They dumped me at some dirty orphanage two states away.
Gray walls. Smell of piss and old soup.
Kids cried at night.
I didn't cry anymore.
Three weeks later a woman walked in wearing red heels and a black coat.
Long black hair, red lips, eyes like dead stars.
Mama Liba.
She looked at the woman running the place and said,
"Give me the quiet one. The boy who doesn't speak."
The woman pointed at me.
"He doesn't talk. Doesn't sleep. Just stares."
Mama Liba smiled.
Perfect.
She crouched in front of me.
Smelled like roses and gun oil.
"You want revenge, little prince?"
I nodded once.
She took my hand.
Cold fingers.
Strong grip.
"Good. Come."
That was the last day I ever saw that orphanage.
She drove me in a black car for hours.
No music.
No talking.
Just road and night.
We stopped at a big house in the middle of nowhere.
Tall gates. Dogs that didn't bark, just watched.
Men with guns at every door.
Inside smelled like bleach and blood.
Mama Liba gave me new clothes.
All black.
No more race car pajamas.
Then she took me to the basement.
First thing I saw: a man tied to a chair.
Face beaten.
Missing teeth.
Mama Liba handed me a small knife.
"Cut him."
I looked at her.
She looked back.
No smile now.
"Do it or I cut you."
I walked to the man.
He started crying.
"Please… I have kids…"
I remembered Richard's face in the fire.
I remembered Scar Man laughing.
I cut his throat.
Blood sprayed hot on my hands.
He gurgled and went quiet.
Mama Liba patted my head.
"Good boy. First lesson free. Next ones cost pain."
That night she locked me in a room with no light.
Just a bucket and a thin mat.
Every morning at 4 a.m. they dragged me out.
Run ten miles.
No shoes.
Carry rocks.
If I fell, they kicked me until I stood again.
Eat one bowl of rice a day.
If I threw up, I licked it back.
Learn to shoot.
First gun was too big.
Knocked me on my ass.
Mama Liba laughed.
"Again."
Learn to fight.
Bigger boys beat me until bones broke.
I learned fast.
Break their bones first.
Learn to kill quiet.
Knives.
Wire.
Hands.
They put me in a box underground for three days.
No food.
No water.
Just darkness.
When they pulled me out I didn't scream.
I didn't beg.
Mama Liba smiled real big that day.
"You ready for the brand."
They held me down on a metal table.
Took a hot iron shaped like an eye inside a circle.
Pressed it on my left shoulder.
Smell of my own meat burning.
I bit my tongue so hard it bled.
Didn't make a sound.
She whispered in my ear while it cooked,
"From now on your name is Invincible.
You feel pain, you smile.
You bleed, you keep walking.
You die only when I say."
I was ten years old and already dead twice.
Years went fast after that.
Age 12 – first real kill outside training.
Some drug dealer who owed Mama Liba money.
I walked into his house like a lost kid.
Put two in his head while he reached for candy to give me.
Age 14 – learned to hack doors, cameras, phones.
Mama Liba said, "Ghosts don't knock."
Age 16 – they sent me to Russia for six months.
Learned to speak with no accent.
Learned to smile while I poisoned vodka.
Came home with frostbite and five new scars.
Age 18 – first big job alone.
Kill a judge.
Made it look like heart attack.
Mama Liba gave me a new passport and a bank account with one million dollars.
First time I ever had my own money.
Every night I looked at Richard's pinky ring.
Still had dried blood in the cracks.
I kissed it and promised,
"Soon."
By the time I was twenty-two I had killed forty-seven men.
Maybe more.
Stopped counting.
Mama Liba called me to the basement one last time.
She sat in her big chair.
Red lips.
Same dead eyes.
"You free now, Invincible.
You better than me.
Go make the world scared of your shadow."
She gave me a black card.
No name.
Just a phone number.
"Your jobs will come to this number.
Big money.
Big targets.
Don't call me unless you dead."
I walked out that house and never looked back.
Three months of freedom.
Small jobs.
Clean kills.
Money piling up.
Then came the big one.
2.7 billion dollars on a beach.
I didn't know it would change everything.
I didn't know it would bring them back.
The same wolves that killed Richard.
I didn't know it would bring her.
Katie.
But that night, standing in Mama Liba's basement covered in fourteen years of blood and lessons,
I was still just Invincible.
Cold.
Empty.
Ready.