Bad Blood by Matthew Hattersley

Author:Matthew Hattersley [Hattersley, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

Nate Winters was exhausted and his head spun from the paint fumes that filled the air. He’d been tirelessly painting all night long, and now, save for a tiny section of one wall, his work was nearly complete. This was the first time in his thirty-five years he’d ever turned his hands to any ‘do-it-yourself’ endeavours and he was surprisingly pleased with the results. He’d even found the process quite enjoyable. It helped that he was creating something he’d been dreaming about for the better part of five years. A headquarters. A training camp. A foundation upon which he hoped to one day establish an empire. If Beowulf Caesar could do it – if that shadowy ponce running Kancel Kulture could do it – then why not him?

Over the past twelve years, Winters had carved out a reputation for himself, not only as a sought-after assassin but someone who was intelligent, industry savvy, and what stuffy corporate types might call a ‘blue-sky thinker’. The organisation he envisioned would revolutionise the murder-for-hire industry. It would be a co-operative, managed by its members yet overseen by him, where operatives collaborated on jobs, supporting each other in the field and in the background to ensure every mission, every hit, was executed to the utmost potential of not only the individual operatives but the organisation as a collective force. There was safety in numbers. There was also real power.

But he wasn’t there yet, and sometimes the weight of his aspirations bore down on his shoulders. It was going to take time and patience – as well as some very clever marketing on his part – to amass the class of people he hoped to work alongside.

The colour he’d chosen for this room was ‘Natural Slate’, a subdued mid-grey with a matte finish. Nate had initially been drawn to the shade that was one darker, but the name of that paint, ‘Urban Obsession’, struck him as inappropriate for an assassins’ training camp nestled within a sprawling farm in rural Wales. So, ‘Natural Slate’ it was. And it was a good choice. Now covering all four walls and the ceiling, the colour seemed to suck all the light and atmosphere out of the windowless room. That was a good thing. It was important.

He envisioned this small square room inside one of the three separate outhouses standing in a row on the eastern edge of the vast eight-hundred-acre farm, serving as a sensory deprivation training pod. The plan was to confine trainees inside the room for hours on end, subjecting them to relentless noise that would prevent sleep and inhibit coherent thought. Once suitably disorientated, they would be taken from the room and thrust into different challenges – target practice or knife skills – and would have to learn how to adjust to their change in environment fast or they would fail. The grey room would also prepare his new band of would-be assassins for a world where patience and composure were of the utmost importance, even when dealing with intense, high-pressure situations.

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