Luca felt a headache coming on as he sat in their little run down office.

Marco was sprawled out on one of the couches, his bottom lip was fat and purple from where Bruno punched him the previous day. He was flipping through television channels, cycling through them all at least twice before finally stopping on a cartoon of cats fighting aliens.

Bruno sat tapping away at his phone, looking frustrated about something. He was probably playing a game on Clock Link; the kind that he was always sending requests to Luca about. Usually, it was some stupid farm simulation.

At the main desk situated closest to the door of the one room office sat Ferro, their secretary. His face was youthful, but his masculine features kept him from looking like a kid. He was clean cut, and his eyes were striking like those of a hawk. At 28, he was the youngest of the four of them.

Luca pulled his switchblade from his pocket. Its golden handle shone softly in the florescent lighting as he ran his fingers over its ivy design. It was strange to think it had been used just yesterday. It cut a man down in cold blood.

With Zack Selby out of the picture, the four of them were the only ones that knew their secret. Still, there was a pit in his stomach.

It wasn’t the fact that they killed Selby. On the contrary, it was better that way. He was sure the cops had noticed him missing and he’d be near the top of their suspect list. After all, he was an employee of the bank they robbed.

He was fairly sure there wasn’t much they could do to tie his disappearance back to them. Same went for when they found the corpse. After all, they couldn’t leave finger or footprints when the watch was active.

They hadn’t been stupid enough to use their personal phones with Selby, instead purchasing prepaid ones through a less-than-legitimate business specializing in that sort of thing. In any case, the phones were long gone now.

Security cameras wouldn’t be an issue either. He already knew there were none of them nearby the building. Besides, if there had been, the watch would have stopped them from working anyway.

The warehouse was abandoned in every sense of the word, and not the place anyone with brain cells would be willing to go, no matter how sweet the deal sounded. Any stronzo stupid enough to go there would end up dead. Turned out the banker was as stupid as they came.

Selby was an old friend of Marco, and had some very loose connections with a few other mobsters. Because of that, he figured he’d get his fair share of the money. What he got instead was a knife in his guts and a one-way ticket to a hole in the ground. That was the nature of this kind of business.

You were loyal only to the ones in your innermost circle. Other people were used when they were convenient and disposed of when they became a liability. Cut away like fat.

That lesson was beaten into Luca a long time ago. It was what kept him from joining something bigger. The larger the operation, the more expendable guys there were. Chances were that he would be one of the expendables.

With a smaller group, there were fewer cracks. More likely for people to feel like they were an important part of the team. It was better that way, even if it wasn’t always true. People that think that they’re disposable tend to find a way to fuck you over before you fuck them.

“You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you? You gloomy fuck,” Marco said, sitting up on the couch. “I don’t even need to look at you to know exactly what’s going on in your head.”

“We’re fine, Luca,” Bruno mumbled. “Just relax. Let your mind go blank once and a while.”

Easy for a meathead to say, he thought. Luca returned his knife to his pocket “Our alibi sucks.”

“It’s foolproof,” Marco stretch out his back, still lying on the couch. “Our boy made sure of that. Ain’t that right, Ferro?”

Ferro continued working without acknowledging him.

“This guy doesn’t mess around,” Marco continued despite being blown off. “He looked up where they put cameras, how to spot hidden ones, even how to tell which direction they’re facing. The cops won’t find shit.”

“I’m not saying Ferro didn’t do the work,” Luca said.

Finding the cameras was a huge part of the job. They needed to be in a camera free zone before activating the watches. Otherwise, they would be gone when it started recording again.

“And I made sure that warehouse was empty. Made sure there wasn’t a drug dealer or bum as far as the eye could see,” Marco cut him off.  “Meanwhile, you and McPunch-Me-In-The-Fucking-Face lounged around the office living the easy life.”

“Fuck you,” Luca said. “It’s not like we could have risked being seen out there.”

“I’m just saying that Ferro and I busted our asses, so I don’t wanna hear it.”

“I wasn’t even talking about that,” Luca yelled. “I said our alibi sucks, dumbass.”

“The junky doesn’t know anything,” Bruno said, still attending to his virtual crops.

“He knows enough. He knows that the time we were scheduled to meet matches with the stop downtown.”

“He ain’t got the smarts for that,” Bruno waved his hand. “Too strung out and livin’ day to day.”

Being in the unsightly side of the loan business meant that they leant to people that were desperate. People didn’t go to a loan shark if they had other options. A lot of their clientele were human trash that needed the money to get their next fix.

From the outside, it looked like they offered small payday loans, which are barely legal as it is. For the truly desperate, they offered higher amounts at the cost of compounding interest. These were, without a doubt, criminal in every sense of the word. 

They set it up so that people like this would never be able to pay back their debts conventionally. In all honesty, most were unreliable. If they ran away, there really wasn’t much they could do about it. They just didn’t have the manpower large organizations did. 

There was a coke head who owed them a couple thousand dollars. They called him right before they left to do the robbery. This way, they could claim they were out to meet with a client if anything went sour.

On the phone, they told him that they were coming to speak with him about his loan, but never showed up. Then, on the way to the warehouse, they called him back and told him the downtown traffic had held them up, and that they would reschedule with him at a later time.

“Alright, but that still doesn’t change that we didn’t meet with him,” Luca said. “Our little alibi is dead on arrival.”

