Deathstroke had been watching Little Cousin's life from afar, treating it as a reality show during his vacation.
A mercenary's life was actually quite boring when you thought about it—nothing more than running all over the place and constantly going on assignments.
Though he never knew when he might die, as long as he had money, he could enjoy life while he could.
So over the next two-plus years, Wade had a pretty good time. Not only did he save up over a thousand dollars, but he also picked up a prostitute named Vanessa and made her his girlfriend.
She was actually a good girl. It was just that, ever since childhood, her drug-addicted parents had forced her into prostitution.
There was nothing she could do about it. This was extremely common in Hell's Kitchen.
If they couldn't pay back the gangs, they used their daughters to settle the debt. If they offended someone important, they used their daughters to apologize. If the drugs at home ran out, they sent their daughters out to sell their bodies in exchange for more.
Family, affection, order—none of it was worth mentioning in an utterly dark world. Human lives were worthless. Even when people in Hell's Kitchen died, the NYPD's official death toll did not change at all.
They did not even qualify to be counted as numbers, just as nobody knew exactly how many people lived in Hell's Kitchen.
Vanessa had come from such a family. Her parents had been thoroughly ruined by drugs and alcohol. As a child, she watched her mother conduct business with customers at home while her father took the money out to buy powder.
Once she was barely ten, she was forced to join her mother's profession. She tried to run away several times, only to nearly