Force of Mortality - Joe Pearson

Chapter One

Michael Cooper was a killer, and he was good at it, enough so that he had made it his living. Born Mikhail Bondarev in Odessa, Ukraine to ethnic Russian parents, he discovered his calling early. As a teen, Mikhail became engaged with the street gangs and the distribution of drugs. When someone from a rival gang required elimination, it was Mikhail that got called upon. Word spread of his efficiency, and he soon got called up to the big leagues, working for the mobsters that managed the narcotic smuggling in that large port city on the Black Sea. In time, he sought better opportunities and greater potential, and like millions of immigrants before him, looked toward America. “In New York you can be a new man.” After plying his trade for the Russian Mafia for a time, Mikhail was determined to branch out and offer his services to a wider audience. So he changed his name to its American counterpart, Michael Cooper, and set out to make his fortune killing people. Now, it wasn’t like he enjoyed killing, it was just that it didn’t really bother him at all. Everybody has to die eventually, he thought, why not now? And if somebody got paid to facilitate a death, where’s the harm in that?