My name is Garrett, and I fucked up.Not the kind of fuck-up where you apologize and move on. The kind that puts you in a laundromat under a butcher shop, folding towels like an honest citizen, while half the city’s police force tears the place apart looking for something that doesn’t exist anymore.They already found the speakeasy.That part went loud—boots, shouting, glass breaking. The sound of men getting their faces introduced to walls because it makes cops feel taller.But they didn’t find the alcohol.Which means my work held.Or it hasn’t failed yet.I keep folding. Same motion, over and over, until my hands stop shaking enough to look normal.Across the room, the capo sits like he owns gravity itself. Oscar. Newspaper open. Page unturned. He’s not reading—he’s measuring. Watching me the way a butcher watches meat, deciding which cuts matter.Milo leans against a dryer, arms crossed, grin lazy. He’s enjoying this the way some men enjoy thunderstorms when they’re safely indoors.“Hell of a job, kid,” Milo says. “Keep this up, we might hire you just to fold.”A joke.Mostly.Oscar turns his page. The sound is soft but it lands like a gavel. That’s the sound of a man deciding how much concrete it takes to sink a problem in the bay.I don’t look up. Looking nervous is worse than being wrong.The door upstairs bangs open.Police come down like an invasion.“EVERYBODY STAY WHERE YOU ARE.”Too loud. Too eager. Every cop looks like he’s been surviving on resentment and bad coffee for a decade. They spread out fast—hands on guns, hoping someone gives them an excuse.One shoves Milo into the wall hard enough to rattle the dryers.Another rips the newspaper from Oscar’s hands, throws it on the floor.For half a second, Oscar’s face changes.Not fear.Not anger.Something colder. The kind of expression that remembers names and waits for the right moment to collect debts.We comply.That’s the rule when armed men need to feel important.They tear through everything. My neat stacks vanish in seconds. Towels hit the floor. Machines get opened, slammed shut. The boiler room door kicks open and I freeze—just a fraction, just enough to feel my pulse spike—but the officer loses interest and moves on.Then the handler comes down with the dog.Big. Muscular. All business. The kind of dog that doesn’t wag unless something’s about to have a very bad night.It works the room methodically—nose low, sniffing walls, machines, drains.Closer.Closer.It pauses near the stairwell where the crate sits, hidden under my brew.My heart kicks once, hard.The dog sniffs again.Then sneezes.Once.Twice.Violently, like someone shoved pepper straight up its nose.The handler curses, yanking the leash. “Hey—what the hell?”The dog whines, pawing at its snout, backing away from the stairs like the air itself bit it.The handler yanks again. “What’s wrong with you?”The dog sneezes once more, harder, then turns its head completely away.They move on.I don’t breathe until they do.The search drags on. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Finally, frustrated and empty-handed, the police retreat. Boots stomp up stairs. The door slams.Silence floods the room like water after a storm.Milo exhales first.Oscar looks at me.Longer this time.Sharper.Then he gestures to one of his men without breaking eye contact.“Pay his rent.”The words hit harder than the raid.The man nods and leaves.Oscar stands, straightening his coat like none of this inconvenienced him.He stops beside me.“You want more work?”I don’t answer yet.Because my hands are still folding towels.Because my life just shifted under my feet.Because you’re probably wondering how the hell I ended up here.It started with my deadbeat uncle getting killed for not paying his loan shark.And the only thing he left me was a book.A book that’s either going to change my life or get me killed.We’re still figuring that out.Let me tell you what happened.

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