lies. No games."
Mostang takes that in. He's not a fool — he's been ordered to kill her, and he's just lied about letting her go. He has limits, grudges, a line about women he never crosses. He folds those into the negotiation:
"You said 'cleaning the world.' How far do you go? Innocents?" He tilts his head. "Children? Collateral?"
Emma's face hardens. "No innocents. No children. This is for people who woke up and chose to prey on others — gang bosses, traffickers, corrupt officials who kill for profit."
He tests her: "And Vencor? You kill the man who made you a weapon, you set the rule? No one steps up and becomes the next monster?"
"Vencor goes first," she says. "After that, we decide together. No single person rules. We dismantle, not replace."
Mostang's jaw works. Then he makes his own terms, careful, like loading a gun:
1. He gets contacts and initial intel — his network that still answers him.
2. He gets a veto on any mission that smells like civilian blood.
3. If they have to cross a line he swore never to cross, he gets to walk. No penalties.
4. He wants a way out — a stash, a new identity, in case this burns.
Emma listens. Nods once for each point. She doesn't bargain for interest. She counters with the one thing that matters to her:
"If you betray us, if you cross those lines — not just mine but ours — you die. No trial. No mercy. You break the code, you end it."
Mostang smiles, dark and thin. "Fair. I don't like orders I can't break. I like rules I choose."
Silence stretches. The city ticks in the distance. Trust is thin; it's the only currency they can spend.
Finally, Mostang extends his hand — the old-world mob handshake: public, binding.
"You know I lied before," he says, hand out. "I lied to save my skin."
Emma studies him a long moment, then takes the hand. Her grip is cold, iron-true.
"Then prove it," she murmurs. "A small job. Test your contacts. Bring me Vencor's courier — the one that runs his ledger. Get his name. Bring no heat to my doorstep. If you come back alive with that courier and that ledger, we start building."
Mostang nods. "I'll get it. If I die, at least I'll die doing something that wasn't ordered."
He slides back into the night, already a shadow again. Emma watches him go, not smiling. For the first time in a long time, she lets a plan begin to feel possible.
She whispers to herself as the fog swallows him:
"Good. Bring me paper, and I'll bring blood, and don't forget. Follow me. Out of your desire."
Chapter End