It was unbelievable, and the rush I felt put Ricardo’s money to shame. This cash house was nothing like the one he’d been at. It hadn’t even been hidden away when I’d stumbled upon that duffel bag. But this… this was real.

The gang was going to be pissed when they realized one of their secret cash houses was raided. This was going to cause more grief, more violence, but that was the whole fucking point. Plus it helped my shelved debt would be knocked even further down the priority list.

We didn’t take time to voice our excitement. We stacked the bagged money in more bags and threw them in the car. Then we were out of there, tense and filled with nerves until we escaped the street and raced out of town. Marko whooped and I chuckled, reigning in my disbelief at what we’d done.

Now we were headed straight for the location I’d buried the duffel bag. It was in a dense, unfrequented bush, accessed only by trail. I’d made this drive at least two dozen times in order to keep the location fresh in my mind. I’d been paranoid the first couple months that someone would find out about the money. That they’d happen to walk past it and know it was there. It was pathetic, really, because there was no indication over a hundred thousand dollars was buried beside a limping tree. I’d managed to cover it up with soil and a giant thick bough that had fallen nearby from a storm. Despite its obvious features, I’d hammered a few nails into the tree trunk just to be sure I’d always know it was the one.

I parked the car on the side of the deserted road and we stepped out. We both held shovels and a flashlight. I took my usual path to the river and we followed it for some time. My body moved for me, already recognizing my surroundings. We veered away from the river, passing a familiar ground littered with hundreds of bullets. People did a lot of shooting here, and that was something to watch out for.

When we finally made it to the tree, I sat down on the cold ground and rested my back against the trunk. We waited another twenty minutes, making sure no one was around or that we’d been followed at all. We were overly cautious for the right reasons.

We couldn’t afford to fuck this up.

After the coast was clear, I picked up the bough and set it aside before we hastily dug beneath the soil it had sat on. The cold I felt soon dissipated as my sweat broke. The earth was frozen solid, taking every ounce of my energy cutting into it. I was surprised I even had any energy at all.

Not only did I work all day, but I had done overtime too. Then I’d gone home to help Allie with Kayden. After that, I fought a desperate drug addict on an empty stomach in front of a crowd of hungry eyes, returned home and finally fucked the hell out of the sexiest woman I was privileged to call mine, and now I was here, digging into my past, seeing nothing but Ricardo’s flattened head while I was at it.

I deserved a damn good rest, no?

“Come on, you little cunt,” I mumbled aloud, tearing through the soil with my boot pressed against the shovel. It gave way. We shovelled the dirt out within minutes, working hard and fast. I didn’t like doing this at night, and all I kept thinking about was Allie and hoping Kayden hadn’t stirred enough to wake her up.

Allie didn’t need to know I was gone. This was meant to be an in and out thing, and so far it was. But every part of me wanted to hurry back home and be with my family, and the minutes ended up feeling like hours.

“Alright,” panted Marko, “that’s deep enough. Put the bags in.”

We filled up the large hole with the bags of money we had no time to count.

“How many more times are we going to keep doing this?” he asked after we started filling up the hole.

“As much as we can,” I answered. “There are that many fucking addresses in that book. Keep an eye out after this and we’ll be seeing more violence from the Syndicates.”

“Keeping the violence up like this will do what exactly?”

“They won’t trust each other to deal. They’re going to lose a lot of money. We’re going to bring the Syndicate down to their knees once they war with each other some more. You saw what happened after Ricardo. They won’t suspect this after so much time has passed. Once they fall apart, we’ll have that much money left to pillage.”

He paused, stopping once to glance at me, dirt already stuck in his brown hair. “That’s very manipulative shit. No one’s ever gonna be able to trace it to us if we keep doing this randomly.”

“Exactly. We keep doing what we’re doing and nobody will pay us any mind. In the meantime, we lay low. Live comfortably and be as unsuspecting as a pig in shit.”

“Maybe we should find another place to hide the money then?”

I chuckled wryly. “If you can think of one as secretive as this, be my fucking guest.”

I personally hadn’t found a spot.

When we finally finished, we stood around, catching our breaths, looking down at the buried money with dazed expressions and hopeful hearts. So absorbed, we stared on until the wind picked up and the sky finally broke with rain.

Then we left.

“I’m going to be fucked in the morning,” complained Marko, slapping a hand against his cheek to wake himself up.

“We don’t get a lot of customers on a Friday,” I replied.

“Yeah, but I’ve picked up overtime for all those side projects. If I can’t touch the money yet, I still need to make ends meet somehow.”

“We can touch the money, as long as it’s a little. A few grand here and there in the grand scheme of things won’t make it obvious to anyone. This means we can afford skipping some fights to get our shit down. We’ll just compensate by pulling a little out. That way we won’t feel the hit.”

His face relaxed, and he let out a relieved breath. “Thank fuck, man. You should’ve told me that before I decided on overtime tomorrow.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, well, I didn’t know if this was going to happen for sure. Kept thinking it couldn’t be that easy.”

He raised his hands up and looked down at them. “I’m still on a buzz. Look how much I’m shaking.”

Yeah, I was shaking too. I kept staring at the rear view mirror, half expecting someone to be tailing us. I had to remember I was as invisible as anyone else to the Syndicates. They wouldn’t even know where to look when they found out about the house.

I dropped Marko off by the apartment building. He’d driven there and his car was parked out front. He got out into the mid-March air, scanning the streets as he walked to it. I waited for him to be gone, and then I drove into the parking lot and got out.