Frankie had a baseball bat. This was an unfortunate turn of events, really, considering how much simpler  my life is when Frankie doesn't have a baseball bat.

"Give me the money, Jamie! Give it to me right now, or I swear to God I'll bash your head in!"

The December air was crisp, thank God, the kind of air that injects clarity into your skull even when you've been awoken just after sunrise by a large man bursting onto your roof, brandishing a blood-stained baseball bat.

Oh God, the blood on the bat was still wet. The sunlight glanced off of it, making the blood look slick.

Pull yourself together, Winchester, I think, choking back a gag. It's showtime.

"Frankie, please, let's be rational about this." I extended my hands out in front of me in manner that I hoped conveyed both submission and something along the lines of slow down, you little psychopath. I took a step backward, towards the edge of the roof.

"Rational? Oh, my dear, we are long past the point of rational," he purred, pulling back his lips into some warped twist on a smile, revealing yellowed, tobacco-stained teeth. The Bond villain charade was really not working for him. He was a brute, and everyone knew it.

"No, Jamie, what would have been rational would have been to get the money to Johnny when he asked for it."

Johnny. Damn him. He could have at least given me some warning. I'd just woken up, and I'd rather prefer that my face not be marinating in its own oils when I die.

"Frankie, during all the time I've been working for the Exchange, I have never once- not once- been late on getting Johnny the money from a job."

The Exchange is short for the New York Glock Exchange, New York's premiere black market. I had mediated a deal two weeks prior between a gang and an arms dealer. When I got the "transaction fee," I was supposed to take it to Johnny so he could count out his cut, but I didn't. I just kept it.

And now Frankie was here to kill me.

Another step backwards.

Frankie snarled, a twisted mask of pleasure stretched across his face as he approached with the bat. Frankie never liked me much. He was Johnny's favorite mediator until I showed up. That's when Frankie became Johnny's hit man. At the time, I felt endless satisfaction watching him get knocked down a rank, knowing that I possessed, at least, more power than one person in the world. And now here I am.

Poetic motherfuckin' justice.

"Frankie, please, just-" Jesus Christ. There was a shred of skin sticking to the blood on the bat.

The composure, the composure I'd spent two years cultivating, shatters in that moment.

God, I just wanted this to be quick and clean.

Another step back.

I let out a breathless sob, the sound you associate with the realization that you will die alone, and that really, you've been dying alone for quite a while, and this is just the universe being sick of you being so oblivious, and deciding to put you out of your misery.

"Frankie, please," I gasped in between the weird inverted belch noise that I make when I cry. "Frankie, oh God, Frankie. I'm so sorry. Just give me time. I just need the time to get the money, I-"

"You mean you don't even have it?!" Frankie roared, and lunged, bat swinging wildly.

I sidestepped him and sigh, dropping the damsel in distress act. So much for quick and clean. During the course of our conversation, I had worked my way to the edge of the roof. He had too much momentum to stop, and he barreled into the barrier protecting us from the rest of the world.

Or protecting them from us? That's the thing about walls. It takes two parties to build one.

I whipped my hunting knife out of the inside pocket of my battered leather jacket, and, before he had time to recover, thrust it through his back. I felt it snag somewhere in the middle of his chest, and I tried not to think about what I just hit. I yanked the knife back out and let Frankie crumple to the ground. His eyes were foggy, and they stare at me as he made a few odd gurgling noises.

Then he went still, eyes no longer foggy so much as glassy. Doll's eyes.

I shivered and reached into his jacket pocket, removing his phone. I dialed Johnny's number, pressing the phone to my ear before I felt the warm stickiness of his fresh blood coating the screen. I let out a little cry and hastened to put it on speaker.

"Is it done?" Johnny's voice was warm, too warm for a man like him.

I nodded, staring at the body, before I realized he couldn't see me. Keep it together, Winchester.

I have said this to myself a lot in the past two years.

"Hello to you too, sunshine. And yes, it's done."

I could hear his sick smile. "I'm proud of you, kid. Body collection in fifteen. Get out of there. You know where the money is. You did good today, Jamie." The line went dead. I deleted the call from the phone's memory and tucked it back into Frankie's jacket.

He hadn't even noticed my gloves. Pro tip: Always notice the gloves. Gloves mean someone doesn't want to leave fingerprints.

Of course, there had never been any deal, or any money. Johnny, in his old age, had grown paranoid. He was worried that Frankie was trying to usurp him, (unlikely; I bet Frankie couldn't even spell usurp) and asked me to assassinate him.

Let us take this opportunity to establish something: I don't kill people. I do a lot of bad things, but killing is not one of them. But when you're starving to death, moral integrity kinda goes out the window, especially when your boss offers you triple time.

My eyes fell on the body again, the blood pooling in the jagged, gory hole in the center of Frankie's chest. I barely made it to the edge overlooking the alley before I vomited, directly into the street below. As I threw open the door to the fire escape, I looked back at Frankie and shook my head.

It was morbidly impressive, if you asked me.

You know, to have committed two murders before your fifteenth birthday.