They say you should never mix business and pleasure, and ladies, do I know it! Dating a hot guy you meet through work is tempting, but it can be such a headache. And that goes double if, like me, you’re a top government assassin.
My last relationship was work-related, and let me tell you, English guys who are secretly funneling military intelligence to China are the wooooorst. Damian and I met on a yacht, where he had a team of sexy “assistants” (security), with whom he was making gross puns like, “I hope you don’t take it too hard!” In retrospect, I should have taken that as a red flag. But, of course, right when I’d found his hard drive and was about to finish him off, he told me that my beauty made him want to join me and become a double agent. I was flattered, so I decided I’d give it a shot. Looking back, it’s like come on! How did I not realize! Classic me.
At first it was great! We played baccarat, chased each other down ski slopes, and made love aboard the Doom Zeppelin. I even grew to love his puns—knowing my reputation for stabbing people in the chest, he said I’d “pierced his heart after all.”
Then, one day, he asked me for the codes to the Parallax Device, and I thought nothing of sharing them, confident that our relationship could survive a little shoptalk. And do you know what he did? He stabbed me with the same knife I’d used to kill his previous girlfriend, shoved me in the piranha tank, and said, “Whose heart is pierced now?”
He was spying on me all along! I felt so used. Maybe in the future I’ll be able to look back on it, tie him to a chair, turn on the countdown laser that’s pointed at him, and walk out of the room laughing. But for now, my heart aches, and not just from the knife wound. Great, now I’m doing it.
The worst part about breaking up with a target is that, in addition to heartbreak, you have to deal with the impact on your work life. Management gave me a terrible performance review, marking me down in professionalism, teamwork, and mercilessness. Even the guys in the henchman division gave me a hard time, saying things like, “You’re here to stabilize Western hegemony, not catch some easy D.” I couldn’t even file a complaint since we don’t have an “HR department” so much as a “shadowy intelligence network”. In many ways, the world of clandestine murder is still a boys’ club. Ugh!
Love seems to find me on the job even when I’m not looking for it. Last year, I was trying to eliminate a masked vigilante called MidKnight. Around the same time, I started seeing Blake Bennington, the playboy billionaire industrialist with a mysterious past. Wouldn’t you know it, they were the same person! After Blakesy, as I called him at the time, stole a missile device and faked his death in a nuclear blast, I fired my last bullet into the wall next to him and said, “Your new life is my last gift to you. Treasure it.” It may have looked cool, but right after that I went home and ate Pillsbury cookie dough straight from the tube while sobbing and watching Bridget Jones’s Diary. At least my supervisor thinks I completed the job, but Craig’s been so great about supporting my career development plan that I hate lying to him.
I know what you’re thinking: “Agent Venom, you chose your career—it’s on you to maintain a fulfilling work-life balance.” First of all, that’s why it’s so much easier to date within the industry. Fellow assassins and criminal masterminds know the workday doesn’t end when you clock out. There might be a ninja ambush under your bed! It’s hard to date Joe Blow when Big Brother expects you to be married to the job. Second of all, I didn’t choose my career—I was kidnapped as an infant so that I could be raised by the Order of the Viper.
I’ve tried dating outside of work. I tried Tinder, but meeting a guy online is not nearly as intimate as watching him go about his day through a sniper scope as you try to determine whether or not he really has amnesia about his time as a super soldier for Operation Rabbit Run. My girlfriend Miss Mantis finally told it to me straight.
“Girl,” she said. “You know that soldier has a long-lost wife he also ‘has amnesia’ about, and dating him is a sure way to get shot and die in his arms to make way for their tearful reunion.” She helped me dodge that bullet. Literally.
Meeting men at work is bad news, but if I know me, I’ll be swooning over my next target before I can say, “Falling in love was never part of the plan!” Maybe if I…oh, shit. I just found out that MidKnight is coming out of retirement to “resurrect project doom,” whatever the hell that means. Craig’s gonna send me back to the piranha tank for sure. And you know what that means. Sigh.
