Tony gambino's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Tony woke before the sun and counted his money on the jailhouse floor. The thin leather wallet held less than a plan needed. Cash could not buy him a crew, not the kind that stayed. He sat with that truth until the light came up, then he stood. If money could not buy loyalty, product would. He walked out to where his two men waited on the burnt wooden bench by the road. They sat the way men sit when they owe something. Tony did not waste words. He told them the storage unit was full and the wallet was empty. He told them they would move the goods themselves, tonight, and split a cut off every crate sold. Their eyes changed. Debt became deal. They loaded the truck under a low moon and drove to a metal-sided warehouse with boarded windows and a rear dock. Tony had traded his last folded bills for one month of quiet use. Inside, the air was hot and still. He set the crates along the back wall and marked the count in chalk. This was the floor of the thing he meant to build. By dawn, two buyers had come and gone through the rear dock. The chalk numbers dropped. Tony handed his men their cut in worn bills and watched them pocket it without counting. That was the shift he needed. They did not work for a debt anymore. They worked for the next cut. He stepped outside as the heat climbed. The wallet was still thin, but the warehouse was moving, and the men were his. Then a boy on a bicycle rode past the dock, slowed, and dropped a folded paper at Tony's boot. Tony picked it up. It was his own face, sketched in old ink, with a fresh word written across the bottom in a steady hand. Seen you.