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Don Arturo, the head of the Cinco Dedos cartel, a notorious drug dealing syndicate operating in Mexico, had a rather gruesome way of punishing renegades. Whenever a member reneged, he would send his enforcers to not only eliminate the traitor and his family but also bring back their heads for him to be sure they are dead.

When Jorge joined the cartel and rose through the ranks to become its most dreaded enforcer, he never thought a day would come when he would have to be on the run from the same organisation which he had spent most of his years killing for. Orphaned at eleven, he had been taken off the streets by Don Arturo, and raised like a son - that was if teaching an eleven year old to handle a gun and shoot a man whenever ordered counted as raising a child anyway - and Jorge, now a forty-year old, had always been a good 'son' until the day before he was sent along with two other henchmen on a mission to track down and eliminate their next target, Carlos, an individual who had somehow found himself in the bad books of the cartel. He must have either stolen from the cartel or attempted to provide information about them to law enforcement agents. Jorge didn't need to know his exact crime. All he had to do was to bring back Carlos' head and those of his family.

Jorge and his team had tracked down Carlos in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state bordering Texas. He instructed that they wait till nightfall before breaking into the house the target was staying in. Attaching a sound suppressor to his Beretta 92FS, he instructed each of the men to stand guard outside while he stealthily entered into the house, following the sound of water dripping in the bathroom. He slid open the door to the bathroom and quickly injected two bullets into the bare chest of the unsuspecting Carlos who was having a shower.

"See you in hell, hombre loco!" He spat on the lifeless body and then walked out of the bathroom in search of the rest of Carlos' family. He made his way to the kitchen and caught sight of a young woman doing the dishes.

"Por favor, no dispares. Please, don't shoot me," the woman begged.

But Jorge was not one to plead with. In fact, he enjoyed watching his victims plead before taking their lives.

"Shhhh," he placed an index finger on his lip, gesturing at her to be quiet. "It's ok. Who else is here?"

"My husband... he's having his bath," the trembling woman answered, amid tears.

Jorge grinned wickedly, "No, he's dead. And now you'll join him."

Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, the sudden cry of a baby upstairs interrupted him.

"Please, don't kill me. I have a baby," the woman's plea seemed like a kind of defibrillator sending shock into his stone cold heart to awaken it. "I beg you, don't make my child grow up without a parent," she continued.

Jorge's mind flooded with his past memories. He remembered how he had watched his ailing mother die before his very eyes. How he wept bitterly, holding her hands as he begged her not to leave him all alone in the world as an orphan. He never knew his father, he had been killed in a factory fire months after Jorge's mom became pregnant.

Now here he was, watching a woman begging not to be taken away from her son. He wondered how different his own life might have turned out to be if he had grown up with a mother. Maybe he would have been an entirely different person.

He tried to shut his eyes and squeeze the trigger but was unable to do so. He couldn't bring himself to shoot her. Opening his eyes, he whispered to the woman to go upstairs and shut the door behind her. In that moment, he knew he what he had to do. The two men waiting outside would never let him spare the mother and her child. Besides, he could not return to Don Arturo without the targets' heads. It was a war in his mind and he had to pick a side. It was either the cartel or the mother and her child.

He made a choice. It was the latter and he knew the consequence of that choice. Clutching his Beretta tightly, he walked outside, the two men were waiting with pistols in their hands. As one was about to ask if the job was done, he opened fire, shooting at them. The two men, taken aback, scampered for safety, while returning fire. After a while he got one in the head but the other managed to escape. He ran after him but couldn't get hold of him.

"Shit!" He knew it was only a matter of time before the escaped guy called for backup from the cartel. Neither he nor the woman and child were safe in Mexico. He ran back into the house and minutes later, he was in the car with the two new passengers he had just picked over the cartel, driving at maximum speed for the US border.

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