It was the middle of the afternoon by the time Angelo and I made our last collection. I was surprised and relieved to find that the rest of them went a lot smoother than the first one. Most of the people that we visited knew better than to try to run away or make excuses and handed over the money they owed without a fuss. We only needed to threaten one other person and they quickly gave us the cash before we had to get violent.

After the final visit, we pawned the computer and TV that we’d gotten from Ryan. Angelo decided to keep the phone because it was newer than the one he already had. Paying twenty bucks to buy a new battery for it instead of paying hundreds for a new phone was a great deal. He drove to Elevation Real Estate, the company that Uncle Luca had run with Nonno before he passed away. Now that Nonno was gone, my uncle was running things completely solo. Angelo and I were stopping by to drop off the money from the collections.

Elevation Real Estate operated out of a small office in the downtown area of the city. We went inside and said hi to the five or so guys who were working there. Angelo had let me know on the way over that they were all affiliated with the gang. The real estate company did help people find properties to buy or rent, but it mostly served as a way for the organization to launder the money from their other operations. There were other members of the gang but they weren’t on the payroll of the company. Angelo led me to the private office in the back and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Uncle Luca said from the other side.

If I had to describe Uncle Luca’s office in one word it would be claustrophobic. There seemed to be a decent amount of square footage, but there was so much stuff thrown around everywhere that it felt like there was barely any space. As soon as I entered the room my eyes locked onto the huge pile of papers strewn all over his desk. A trash can in the corner was overflowing with takeout food containers. I wasn’t a clean freak, but I had to suppress the urge to throw the garbage in a dumpster where it belonged.

It felt like every square inch of the wall was covered in framed photos. Some of them were of different members of our family and others were old photos of Uncle Luca hanging out with minor celebrities from the 90s. I didn’t know that he’d known so many famous people. It felt ironic that the photos were so glamorous but the room was dingy. The lack of windows in the room just served to make me feel even more boxed in.

“Everything go alright?” Uncle Luca asked. “Any problems?”

“Ryan Kelly tried to hold out on us, but we got him to see reason in the end,” Angelo smirked. “It was smooth sailing after that.”

He placed the bag holding all the money we’d collected onto the desk. Uncle Luca opened the bag and then pulled out a machine from a drawer in his desk. It looked like one of those money-counting machines that you see in movies sometimes. This was my first time seeing one in real life. He placed the money into the machine and it quickly flipped through the stack before showing a number on its display. I couldn’t see how much money it was from where I was standing but Uncle Luca seemed pleased with the number.

“Good. So what did you think of the work you did today?” Uncle Luca asked me.

“Um, it wasn’t bad. Like Angelo said, it went pretty smoothly,” I said.

Uncle Luca turned to Angelo “How did Nico do? He give you any trouble?”

“Nah, he listened to everything I told him to do. Didn’t get squeamish or anything either. He kicked Ryan so hard in the balls that I don’t think he’ll ever have kids,” Angelo said.

“Wish I could’ve been there to see that,” Uncle Luca chuckled. “That scumbag needed to be put in his place. Good job, Nico.”

“Thanks. Does this mean I’m… part of this now?” I said.

I’d almost said “in the gang” but changed my mind at the last second just in case the room was bugged. God, I’d only been a criminal for a day and I was already getting paranoid. Uncle Luca stared at me with a severe look on his face. I held his gaze and didn’t break eye contact.

He smiled. “Yeah, you’re in. Congrats, kid.”

Angelo grinned and patted me on the back. A huge smile broke out on my face. “Thank you! I promise I won’t let you down,” I said.

“I know you won’t. I see good things in your future,” He said.

Before I could reply, I was interrupted by a flood of notifications from the system.

QUEST “ONE OF US” COMPLETE

100 XP AWARDED

CLASS UPDATED

NEW SKILLS AVAILABLE

I was interested in checking all of that out but decided to wait until I got home. If I randomly started spacing out here, things would get awkward. I mentally commanded the notifications to go away and they quickly disappeared.

“Angelo runs a small crew with a couple of our younger guys,” Uncle Luca continued. “You can run with them for a while and they’ll show you the ropes.”

Angelo seemed like he wanted to say something but decided to keep quiet.

“That’s all for now, nephew. I’ll see you later,” Uncle Luca said.

I thanked him again one more time before heading out with Angelo. He offered to give me a lift home so we hopped back in his car.

“Thanks for covering for me back there,” I said.

Angelo glanced over at me. “What are you talking about?”

“You seemed pissed earlier when I stopped you from breaking that guy’s hand, but you didn’t bring it up when your dad asked how everything went. He probably wouldn’t have let me join if you’d mentioned it.”

“That’s why I didn’t,” He said. “I can tell how much you want this. Just make sure you don’t go lightly on anyone going forward, alright?”

“Yeah, got it. So who else is in your crew?” I said.

“You wouldn’t know them. I’ll introduce you tomorrow,” He said.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Cool. I’m looking forward to it,” I said.

“Not gonna lie, it feels weird having you join us,” Angelo said. “You’re supposed to be the smart one. I never thought you’d get involved in all this.”

“Me neither. I guess I’m just making the best of my situation,” I said.

“Right. Well, it’s good to have you on board, bro. I hope you’re able to keep up with us,” He said.

“It sounds like you’re just worried that I’ll be running the whole show within a week.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, when I become your boss I’ll be tough but fair.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Angelo laughed.

We pulled up to the house a few minutes later. I grabbed the jacket part of my tracksuit from the backseat and zipped it up before I got out of the car. It would be hard to explain why my shirt was covered with blood if my mom saw it. Angelo and I said our goodbyes and he sped off. When I entered the house I heard something boiling in a pot in the kitchen. Mom was standing by the window.