“You're just paranoid,” Bruno returned his attention back to his phone. “Makin’ mountains out of molehills.”

“Come on now,” Marco said, flipping through the channels again. “We all know this isn’t really about the alibi.”

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“What the hell do you know?”

“You’re still thinking about that dead kid.”

Luca tensed up.

“People die every day,” Marco said. “What’s so special about the one yesterday? She was young and pretty so she gets the mourning of the whole city?”

“You piece of shit,” Luca glared at him.

“Don’t act like you and Bruno didn’t just off someone.”

“He made his own bed. This is a kid we’re talking about.”

“Everyone’s gonna die, Luca,” Marco grinned. “Sometimes, other people just make it happen a little faster.”

“You’re a monster.”

“This is why I love you, Luca,” Marco laughed. “Ferro always does what I ask. Bruno listens, but you have to make sure you don’t piss him off. You, on the other hand, kick and scream the whole way. I don’t think I’d have any fun in this business if it weren’t for people like you.”

“You’re a shitty boss.”

Marco had put the most money in the business, and that effectively made him in charge. The money they brought back yesterday totaled almost 5 million.

With that kind of money, there was no point to stay together. In fact, they could leave the whole loaning business behind.

In the next few weeks, he would disappear. Take the money and run, as it were. Of course, he would only take his fair share. The last thing he needed was one of them talking to the police because they didn’t get their cut of the pay.

Marco and Bruno hadn’t realized it. They were both still under the impression that he would continue playing bank robbers with them after this, and that was because they couldn’t imagine him not wanting to.

For Luca, there were only two types of people who were involved in crime, and he could tell them apart. He had slogged around in the dark underbelly of society for too long not to be able to.

One group were those that worked because they had to. These were the people that didn’t have the skills or qualifications for other jobs. Sure, they could get a minimum wage job flipping burgers, but that was humiliating. If you needed to make money, doing work like this was much more empowering.

These were the people who would leave the industry if they could. The problem was, once you were in, it was extremely difficult to get out. You needed a substantial amount of money to do it, and this type of work rarely paid well. If you were involved with an organization, it was even more unlikely. You knew too much, and to be on the outside was to be dead.

People in the first group usually ended up in the second after a few years. These were the people that stayed in the industry because they didn’t know how to live any other way. This is the group that Marco fell into, and it was for good reason.

One day, you’re pulling knives on people and dodging cops and the next you’re supposed to settle down in a house with a white picket fence, get married, have 2.5 kids, and live a peaceful life? Bullshit. His chances at normal were long gone.

If he could just hold out a few more weeks, maybe even a month, he would be out of this city. No, out of the country. Going back to Italy didn’t sound that bad.

His heart jumped with the sound of Bruno’s voice.

“We have a situation,” Bruno looked up from his phone. “Someone’s usin’ a watch downtown.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Luca looked down at his wrist.

Marco grabbed the remote and switched to the news. Sure enough, they were talking about it. The stations were probably scrambling to get their cameras to the scene.

“This is great,” Bruno laughed. “Some idiot’s about to get his ass caught and take the blame for us.”

“You don’t mind them knowing about the watches?” Ferro finally spoke. His voice was deep, and he sounded collected.

“If they catch this guy, it won’t take the cops long to figure out that he didn’t do it,” Luca sighed. “We don’t need them getting any idea on how we pulled this off.”

Bruno grunted. “Well it just helps our alibi. We were right here when it happened, after all.”

“Luca, Bruno, we’re going to the store down the street,” Macro announced as he jumped up from the couch. “We should show our faces outside.”

“Alright,” Bruno said. “I’ve been meanin’ to get some grub anyway. John Doe posted about these coffee flavored potato chips the other day.”

“I saw that,” Marco laughed. “Didn’t he say that they made him puke?”

“All the more reason I gotta try ‘em.”

“I’m not going,” Luca said. “Not in the mood.”

“There he is,” Marco pointed at him. “Kicking and screaming.”

“Fuck you.”

The two of them left, leaving Luca and Ferro behind. They sat quietly, letting the sound of the television fill the silence for them. The cameras made it to the scene, and showed some pictures of people frozen in place. Someone even volunteered to walk into the affected area for the camera. After a few minutes, it finally came to an end and police started showing up. Whether or not they caught the one that used the watch, this was going to give news channels enough to talk about to last them for weeks.

He switched off the TV. He could hear all the details from Bruno later. He was sure Clock Link would be swarming with this stuff.

The two of them sat for another twenty minutes or so. He let his mind wander during that time. The idea of returning to Italy was becoming more and more appealing. He could forget about this damn city altogether.

“Luca,” Ferro said. “Your phone’s ringing.”

Luca hadn’t even noticed his phone buzzing right in front of him on the table. It was probably Bruno calling to ask him if he wanted anything before they left to come back to the office. He supposed he would ask for something for dinner. It was already nearing 6 o’clock.

“Huh…” Luca said as he looked at his phone display.

“Something wrong?” Ferro said, still looking through some paperwork.

“It’s from my brother’s oldest,” Luca said. “I don’t think the boy’s talked to me in 3… maybe 4 years.”

Ferro shrugged.

Luca accepted the call and put the phone up to his ear. “Pietro, didn’t expect a call from you,” he did his best to sound happy. “How was Italia? Wait, what?”

It took him a moment to register what his nephew was saying on the other line.

“Cory’s in the hospital.”