Bent Rules

My father was a strange and secretive man who would disappear on us for days or weeks without a word and return as if nothing had happened. My younger brother, Alex, and I were still in primary school at the time; we never understood why he disappeared like that, and Mom wouldn’t give us a straight answer either. I don’t think even she knew all the details.

As a few years passed, however, Dad’s disappearances became increasingly frequent, and he and Mom often argued when he was back. This led to our parents divorcing, and Mom getting full custody of us because Dad was never around. He was barely even present for his own divorce.

After the divorce, we rarely heard from Dad. He would call us once in a few months, but it was always brief. After a few years, we stopped hearing from him altogether. We received no word about his whereabouts, and Mom was worried, but she never told us anything. She knew more than she told us; I was certain of that.

When I was fifteen, we received a package that shocked Alex and me. There was a drive containing a video, something Dad had recorded in a rush. He told us that if we were seeing the video, he was most likely dead. Dad said he was hunting down members of an underground organisation connected to assassinations, sex trafficking, and political violence. He said he didn’t want to mention how deep the connections ran, but that there were prominent people involved who wanted him gone.

Mom saw the look on our faces and made us promise never to go down the same path. She was shivering and in tears as she hugged us; Alex and I couldn’t help but agree. We didn’t want to put her through anymore loss. I felt sorry that she had shouldered such a secret for so long.

Once I graduated from university, I joined the police force in hopes of following Dad’s footsteps without crossing any lines. However, I soon came to realise just how much those boundaries were bent to meet the needs of the rich and powerful. As months passed, I watched so many criminals evade justice because of their connections. I grew bitter and impatient as two years went by, and I began to feel more and more powerless in the face of corruption. It was then that I took a stand; I needed to bend the rules myself.

Weeks later, Alex found out about my second job and begged me to let him join. I was reluctant at first, but I couldn’t deny that he was a valuable asset to staying ten steps ahead with his knowledge of technology. I was able to locate targets much faster, and we started chipping away at organised crime in the city. In time, we uncovered several documents linking major crimes to politicians, businesspeople, and celebrities, and our list grew longer the more we pressed on. To our surprise, we stumbled upon a document that had Dad’s name listed on it. We not only learned the identity of the man who had killed him, but also the politician who had put a bounty on his head.

Alex found a window where the man would frequent a club past midnight. I killed his bodyguards while he was on his way to a private room, and Alex injected him with a sedative. We took him out the back and drove to an abandoned building, where we tied him to a pillar and waited till he woke up. The man pleaded with us the second his eyes opened; we simply showed him photographs of twenty-five people he had murdered, including our father. None of them had a choice, so why would he? That is what we asked him before I fired three rounds into his head.