Hostile Takeover Read Free

up the grill. So, instead of becoming a drug mule or getting sold as a chicken dinner for pedophile conventioneers, I got recruited into the highly unglamorous yet hella lucrative world of contract killing. I have half a brain and I’m fairly athletic, so they applied my talents to the job, scrubbed away any pesky human emotions or empathy that might get in the way, and put a gun in my hand before I had even figured out how to find my dick with it. I was twelve years old when HR, Inc. got its hooks in me and I stayed there for thirteen years.
    Three years ago, at the ripe old age of twenty-five, I was about to retire. Bob’s philosophy was that anyone accepting an internship past that age would be labeled a slacker by established employees and draw the kind of attention that could jeopardize assignments. Which was fine with me. I was happy to wash my hands of the wholeaffair, but before I could ride off into the sunset, I had one last job. I should have known not to take it because one last job in the movies is always the first step to total annihilation. Always. In the film Seven, Morgan Freeman takes one last case and ends up in the seventh circle of Hell. Or how about Harrison Ford in Blade Runner ? Guy comes out of retirement to bag one last skin job and finds out he’s a skin job ! Jesus, I should have seen this coming!
    Anyway, all I wanted was to move on and try to live something other than a kid-on-a-milk-carton life. I wanted baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and fucking Chevrolet. God knows I earned it! You know the mortality stats for someone in my line of work? Nearly 100 percent. It doesn’t matter how deadly you are because, unless you’re the Terminator, eventually one of those bullets coming down like cool November rain is going to find you and paint the world with your insides.
    It’s only a matter of time.
    And I had done my time . . . in spades. I should have bounced when I had the chance. Of course I didn’t. Instead of getting my gold retirement watch and landing on my feet with a white picket fence and a satellite dish, I ended up base-jumping from the kettle into the fire. All because of one last job . But what’s done is done. If you’re interested, you can read about the whole hot mess in The Intern’s Handbook . You won’t find it at Barnes & Noble, but I hear the feds have a few copies lying around, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could download it for free on Russian iTunes. I’m told it’s an excellent beach/airplane/bathroom/killing-time-after-a-motel-tryst read.
    But that was then and this is now. I’m twenty-eight years young and I’ve ripened like nightshade berries or pungent French cheese. Since having my ass handed to me three years ago, I tried valiantly to leave my foul-mouthed, trigger-happy alter ego behind. Greener pastures were my original destination, but there truly is no rest forthe wicked (despite our infectious charms), and I ended up being railroaded into a collision course with, you guessed it, Act Two of my tragic life story. I thought I’d nearly seen it all, but this not only takes the cake, it kidnaps, tortures, and dismembers the pastry chef.
    So Kumbaya your asses round the campfire for a little prison bedtime story. If you’re already a member of the John Lago fan club, then none of what I’m about to tell you will come as a shock. After The Intern’s Handbook, you’re used to being bound, horsewhipped, and hung from the nearest tree by the prodigious yarns I’m apt to spin. In fact, if this were a movie sequel, it would be The Godfather, Part II— better than the original. For all you John Lago virgins, welcome to the party—a raucous affair where they dose your wine cooler with angel dust at the door and you wake up playing a supporting role in a ritual killing somewhere in a swamp outside Tampa.
    I guess the best place to begin is with Alice—the beautiful and