Todos los capítulos de Taking out the general : Capítulo 1 - Capítulo 8

Thomas Hills did not sleep.All night, Nathan watched his father sit in the living room with a cutlass on his lap. The broken front door had been pushed shut with the dining table. His mother and Lily were awake in the corner, holding each other, their bags half-packed but not fully, because Thomas had said no.At 4:00 a.m., Thomas's three friends arrived.They were big men from the construction site: Uncle Boro, Uncle Sam, and Uncle Daniel. All in their forties and strong, they carried sticks and iron rods from work."Thomas, are you sure?" Boro asked when he saw the broken door and the blood still on the floor from yesterday. "General Varric? That man has killed for less.""This is my house," Thomas said. "He wants us to move out on our own so he can say we left willingly. I will not give him that satisfaction. Let him come and throw me out if he can."Nathan stood by the window. He was seventeen, and he wanted to believe his father could win.At exactly 6:00 a.m., the street went s

Nathan did not move.One minute became ten. Ten became thirty.Outside, on Hills Street, his father's body lay on the ground. His mother was wailing. His sister was screaming. And he was inside a hole in the ground, biting his hand and listening.He could hear Varric's voice inside his house."Take that chair out and burn it. No, not here. Take it to the truck. I don't want fire marks on my new floor.""That wall there, break it. I want an open kitchen.""This is well behind the house, cover it. Fill it with sand. I don't want a well in my mansion."Nathan's eyes widened in the dark.They were going to fill the well.If they filled it, he would be buried alive.He pressed his back harder against the cold bricks and tried to make himself smaller. His heart was beating so loudly that he thought the soldiers outside could hear it.A soldier walked into the backyard. Through the small gap between the bricks, Nathan saw his boots stop right beside the well.The soldier lifted the wooden pl

TAKING OUT THE GENERALThe rat had been eating Nathan's dinner for three nights, so on the fourth night, Nathan ate the rat.He made no speech about it as Jace watched from the mattress, his mouth hanging open. Milo, who rarely wasted words, simply turned his face toward the wall."Say something," Jace muttered at last.Nathan swallowed another bite. "It's meat."That was Grayport. Three years earlier, he had cried when his mother burned the rice. Now he could eat a rat and feel nothing at all.Grayport was a city in the same way a rotting fish was still a fish. Poverty was not an unfortunate condition in Grayport. It was a sentence handed down at birth.Rent was due every Friday. The landlord arrived on Thursday to remind you.Nathan was twenty years old. He shared a single room with his two cousins, one stove, and one window patched with cardboard. Their possessions amounted to little more than a few battered utensils, threadbare blankets, and a debt that grew faster than they coul

TAKING OUT THE GENERALFor three years, Nathan had killed Officer Kane in his dreams. In none of those dreams had his hands shaken.They were shaking now.Rain dripped from a broken gutter onto his neck. He remained motionless, watching through the back window. Inside, the tavern glowed with a yellow, smoky light. Men drank, laughed, and shouted over one another, their voices rising above the clatter of bottles.In the corner sat a broad-shouldered man hunched over a table, alone.Kane.Ashley's plan was simple. She had delivered it that morning on a second slip of paper, pushed beneath the door by a boy who disappeared before Nathan could catch him.Midnight. He always goes out the back to relieve himself. Do it there. Take his purse and his boots. Make it look like a robbery. Leave through the canal.Simple and Clean. Exactly the kind of plan Nathan would have made himself.That was what bothered him.Milo's voice echoed in his memory, calm and cold.Nobody is lucky around General V