The rain in Chicago didn't wash anything away; it just made the filth shine. I was a laborer at the docks, a man whose only ambition was to stop the shaking in his hands and find a way out of the gutter. Then came the cat. A sleek, black thing that appeared in the alley behind my boarding house, leading me toward a rusted locker in the shipyard.

Inside the locker was a briefcase. Inside the briefcase was two hundred thousand dollars in unmarked bills. I didn't ask where it came from; in this city, asking questions is a good way to get a permanent residence in the river. I took the money and I ran.

For six months, I played the part of the self-made man. I bought a suit that cost more than my father had earned in a decade. I moved into a penthouse with a view of the lake and started frequenting the clubs where the air was thick with expensive cigars and cheap lies. I thought I had beaten the house. I thought the cat had been my lucky charm.

But the money wasn't a gift; it was a leash.

One night, a man in a grey fedora walked into my living room. He didn't use the door; he used a key. He told me that the briefcase had been a "test"—a way for the Syndicate to identify someone desperate and greedy enough to take the bait. They had watched me spend every cent, mapping my connections, learning my weaknesses.

The "luck" ended with a cold barrel of a .38 pressed against my temple. They didn't want the money back; they had already laundered it through my accounts. They wanted a fall guy for a series of warehouse robberies that had angered the federal government.

They gave me a choice: go to prison for twenty years, or go into the river tonight.

I looked at the black cat, which had followed me to the penthouse. It sat on the mahogany table, watching me with eyes that seemed to laugh. I realized then that the cat hadn't led me to fortune; it had led me to the slaughterhouse. I had been so blinded by the glitter of the gold that I never noticed the shadow it cast.

As the man in the grey fedora pulled the trigger, my last thought was that the rain was finally starting to fall inside the room.

[OTMES_v2_Code: M1:9.0, M3:7.0, N2:0.8, K1:0.7, TI:85.0, Theta:210°]