I knocked twice on the black door. Not too hard that it scared the people inside, but not so soft that it warranted curiosity. A dog barked some way off and I could hear crickets chirping in the grass across the road. I held my gun in my right jacket pocket, making sure that I had the silencer screwed on tight. I relaxed my shoulders and waited for the door to open.

Being a trigger man for the mafia isn’t what I wanted to be. I grew up in a family where my parents always preached education. They never let me miss a day of school. I had a cold, flu, head was hurting, they made damn well sure that I attended. They wanted for me what they hadn’t had themselves. My father worked himself to the bone in a steel factory, while my poor mother had three different jobs to support us. They always told my brothers and I that education was the most important thing a person could have. Their words never left me, and I carried them around with me like a backpack throughout my childhood and into my teens.

I was fourteen the first time I smoked weed. I know that nowadays it’s considered harmless but I don’t agree. My friends and I used to spend more time smoking than anything else and before I knew it my grades were dropping and I was failing in school. Then a year later my father died, after working an extra shift at the factory. They told me his heart gave out and after that ma was never the same. She couldn’t find it in herself to work and it fell to me to look after her and my younger brothers.

I knew guys involved in drugs from smoking weed and I eventually met the connect, George. He was older than me, and took me under his wing. He would pay me a grand a week if I sold all his weed for him in my school and others. Eventually they kicked me out after I got caught selling to the son of an English teacher and I started working for George full time. First as a dealer, but when I turned 20, he told me that he needed a loyal bodyguard. Of course I accepted, it was thanks to George that I was able to support my family.

George had enemies. More than I thought for a middle ranking mobster but enemies he had. I killed my first man at 22, a crack dealer who had been stealing money from. Then two soldiers from a rival mob. I’ve got seven kills under my belt and I’m still only 24. By the time I get to 30, who knows how many men I’ll have killed.

I heard footsteps inside the house and saw a silhouette approach through the pane of glass on the door. A stocky tall man opened it. I reached into my pocket.

‘Hello George.’