"Say goodbye to your money fellas. I'll call."

A smirk weaseled onto Martin's face as he dumped his chips into the center of the table. A belligerent celebration ensued as the young boy taunted each of his competitors, sneering and making jabs about their lack of skill. The man across from him, Seth Concepcion, was the only one who didn't look back at Martin with hatred in his eyes. Instead, Seth kept his gaze on the man to Martin's left.

As Martin completed his victory tour of the other player's faces, he locked eyes with the man who Seth had been watching. The man eased out of his chair, revealing a frame that overwhelmed Martin's presence in an instant. The man unholstered his firearm and blasted a hole through Martin's neck.

The sound of screaming quickly overtook the live band as the bar's tenants recoiled from the murder. But nobody made a move to stop the shooter.

Martin tried to scream too, but a hopeless gurgling was all that emitted from the dying boy's throat. He collapsed, flailing as blood gushed from the wound, commingling with green felt of the poker table. His cards, now smeared with crimson red blotches of blood, revealed that Martin had been buffing. His hand was nothing but a pair of fours. Not that anyone was paying attention to Martin's cards at the moment.

The shooter placed his gun back in its home and observed what he had done to the room. The crowd was reeling, but the safety of his family name would protect the man. It didn't matter if they despised him, as long as they knew who he was.

While Martin began convulsing, falling off of his chair, the shooter placed his cards face down on the table. He contemplated grabbing the chips before simply turning to the dealer and demanding his payout. The dealer hastily obliged and the shooter walked out the front door, tipping his hat to the bartender as he left.

With Martin now dead and the shooter gone, Seth finally stood up from the poker table. The rest of the crowd began to quiet down, recognizing his lanky frame and full mustache. Seth curled in his lips as he thought, staring down at the corpse of Martin. After a few moments, he flipped out his wallet, dropped a stack of cash in front of the stunned dealer, and grabbed ahold of Martin's arms, dragging him out the back door. Seth rested Martin up against a grimy wall, took several paces away from him, and spun back to look at the lifeless Martin. "Sorry, old friend," he whispered, before firing a pair of bullets into Martin's body. Martin flopped over as more blood squirted out onto the floor of the alley.

Seth frowned to himself and lit up a cigarette. A couple of months ago this would have been an arrest, not a coverup. He spent a minute smoking, and then pulled his sheriff's badge out of his pocket and fastened it to his lapel. He walked back out of the alley to meet his deputy out front.

His suit now drenched in blood, Seth was hoping his deputy would at least share some of his recently-acquired payout. If you're going to be dirty, you might as well get some extra cash out of it. This new royal regime wasn't exactly working out for the everyman, but that didn't mean Seth couldn't make it work in his favor on occasion.