“Don’t trust anyone.” He let out a short, dry laugh. His crooked teeth flashed, yellow against the thick gray beard curling under his lips. His mustache twitched as he smiled without warmth. “Not even me.”
He tapped the side of his temple with one rough finger. “The only thing you can trust is your own mind. Even if it feeds you crazy shit. At least that shit isyours.”
Then he shaped his hand into a gun, made a clicking sound with his tongue, and mimed firing twice.
“For the rest?” he said, smirking. “Two bullets to the head.”
I pulled the ski mask down the rest of the way, letting it stretch over my face. I kept my eyes low, shoulders hunched.
The less I asked, the less I knew. And the less I knew, the less I could be blamed for when it all went to hell.
Crooked as they both were, he wasn’t wrong. In the end, the only person I could trust was the one wearing this mask.
Me.
FIVE
DORIAN
23 years old
9:00 a.m. was the exact time we pulled up in front of the bank.
We both wore matching gray jumpsuits. Industrial. Forgettable. His face was hidden beneath a black ski mask, stretched tight to his skin. I watched our reflections in the glass, two men inside a borrowed sedan, breathing like beasts about to break from a cage.
He didn’t say anything. Just leaned forward, popped open the floor compartment near my boots, and reached inside. The metal clinked as he pulled out two silver guns.
The moment he handed one to me, something in my chest went still.
“More chaos, more fear,” he laughed, tossing one to me before slamming the compartment shut.
Just like that, like it was a regular Tuesday, we stepped out of the car and walked straight into the bank.
We pushed the glass doors open and moved fast.
“Everyone down!”
He shouted first as I grabbed a wooden stool near the wall. I smashed it against the floor and used one of the thick legs to jam the door handle shut behind us.
Panic rippled through the room.
“Don’t move!” he yelled again, this time pointing at the woman behind the front desk and the off-duty cop in line. “You two! To the vault. You have thirty seconds.”
All I could hear was their screams, crying, and gasps for help. They collapsed to the floor, too scared to move, every single one of them.
And me?I felt nothing. I didn’t even feel my heart beating. Just a cold, tight tunnel vision.
Because I had only five minutes. That’s how long we had until real cops would show. One minute to hit the vault, four to disappear. Which meant I had less than sixty seconds to grab the bags and run.
The woman from the desk shook and typed in the code, and the vault door creaked open. She and the cop began stuffing stacks of bills into two black leather bags the mechanic had thrown at their feet. They didn’t speak. They didn’t blink. Just moved fast.
As soon as they zipped the bags closed, he shoved them toward me and nodded.“Run.”
So I did.
I took one bag and gripped it in my fists, already heading toward the back. As I ran, I noticed that one last bag was left behind near the vault door, so I turned around.
But the image in front of me played like a movie that didn’t have a happy ending.
