Chapter Text
I. THE BOY
Martín was an orphan. No family. No history. A blank slate from start to finish. At least, that was what he heard. Galvez always said it with praise, as if coming from nothing was something Martín should be proud of. And maybe he should be.
But he wasn’t always a walking puppet. Once upon a time, he had been like everyone else, with a mother and a father, and even an old man he called Tío. They lived, to his memory, in a crumpled little house that smelled like shit. The tubs were filled with more trash than water, and his mother lit candles in place of lights.
He didn’t go to school. But the man (who had really just been a boy, no older than fifteen) next door did. When he was done with class, and not with some girl, he would come out and sit on the steps. He’d talk to Martín if he had the time, point out constellations and recite the alphabet. Sometimes he would leave his books with Martín for safekeeping. There were all sorts of books- novels, maths, philosophy, geography- mostly filled with words Martín didn’t know. But the man- the boy- with glasses as thick as coke bottles (coke, Martín assumed, tasted like soot but he’d been told it tasted like sugar, that he would know if he could afford the taste one day) was always happy to teach him.
At home, Martín spent most of his nights picking his father’s bottles of beer from the ground. If he was lucky enough, there would be some drops left to taste. It was bitter, but because his father liked it so much, Martín assumed it tasted good. Father- Papa, if he’d ever called him that- was always too tired to pay Martín much mind, unless it was to flick an occasional clout at his ear.
Martín remembered even less of his mother. She was a ghost who cowered before his father, or perhaps it was the other way around. She and Papa were always yelling at one another, always yelling, then sobbing, then kissing and hugging. And Martín, buried on the couch in his quilt and pillow, would only flip on his side and sleep away.
In the end, Tío was the one he really remembered. He was an old man with yellow teeth and scratchy hair, most of it falling out of his spotty scalp. But Tío was good to him. Tío told him stories at night, reminded him to brush his teeth, and snuck him sugar cubes from town. Once, he even gave Martín a stuffed rabbit made of old socks. Martín slept best when he was curled against Tío’s arm, against the smell of tobacco and clay.
And Martín never minded when his parents left him to take care of Tío. Martín held his hand when he became too disoriented to speak, when he wept and curled into a ball on the ground. Martín would hold him until Tío fell asleep.
But on one occasion, Tío had woken before Martín and wandered out. When Martín found him, the barrio children were throwing pebbles at Tío’s back and calling him names. Tío didn’t see them because he was too busy babbling into the air.
But Martín did. So he picked up a stone and dashed it against the boy with the loudest mouth. Martín cracked it over his head until the boy cried and bled. And when his friends tried to pull him off, Martín smashed his fists into their teeth.
That night, Mama scolded him for the blood on his shirt and Papa smacked him in the head for what he’d done. Martín spat out a tooth and said, “sorry” like a curse. He went to sleep without dinner, against Tío’s arm, and curled around his sock rabbit.
Martín’s memory began to fail after that night. Everything became a vague splash then, blurs of color tinged with burnt red. The student next door disappeared first, grabbed by men in the night until nothing remained except his cracked glasses in the dirt. Then Tío left at dawn in a chattering panic, and he had gone so far that Martín couldn’t find him, no matter how much he ran. Martín ran and ran, and when he came home, their house was ablaze.
He remembered the world going black. And when he woke, his parents were dead. After their funeral, a woman came for Martín in a brown car.
“I’ll take you to a home for little boys just like you,” she’d said, as sincere as a marionette, “you’ll make lots of friends and start a new life. Are you ready, Martín?”
Martín spat in her face and laughed when she cried out.
Tío never came home. And Martín spent his ninth birthday in a flea-filled cot.
.
.
Martín didn’t make any new friends at the orphanage, but he made plenty of enemies, a habit he never shook. There was a limited amount of food, he soon learned, just enough to keep each stomach full, but not enough to keep them full. When he tried to steal more from the kitchen, Sister Maria had slapped a ruler to his bottom and made him repent for his sins.
There was a light thrill to theft, but Martín soon discovered it was much, much easier to take instead. So whenever a boy was unfortunate enough to grate his nerves, Martín grabbed his collar and demanded a cut of his food. And if the boy was dumb enough to say no, Martín had no qualms striking him in the jaw.