“Hi, was that Angelo outside? He could’ve come in and said hi,” Mom said.

“You know him. He’s always on the move,” I said.

“What were you guys doing all day? You were already gone when I woke up this morning.”

“There was an early Black Friday sale at the mall and we wanted to get ahead of the crowds,” I lied.

“It’s only the first week of November and they’re already doing Black Friday sales?” Mom said. “At this rate, we’re only a couple of years away from Black Friday starting in September.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said as I started walking up the stairs.

“Wait, why are you wearing a tracksuit? It’s eighty degrees outside,” Mom said as I stood on the first step.

“I got it in the sale and liked it so much that I just had to wear it home.”

Mom shook her head. “I swear, I just don’t understand you sometimes. Go take that off before you pass out.”

“You’re right. What was I thinking? I’ll go do that now,” I said, hurrying up the stairs before she could ask more questions. Like why I didn’t have any bags of things I bought from the “sale”.

I headed up to my room, locked the door, and plopped down on my bed. A smile tugged at my lips. I was a member of the mafia. Well, I wasn’t a made man or anything yet, but I was still basically in. It was wild to think about. And that reminded me of something.

The status messages that the system had given me in the real estate office had been gnawing at me ever since I got them and I was glad I had some privacy so I could finally check them out. I opened up the Quests box and saw that there were no active quests at the moment. The quest that I’d just completed, One Of Us, was listed in the completed section. I couldn’t help but wonder what triggered new quests. Would they be given out at random times? Were they triggered by certain actions on my part? And would I have to keep on completing these quests forever or would there be some type of endgame to this entire thing? What would happen if I somehow failed a quest?

I tried asking the system these questions out loud like a dope, but it didn’t offer me any answers. Typical. I shook my head and checked out the Stats page. Whoever created this thing really should have made it more user-friendly.

User

Domenico Moretti

Age

21

Current Class

Mafia Associate

Current XP

100

Charisma

4

Intelligence

6

Wisdom

4[+1]

Strength

4[+1]

Constitution

5[+1]

Dexterity

5

It looked like earning a new class gave me points in a few of the attributes on the stats table. I wondered if there were other ways to increase those attributes or if they were just tied to class changes. It was a little bit insulting that the system felt my charisma and intelligence were low. The other thing that jumped out at me was the 100 XP it had given me for completing the quest.

I remember the system saying something about new skills. Maybe I can use the XP there? I thought.

When I opened up Skills, I was greeted with four options of skills to choose from. Based on the research I’d done earlier on litRPGs, I knew that usually when you chose a skill the system would change the system user and grant them some new ability or power. I was already starting to get accustomed to the insanity of my situation and decided not to question how that would work. I just hoped that it wouldn’t be painful. These are the choices that the system offered me for new skills:

* BRAWLER I: GRANTS BASIC FIGHTING ABILITIES. PASSIVE ABILITY. COST: 100 XP

* CAPTAIN COOK I: MASTER 1 NEW RECIPE TO COOK DRUGS. COST: 100 XP

* SAFECRACKER I: GRANTS BASIC LOCKPICKING SKILLS. PASSIVE ABILITY. COST: 100 XP

* MEAN MUG I: INTIMIDATE SOMEONE INTO BENDING TO YOUR WILL. 25% CHANCE OF SUCCESS. 1 MINUTE TIME LIMIT. 24 HOUR COOLDOWN. COST: 100 XP

I was able to eliminate the Captain Cook skill right off the bat. There was no way I was going to start cooking drugs. Even ignoring how horrible it would be to create the drugs that ruined people’s lives and turned them into addicts, it just seemed like getting involved in that would bring way too much trouble my way. I didn’t plan on ever getting involved in dealing drugs. I’d seen enough movies to know that stepping on the toes of a local drug lord could have disastrous consequences. And even worse than that, selling drugs was a surefire way to get on the radar of local law enforcement. Sure, you could make a lot of money from dealing drugs but the risks just didn’t seem worth it. Yeah, this one was a no-go for me.

The Brawler skill seemed like it could be useful in the future. Other than kicking that guy in the balls earlier today and punching him in the face, I didn’t have any experience with fighting. It seemed like most people these days settled their disputes with knives or guns though, so I felt like getting this skill wasn’t a top priority yet. Still, it couldn’t hurt to have some self-defense skills in my back pocket.

Safecracker seemed like another decent option. Being able to break into places and loot valuable objects could be a decent skill to have in case I ever needed to make money fast. But I didn’t know how often I would even have the opportunity to use my lockpicking skills if I chose this. Heist movies made it seem like you needed to put a lot of planning into choosing the right targets to steal from and even after all that planning, there were always things that you couldn’t account for. The rewards could be great, but so was the risk if I got caught. I decided to hold off on choosing that one unless I was hard up for cash.

Mean Mug caught my attention immediately. The description was vague but intriguing. I wasn’t sure what exactly the System meant by “bending someone to my will”. Was this some form of mind control? It seemed like it could be a good alternative to relying on violence all the time to get people to listen to me. This skill seemed like it could have applications in a lot of different situations. All of these skills had the Roman numeral one after them, which suggested that I would be able to upgrade them further if I got more points. If Mean Mug gave me this much power over another person, then I shuddered to think what it would be capable of after another upgrade. The more that I thought about it, the more Mean Mug seemed like the right choice.

I focused hard on spending my XP on it.

NEW SKILL UNLOCKED: MEAN MUG

The popups for the other skills disappeared and I waited for something to change inside of me. After a few moments, I realized that nothing was happening. I didn’t feel any different from before I’d selected the skill.

“Well that was anticlimactic,” I grumbled.

It wasn’t a big deal. I was sure that it wouldn’t be long before I’d get a chance to test out my new skill.