Haven’s Creed by Parker Williams
I was not a good man. Hell, there were many times I wasn’t even sure I was a man anymore. I killed people for a living and made damn good money at it. I didn’t do random chaos, though. That stuff was for amateurs. What I did was for a cause. The greater good, you might say. I was sure there were plenty who’d argue that fact, but they hadn’t seen the things I had. They lived in their perfect little world where everyone was redeemable. Our penal system worked. The government was the bad guy. In some cases they were right. When they were wrong, that was where I stepped in. Either way, I did the things that needed to be done because others couldn’t or wouldn’t.
I had seen and done a lot of things in my life that would make most other people quake in fear or piss their pants. I was used to watching people move to the other side when they saw me walking down the street. Not because I was a hulking man, though I was big, but because I gave off the aura that I wasn’t someone to be messed with.
When I was fifteen, I killed my first man. Every time Arnie, the guy my mother was shacking up with at the time, drank, he got it into his head she was cheating on him. He’d start slapping her, and that turned into full-fledged beating within a few months. When he was done, he’d start on my sister.
There were nights she’d crawl into bed with me, sobbing. For the longest of times, she wouldn’t tell me what happened, but when I found blood on her pajamas, I knew. I’d tried to stand up to him, but he beat me badly enough that I couldn’t go to school for two weeks until the bruises faded. But I got off lucky. The things he did to Chrissy gave me nightmares. I’d hear her cry out and knew there was nothing I could do but hide in my bed, my pillow covering my head. He was bigger, meaner, and stronger than me, and he reminded me of that fact constantly.
The old lady never said boo about it. She always forgave him and tried to justify what he did by telling me how much stress he was under. How he was a good man and didn’t mean it. It was just the drinking, she swore. It was more like he was a bastard and she was his meal ticket.
I came home one night and found him whaling on her, my sister’s body crumpled in a heap, her head smashed in. The son of a bitch had a gun in his hand, slick with blood, and he threatened to kill them both, screaming he wouldn’t let her leave. She slapped him. It wasn’t hard, but it shocked him enough that he dropped the gun. I picked it up. He sneered at me and called me a weak-willed fag.
I looked at the gun I held in my hand. The instrument of my revenge. The means to saving my sister.
“Give me the gun, you fuck. It’s not a dick, you wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
The bullet I put in his forehead showed him how wrong he was. He lay on the floor, blood bubbling from the wound, and his eyes locked on mine as he took his last breath. I wanted that fucker to know it was the weak-willed fag who had done this to him.
The police and the courts ruled it justifiable. I had been protecting my mother, they’d said, from a situation that had escalated beyond my control. Not that it did me any good. My sister was never the same, even after multiple surgeries. Mom eventually dumped her in a state hospital because she couldn’t care for her anymore. Then I came home one day to find out she’d bailed while I was at school.
It kind of sucked. The story got around about me killing Arnie, and most people went the other way when they saw me. Even my teachers were afraid of me. After a time, I decided I wasn’t going to go back. I’d never told anyone my mom had left, and it was unlikely they’d come looking for me. I got myself a job to pay the utility bills and ate at McDonald’s a lot. At least she’d left enough for the rent for a few months, which I suppose I was grateful for.
The next two years were rough, but I survived. I got my GED, knowing without an education I’d never get anywhere in life. Between work and study, I never went out. I was determined to make something of myself, to ensure that I became a person that would make Chrissy proud.
When I turned eighteen, I joined the Army, my sole goal to excel and move up the ranks. To become someone who earned the respect of people who had always looked down on me. Instead, I found something greater. I found a purpose.
My instructors were impressed by my skills on the rifle range. When I pulled the trigger, I didn’t miss, because every time I took aim, it was the face of the man who’d started me on this path I saw in my sights. The one who took my world away from me.
Eventually they sent me to sniper training at Fort Benning. That was where I fell in love with killing my targets before they were even aware they were dead.
That was where I learned to murder.
Coming Monday, December 14!
Pre-order now at Amazon, All Romance, or Smashwords
Amazon eBook: http://www.amazon.com/Havens-Creed-Parker-Will…/…/ref=sr_1_1
AllRomance eBook: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-haven039screed-194…
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/598547