He enjoyed cutting his knuckles with teeth and bruises, not so much for the pain he caused but more for the pain he felt. Some years later, he would look back at it as the seeds of power and control.
But at twelve, he was only an angry child who liked to bully and fight. They called him volatile, violent, vicious, a devil come to earth. So when someone asked to take Martín away, the orphanage was more than happy to comply.
“Hello Martín,” his new guardian said when they first met, “I’m Señor Galvez. I’ll take care of you from now on.”
Martín’s first impression of Galvez was that of a man built in strength. Broad shoulders, rough hands, hawkish eyes. There was a cool sharpness to him unlike anyone else Martín had yet met. Even so, when Galvez moved to touch him, Martín bit him in the hand.
.
.
Galvez never scolded Martín for acting out. He regarded it with amusement more than anything else. In fact, he rewarded Martín whenever he hurt his peers.
And Martín had many peers, mostly boys just as shifty and just as angry. On their guardian’s orders, they performed drills in the morning and drills at night. They jumped through wheels, crawled up ropes, and wrestled in mud. Between meals, they learned to carve wood and how to hold a blade. And before they showered- which consisted of running across a screaming hose- they would spar in pairs, no rules to stop the bruises and blood.
“Keep it up,” Galvez’s right hand always said, “keep it up and make us proud.”
No one, until then, had talked about Martín with pride. Not even Tío.
Martín swore then, that he would make Galvez proud. He excelled at everything he did. He let the ropes burn his palms, let the gravel cut his feet, let the blades slice through skin. He took so many punches that the taste of blood became second nature. And before the year was up, Galvez had him leading the drills.
“You’re amazing,” Galvez told him, squeezing a towel as he padded away the sweat on Martín’s brow, “a fucking superhuman.”
Martín was the first of his peers to hold a gun. And when he was fourteen, he made his first kill. Blew a bastard’s brains out and watched the man bleed out. Galvez treated Martín to lobster that night, and it was the best fucking meal of his life.
.
.
In truth, Martín never forgot the verses those Sisters had once instilled in him. Murder was a sin, he knew, but it felt much easier to run towards hell than crawl for heaven. And he was, for once, filled with purpose. He had a gift, Galvez said, and Martín believed him.
He was less than half the age of Galvez’s other men, and he had yet to miss a target. He could take anyone and anything out with a single shot, and when that failed, he knew himself trusty with knives and fists. His only flaw was the mess of blood and guts that followed. Cleaning up was a task he still had to perfect.
Regardless, they made him the captain of his own little team at age sixteen, a group of amateurs at his beck and call. This time, Martín was in charge and if he did well, it was a position Galvez would let him keep. All uphill from here.
But until then, his targets had all been the same: arrogant men with loud voices and crisp suits.
This time, it was a child. He would pull the trigger on a girl not yet ten, then blow off her mother’s head. He hadn’t given it much thought until they came into view.
Boom, boom, ciao, he thought from the roof.
But Martín froze. The girl had looked so weak and small, and against all sense, he remembered Tío and the children throwing stones at his back. And suddenly, Martín felt sick.
He lowered the gun and motioned for his boys to fall back.
When he returned to base, Galvez gathered their group. Then he had Martín stripped to the bone and strung up to a pole in the middle of their court. And in front of everyone, Martín chewed his cheeks raw when Galvez brought a switch against his back. They whipped him until blood ran down his feet.
“Worthless pile of shit,” Galvez hissed when he saw it fit to let Martín down.
Curled by the man’s shoe, Martín coughed out the bile from his throat. And in the midst of the sweat and blood, he did his best to hold back the tears.
“See that?” Galvez went on, “that’s an example of a failure.”
Those words cut Martín more than anything else. He swore then that he would never disappoint again, but something deeper told him his words rang false. He had only lived to please Galvez, lied to himself to lessen the shame, and dirtied his hands with so much blood he could no longer tell which was his and which was not.
“Will you ever do this again?” Galvez demanded, touching a foot to Martín’s jaw.
“No.”
“No what?”
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
Galvez walked off without glancing back. And when another boy tried to help him up, Martín punched him square in the nose.
.
.
By the time Martín realized he did not enjoy killing, it was much too late. He simply had the stomach for it, he soon learned. And now he did not know how to do anything else.
