Previously, Frank Castle took on an assistant named Chip, who was skilled at computer hacking.Chip proved to be useful in the Punisher’s war on crime but Chip had an alternate motive for joining up with Frank: his family had been killed several years earlier and Chip wanted revenge. Frank had agreed to help him get vengeance on Howard Saint, not realizing that Saint was already preparing for the Punisher’s visit…

Chip Carter was sleeping peacefully on the bed of the safe house as Frank looked in on him. Well, sleeping peacefully thanks to the sleeping pills Frank drugged him with. Ever since Chip had survived his encounter with a cannibal, causing him to lose half of his pinkie and a large piece of skin on his chest, he’d been restless and not focusing on the job at hand.

Frank had been afraid that Chip wasn’t ready to fight alongside him since he’d met the young man in Washington, but a part of him had wanted to give Chip a chance to prove himself, and his computer skills were of great use in the war against crime. But now Frank was having second thoughts. Maybe after he took out Howard Saint, he’d give Chip a chance to get away from this life before he got in any deeper.

As Frank sat outside, taking the moment to rest himself, he felt a cellphone vibrating. It was the phone that Anya had given him on their first meeting. The bodyguard of Vic Ritoli had challenged him to a fight one year from then, which wasn’t too far off. Frank picked up the phone and looked at the message left for him.

“It’s time,” the message read, accompanied by an attached picture.

A picture of 10 year old Benjamin Castle, playing on the beach in the Bahamas.

SAINTS AND SINNERS

Prologue

By Tobias Christopher

Los Angeles

“No word from the Hanson brothers,” said Saint’s bodyguard as he stood in front of the man’s desk in Howard Saint’s mansion in Los Angeles. “We think the Punisher might have–”

“Killed them?” asked Saint with a sigh. “The Hansons were my best bet to take that fucker out; looks like we’ll have to go with the backup plan. Bring me the Punisher’s son. If we can’t kill the Punisher physically, we’ll kill him mentally by using his brat to keep him away.”

The Bahamas

It had been a year since Frank Castle had found out he’d unintentionally fathered a son with a prostitute he’d rescued from a serial killer. The prostitute had been working for an old enemy of Frank’s who took the child to raise as his own in revenge, using the boy to blackmail Frank into taking out the mobster’s rivals. Fortunately Frank had turned the tables, killed the man, and sent the boy to live with a foster family, far away from the Punisher’s war on crime.

Frank stepped off the plane, looking at the people around him, feeling immediately out of place with those who were coming to the islands for a relaxing getaway. He’d left Chip at the safehouse with one of his more trustworthy contacts to make sure the young man didn’t go off and get into trouble while Frank was making sure Benji was alright.

He’d done his research on Anya as soon as she’d issued her challenge. She was the daughter of a Russian immigrant who’d trained around the world to learn several forms of combat. Frank had wondered why she’d work for a lowlife mobster like Vic Ritoli, but knew she had her reasons, just like he had his reasons for killing criminals.

After getting a rental car, Frank drove to the coordinates that Anya had texted him. He just wanted to get this over with and get Benji back to the life he needed, away from the darkness that the Punisher would bring into his world if he stayed long enough.

California

12 year old Morgan Saint was making himself a sandwich when he saw his father coming out of the garage.

“Dad, can I eat my sandwich out by the pool?” asked Morgan innocently.

“Morgan, you know the rules, no one eats by the pool,” replied Howard Saint, the boy’s ‘father’. “We don’t want to get food in the pool.”

“But Mom gets to eat by the pool,” said Morgan.

“Morgan, no one is allowed to eat by the pool, not even your mother,”

“Then how come I heard her tell her girlfriends that whenever she goes out to talk to the pool boy her muffin gets moist?”

Saint looked out the window at the pool boy, his eyes narrowing into jealous slits.

“Go play, Morgan; you can eat in your room just this once,” said Saint as he watched Morgan run off. Howard Saint was extremely jealous and hated when his wife’s eyes wandered. He’d have to have a talk with the pool boy to make sure he kept his skimmer out of his wife’s Jacuzzi.

Castle walked onto the grassy field that he’d been told to meet Anya at. He didn’t see anyone there as the wind blew through the field, making it look like a green colored sea. Castle scanned the area, wondering where his opponent was. He backed up just in time to avoid a punch from Anya, who just as quickly vanished.

“I was starting to think you weren’t going to come,” said Anya, remaining hidden from Frank’s view.

