17 years old: Has his first illegal boxing match. He stays involved in illegal boxing matches of various sorts for a year before being offered a courier job for his boss, which he handled flawlessly. Various odd jobs continued from there for the next two years.
At 20, he was told, for the first time, to specifically kill someone. He showed a decent flair for it, having enough brains to tag the guy along until he had no witnesses, and then he beat the guy to a pulp and shot him. He then spent the rest of the night drinking heavily and getting severe shakes.
From about 20-25, Ryan continued to do odd jobs, ranging from beating the crap out of people as warnings, to armed robbery, to murder for his boss. At 25, he got the first murder order he felt good about, a notoriously brutal pimp who had started dealing drugs, which was his bosses turf. Really, this should have been meriting a warning rather than a kill, but both Ryan and his boss despised the man personally. Following that kill, he soon realised that he'd basically just put about 30 or so girls in danger, simply because they no longer had any form of protection.
He made a decision that he'd protect them, and took over the turf before other pimps could, making certain to treat his girls well. (No quotas, no abuse, no humiliation, reasonable cut.) He did this for about three years, which included a rather brutal bit of 'teaching' to another pimp who got angry that Ryan stole some of his girls. He actually stole a fair few girls, since he treated them good and protected them well. Still, Ryan stayed careful, never leaving enough evidence to convict him. (Although he got arrested a few times, charges always ended up getting dropped. Sometimes because Ryan was clever, most often because money changed hands.)
However, Ryan's temper eventually got the better of him, as it always was eventually going to. A particularly brutal sadist tried to abduct one of Ryan's girls, one he was particularly friendly with and protective of. This girl wasn't a street level hooker, but tended to run in higher circles. (She had the looks to do so and Ryan had enough smarts to split his profits with someone else who could put her where she needed to be: His half of that money still was far more than what he'd gotten otherwise.)
Which meant he beat the everloving crap out of a guy in the lobby of a Hilton. Not smart. No amount of wrangling could keep him out of prison this time.
He did two years, and only learned while he was in prison that he had a daughter. By this time he was about 28. When he got out of prison he left Atlanta and headed for Dahlonega.
And for five years he's been doing a bit of work here, a bit of work there, and finally ended up working in a garage.
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