So he told himself to hone his craft and make the most of his gifts. He was a killer and he was brilliant. And maybe one day, he would meet his match. Until then, he would tell his targets- boom boom ciao- and let everything else fade to white.
.
.
II. THE MAN
Martín stopped keeping track of birthdays after his twenty-fifth. It was easier to mark time by years, and he’d grown numb to Galvez’s lavish parties over the decades. The complimentary wine bottles felt tacky anyway, considering how closely grape wine resembled the color of blood. Sometimes his colleagues would invite him from drinks, small gatherings at small bars where they could laugh and pretend to be like anyone else.
Martín wasn’t sure if he envied other lives. They seemed terribly mundane, and he doubted the average man’s life was much happier than his. His life may be shit, but it was interesting shit and regardless of Galvez’s reasons, Martín and his ilk were making a difference in the world one way or another.
And it was at one of these little gatherings that he learned he preferred men. Sometimes the others would speak of women- short term, because their line of work left little room for anything more- and Martín rarely felt anything beyond a dull curiosity.
“Your eyes,” the bartender said, “they’re beautiful.”
And because he had never been called beautiful, Martín smiled. And when he smiled, the other man- older, he assumed, but not by too much- called him beautiful again.
The bartender’s name slipped his mind in the end, but Martín remembered the stubble on his jaw and how he’d grinded his hips behind Martín’s own. Martín had expected it to hurt- like everything else- but it felt good, like something clicking in place. Then because for a moment, he was no longer Martín Berrote, he straddled the other man’s waist and placed himself against his thighs. He kissed the man everywhere he could, and in the morning, the bartender would say he quite enjoyed Martín’s appetite.
“Come find me again?” he’d said, with all the eagerness of a puppy.
“Sure,” Martín told him.
He never did.
One man was the same as two, three more. If the sex was good, Martín lacked nothing, and he was certainly never wasting time on strangers he knew he’d never see again. He took what he wanted and he owed them nothing.
.
.
Martín was well into his thirties by the time he was rewarded the privilege of living outside of Galvez’s thumb. “Bogota,” his colleague from a decade above (“I’ll replace you some day,” Martín liked to tell him, “you should be careful, you know, around me.”) found him a flat in Cartagena, a suitably humble place where he could sleep in and gather his wits when there was no work on his mind.
He spent most of his time watching TV and biking into town for milk. Martín tried countless times to spend his money on luxuries and food, but any joy was always short-lived when he remembered the source of his pension: death and a man that held him by a leash.
He’d considered killing Galvez before, and who knows how many times he’s dreamt of snapping the man’s neck. Martín could do it without a gun too. Galvez was getting older and Martín still had plenty of fight in him. All he had to do, really, was shove Galvez down the stairs and say goodbye. But Galvez had a wife (or a mistress, it was hard to tell) and a family, and countless orphans living off his underground empire. It would all fall apart if Galvez disappeared, and that wasn’t even taking into account what his clients would do should he die. Martín was just one man, an impatient one at that, and he did not want that level of responsibility on his shoulders.
And maybe- just maybe- a part of him was scared that he would fail. Martín didn’t fear death per se, but he hated the thought of dying without purpose: alone, forgotten, and as much a piece of nothing as the targets he’d once slaughtered with so much glee.
So he reveled in his misery instead, locked himself away, and took it all out on sex. And at the end of the day, there was little difference between the cock between his legs and the cock of the rifle in his hands.
.
.
Galvez sent Bogota to Munich, so Martín had to return to base in his place. They put him in charge of the new wards, a job that he found irritating at best. The oldest was fourteen and the youngest, eight. But as far as Martín was concerned, they were all unruly snot-nosed brats who would grow into unruly, broken men.
“This is Palermo,” Galvez said, clapping a palm to Martín’s back, “he’s the best of the best, and if you’re lucky, he might teach you his tricks.”
“That’s right,” Martín told them, putting a gun to his head, “here’s the first trick. If you love yourself, blow your head off now. Boom.”
The brats didn’t take his advice, too fresh to understand. They thought the world at their fingertips and they worshipped the ground at Galvez’s feet. Just as they worshipped Palermo’s. And as soon as it stroked his ego, he remembered how many of them would die or worse, turn out just like him.