“I came for my son,” replied Castle in a low, calm tone. “If you’ve harmed him in any way…”

“Benjamin is safe,” said Anya, still remaining hidden. “He doesn’t even know either of us are here; I just wanted to make sure you’d come. He’s safe with the family you left him with.”

“Is this fight really so important that you had to drag me halfway across the world?” asked Castle, waiting for her to strike. “Why here?”

“I have business here that I couldn’t walk away from,” replied Anya as she stepped out to meet him. She was dressed in a black, skintight suit and didn’t look any bigger than the last time Frank saw her. “And I didn’t want to break our date.”

“Let’s just finish this,” said Frank as the two attacked each other. The punches came fast and brutal between the younger woman and the older man. If this fight had been seen by anyone, they would not have believed that such a tiny, petite woman and an old war vet could wage such a brutal fight against one another.

Anya punched, kicked and used every ounce of martial arts training she had against Frank, who in return used his years of experience fighting in the most brutal wars man has ever seen against her. Neither was willing to relent against the other, yet both knew that the fate of a young boy was possibly hanging in the balance should either lose.

As the two battled each other, blood was drawn, bones were to the point of being broken and bruises started piling up, but neither of the two opponents would back down. After nearly an hour of brutal battle, Anya had finally won out as Frank landed hard on his back in the grass.

Broken and bloody, Anya spit out a stream of blood and laughed. “That was…that was better than anything I expected. That was the greatest fight I’ve ever experienced.”

Beaten, broken and bloodied himself, Frank could only lay there, his energy spent as Anya stood over him. “I said this would be a fight to the death, Castle, and I am a woman of my word. If you die, the mob stops hunting him as revenge against you.”

Anya was about to strike but then she saw smoke rising near the Martoni home. Her eyes went wide as she started running. Her contact was keeping surveillance over Benji and his family and he was to contact her if anyone got even remotely close to the island.

Frank, seeing the panic on Anya’s face, managed to find the strength to pick himself up and follow her to the small beach house, which was on fire.

“Benji!” shouted Anya as she rushed into the house. Looking through the smoke, she was greeted by the sight of Benji’s step-father laying on the ground, his neck having been snapped. In the kitchen, the boy’s step-mother was face down in a stove pot, her neck having been slashed. “No!”

Stepping backward, she nearly stumbled over Benji’s step-brother. Starting at his legs and looking up his body, Anya thought he might have still been alive… until she saw his skull had been crushed in, his eyes remaining wide open. “Ben!”

It was then that something started rising up out of the smoke, the red targeting laser aimed at her head. As he was about to shoot, the gunman himself was shot several times through the chest by Frank, who was standing in the doorway. He walked in and looked around, feeling sorry for the innocent family who had died so brutally. Seeing the gunman twitching on the floor, Frank picked him up.

“Who? Sent? YOU!?” demanded Frank. “You’re not dead yet, and I can guarantee you that your remaining time will be filled with agonizing pain. Now who sent you?”

“S- Saint,” the man said as his final words as Frank dropped his lifeless body to the ground.

“Where are you going?” asked Anya as she walked Frank walking out the door.

“To get my son back.”

Anya followed him, not trusting the Punisher to do this on his own. But first, she had another stop to make.

Not too far away, Anya’s contact was supposed to be stationed in a van, monitoring the Montoni home.

“What the fuck happened?” asked Anya as she opened the back of the van, finding it empty. There was only a computer with her contact’s face on the screen.

“Sorry, Anya,” said the man with a smile. “I just couldn’t take working for a bitch like you anymore, so I sold Castle’s kid’s whereabouts to the highest bidder and decided to retire in style. You’ll understand if I didn’t stick around to say goodbye in person. See you in hell, you emasculating cu–”

BOOM!

As the van exploded, Anya flew back several dozen feet, crashing into the windshield of a nearby car. Severely injured again, Anya rolled off onto her feet and staggered into the night. Coupled with her injuries from her prior fight, she knew she wasn’t going to be in peak fighting condition any time soon.

Meanwhile, Frank was headed to the airport. As soon as he got Chip from the safehouse, he was heading straight to Saint to kill him as brutally as humanly possible.

On a small plane already halfway back towards the United States, Benjamin Martoni had been blindfolded with his hands tied to a rail. He’d witnessed his foster family’s brutal murders and felt something inside of him that he’d never felt before. Something that was telling him to avenge them the first chance he got. Something that, if he’d known his true heritage, would be saying, “Like father, Like Son…”

To be continued…