I know you don't like Garth Ennis (but from what I've read on your journal it's because most of what you've read has been Ennis at his worst).

But Ennis's Punisher stuff has an incredibly cynical but plausible twist where it turns out that Frank literally made a deal with Death-with-a-capital-D to spend his life killing people in a justifiable way, and the price (although he didn't know it at the time) was the death of his family.