“The least I can teach you, then,” he drawled, “is how to stay alive. You’re not heroes, you’re not workers- you’re tools. Got that?”
They claimed they did. So Martín let them do their drills, taught them how to hold their knives, and what to do if they cut their palms. And then, on a muddy rainy day, one of the boys slipped from the rope he was climbing up.
His skull would certainly have shattered in four if Martín hadn’t slid over and caught him in time.
“La concha de tu madre!” he snapped, suit soaked in mud, the boy against his chest, “if you think you’re going to fall, say something!”
“Sorry,” the kid said, too afraid to look him in the eyes, some snot on his nose.
The boy’s name was Matías. He was ten years old.
.
.
Matías was the opposite of what Martín had been. He was the slowest among his peers, somewhat whiny, and too clumsy to hold a gun. He had the miraculous ability to miss a target from less than a meter away, and he spent more time staring at the mirror than whatever training Martín assigned.
Maybe that was why he became Martín’s favorite. The others, he supposed, reminded him too much of himself. Matías, at least, resembled a boy of flesh and blood. He was the one who would greet Palermo with a chippy “good morning!” at dawn and a “good night” at dusk. Whenever Martín said, “Any questions?” to his trainees, the boy would raise his hand and say some nonsensical shit:
“Why aren’t you wearing a tie today?”
“Why are you wearing a tie today?”
“Do you like empanadas?”
“Why did you choose Palermo?”
“Have you been to Palermo?”
“Will you take us to Palermo?”
And no matter how much Martín glared, how many times he yelled at Matías, how impatient the rasps were in his throat, the boy continued to follow him around with a grin. Martín despised the brat undoubtedly, mostly because Matías managed to make himself a fixture in Martín’s life. Attachments were something wholly foreign to Martín, and by the time he realized what the boy had become, it was far too late.
And Martín admitted that he enjoyed listening to Matías chattering up nonsense by his ear. He didn’t mind letting Matías touch his rifle, fix his gloves. He laced the boy’s boots and taught him how to carve soap. At lunch, they shared milk.
And when Matías, aged twelve, came back sobbing and heaving because his first mission had been too fucking much and the gun was too heavy and there was so much blood, Palermo, Martín washed the blood from his hair, scrubbed his nails clean, and told him it would pass in time.
“It’s what I told you,” he said with a smile, “boom, boom, ciao. You trigger, you pull. Everything else is just noise, eh?”
When Matías told him he couldn’t sleep at night, not without thinking of all that blood, Martín grabbed a pair of his socks and knotted them into a little rag rabbit. Matías kept it by his pillow, and when he told Martín that he named it ‘Palermo,’ Martín flicked him in the nose.
.
.
Even after Bogota returned, Martín kept Matías under his wing. For Galvez it was just as well, because Matías was certainly more efficient with Martín as his guide. Martín taught the boy all he knew, every trick and tip his fucked-up brain had gathered over the years. In his opinion, Matías was still somewhat dim, but he was a quick learner nonetheless.
On Matías’ fifteenth birthday, Martín brought him to Cartagena. On his sixteenth, they went to Lima. On his seventeenth, they flew to Barcelona. On his eighteenth, Los Angeles.
And on Matías’ nineteenth birthday, Martín went to a bar and drank his liver out. Then he’d sobbed to himself until his air ran out.
“I’m sorry,” Bogota had told him over the phone, “he didn’t make it.”
“Who did it?”
“Dead.”
Matías hadn’t been quick enough. He’d been killed. A shot through the head. Then he’d bled out alone. And Palermo had been oceans away.
Martín attended his funeral alone and buried Matías with the pitiful rabbit. When he asked Galvez why he couldn’t have sent anyone else, his answer was a shrug and low, “Does it matter? You of all people should know.”
Martín had wanted to rip the skin from Galvez’s face, but he only threw his head back and laughed. Because Galvez was right. He of all people should have known and it was a real fucking joke to have pretended he didn’t.
.
.
Martín lost his left eye to a sniper who shot him through glass. It was the first time he had been wounded in decades, and when he collapsed into Marseille’s arms, all he could think was, “Fuck.” And while the rest of his team was busy plucking glass from his eyes, Bogota fired five bullets into the fucker’s back. They didn’t know who the man was, but Martín trusted that the bastard was dead. Or else, he’d have to get up and hunt the bastard down himself.
Recovery was a boring process that he mostly passed with loud television and a flask of whiskey in his hand. Laid up in bed, he was bereft without something to do, and he wasn’t sure if he missed the adrenaline of his hunts or if he simply wasn’t used to actual peace (something he hadn’t known since Matías died). Eventually, the bandage around his head came off and he had the choice of plucking in a glass eye or covering it up with a black patch.
He chose the latter and Bogota asked him if he was trying to be the most noticeable assassin known to mankind.
“I’m sexy, I’m bored, and I like to hold grudges,” Martín quipped back, “I’ll take the eyepatch if I want. I deserve some fucking recognition.”
“Recognition isn’t something we really want in this line of work.”
“Or what? If anyone tries to touch me, I’ll blow their dick off.”
.
.
Palermo was not hard to spot. He decked himself all in black- tie, jacket, shirt, slacks- and carried a rifle slung over one shoulder, an eyepatch pressed to what had once been his left eye. He always looked as if he was on his way to a funeral to spit at another man’s grave. He was Galvez’s right hand man, a killer among killers, and every bit as hardened as he looked.
The lucky ones got his scowl. The less fortunate received his sneers. And always, he put out his targets with a clean shot through the head. One bullet was all he would ever need.
.
.
Nearly a decade after Matías’ death, Galvez called Martín to his office and told him, “I need you to kill this man.”
“Does it pay well?” Martín sat on Galvez’s desk, and snatched the file from his hands.
“Extremely.”
“So what does this asshole do?”
“He’s an art forger.”
Martín quirked a brow. “Since when did anyone put hits on forgers?”
Galvez leaned back. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you why. But I can say this- he’s an asset that outlived his usefulness and we have some friends who would prefer to see him gone.”
Martín flipped through the file, licking eyes over every photo and text. His target was allegedly a public figure among the world of fine art, gallery curation, and the like. He was talented, Martín would give him that, and rather slimy, given his forgery hustle on the side. But since Martín considered himself shit at drawing faces, he was more than impressed by the paintings this man could do. He did sculptures too, once stealing and replacing a statue from the Vatican itself (a move that would surely land him in hell).
“He’s a bold one,” Martín mused.
And not bad-looking. The target was a Spaniard, surprisingly attractive for his age, with bright eyes and a tricky smirk. It was a shame that Martín would have to meet him this way, but alas.
“Leave it to me,” he told Galvez.
.
.
III. THE LOVER
When Martín first laid eyes on Andrés de Fonollosa, he shot him in the chest.
It was as easy as that. He waited on the roof of the building across, lit a cigarette between his lips, and watched Fonollosa exit the restaurant with his red-haired wife, a woman who looked half his age.
Martín gave them a few steps first, some seconds to make sure he had the right target. Fonollosa came out in a trailing coat of grey felt, a suit cut to his figure underneath, black gloves entwined with his wife’s hands. He knew Andrés de Fonollosa to be a vain man, someone who liked to flaunt his wealth and his brides. And so far, the man below matched the description word for word.
The woman, Tatiana de Fonollosa, laughed at whatever her husband said. Martín spat the cigarette out. He would need to fire before they crossed the street, but there was one more detail he needed to ascertain.
Andrés walked with a limp, the effect of some injury that had left him crippled. Good, Martín thought, makes him slower.
The moment Martín saw that limp, he knew his target was locked. He aimed the rifle, squinted, and pressed the trigger-
The Spaniard glanced up, and Martín didn’t have time to wonder if it was a trick of sunlight, because right then and there, it looked like Andrés de Fonollosa was locking eyes with him. Martín, against all precedent, panicked just as his finger slipped.
Bang.
Tatiana screamed first. When Martín set the rifle aside, he saw the woman on her knees, desperately- pathetically- trying to stem the blood from her husband’s chest. Andrés lay on concrete, blood sputtering from his lips. As the crowd gathered around them, Martín slipped away. At this rate, the target would survive, assuming those onlookers acted fast enough.
He retreated to a corner, hugged the rifle to his shoulders, and shuddered. He had aimed for Fonollosa’s head. He had never- never - missed a target before. Then why him, why now?
“Andrés de Fonollosa,” he muttered, “who are you?”