Royce Ben

"Uncle Ben~ Do me a favor?"

Qin Wei leaned his head toward Royce.

His face looked so devious he might as well have written "I'm about to screw you over" across it. The sight made Royce's skin crawl.

The middle-aged slacker's voice trembled. He was genuinely scared:

"You've already got a gun poking into my kidney... and you're still asking for my opinion?"

"A gun? I didn't bring a gun. What are you talking about... oh, you mean this!" Qin Wei pulled a sausage from his pocket. He had bought it at the convenience store while waiting, then forgotten to eat it. By now, it had gone cold.

Peeling back the paper bag, Qin Wei took a savage bite.

He was starving.

Royce strongly suspected Qin Wei was just messing with him, but he had no proof, and he couldn't exactly turn hostile.

"Fine, spit it out! What do you want me to do?"

"Here, see those guys? I want to know who they are and where this shipment's going. Go ask them for me?"

"You want to hijack..."

Royce had barely raised his voice in agitation before he clapped a hand over his own mouth like a guilty thief. Hunching over, he glanced left and right, then muttered only after making sure nobody was watching:

"You want to hijack the shipment!? You're dragging me along to get killed! You clearly said I was just coming along to drive for you, you liar!"

"That wasn't exactly a lie. If I'd managed to buy the goods, all you'd have had to do was drive. The problem is, I didn't!"

Qin Wei glanced at the mountain of cash piled in the back seat, then looked at Royce.

"You take all that money from me, then come into the private room and sing two songs with a sour face? You won't even let me touch your hand. That's hardly professional!"

"It's not my hand you're after, it's my life!" Royce hadn't understood Qin Wei's analogy, but that didn't stop him from grasping what he really meant.

Qin Wei couldn't help laughing at that.

He had said something similar himself when he recovered the five million dollars in gambling money and earned his first payout from Maroni. Yet that very incident had turned him against Maroni.

Having learned the hard way, Qin Wei knew better than anyone that death and threats couldn't win people's hearts.

Perhaps only sincerity could.

"To tell you the truth, I want to bring Maroni down." He scratched his head and sighed softly as he watched the flickering crane lights outside the window.

Seeing Qin Wei suddenly turn serious, Royce had the sense to shut his mouth.

"In twenty-eight days, I'll lead a crew to rob Maroni's bank. The bank's Private Vault holds irrefutable evidence of his crimes. Once I have it, victory will be in the bag.

"The weapons are my first step. Without them, none of the rest of the plan can happen. So I have to get this shipment tonight, whether I buy it or steal it!

Royce licked his lips:

"You could negotiate with those guys, couldn't you? If the price is right, they should sell it to you."

Qin Wei shook his head. He knew these men were buying weapons for exactly the same reason he was. Besides, Joker was involved behind the scenes, and that lunatic wasn't someone money could satisfy.

"For certain reasons, I can't tell you much more, but please trust me. This is the only way that will work."

Qin Wei turned toward him, meeting Royce's eyes with a sincere gaze.

Royce changed. He stopped squeezing his voice into a pitiful whine. Rolling down the window, he lit a cigarette. The smoke rose over his features like a pair of soft hands, soaking into his stubble, clinging to his long lashes, then curling into his blond hair, tracing the profile of a mature man who looked a little worn down.

"One last question. Why do you trust me so much?"

"I'm going to recruit people in the Lower District. Now that Madman Baron is dead, you're the only one who would leak the news to Maroni, so I have to bring you aboard before that happens.

"As for why I trust you, at first I wanted to buy you off, too. But that call from Oswald just now made me realize we might have been in the same boat all along."

Qin Wei pulled the crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

After sitting unused for so long, it could finally serve a purpose-to add a little atmosphere to a conversation between men.

Perhaps nobody hated Maroni more than Royce Ben.

Especially after he had served twenty years in prison for Maroni out of loyalty, only to emerge and discover that his wife had vanished and his old friend had become a mob boss.

Twenty years earlier, they had both been lieutenants under Falcone. Like Oswald now, each had controlled a tiny patch of Gotham's Lower District, spending every day running around collecting rent.

Maroni had been only nineteen then, vicious and brutal, his murderous intent plain to see. His eyes couldn't hide his hatred of Gotham or his hunger for power.

Royce, meanwhile, had been five years older than Maroni, taller, stronger, and a better fighter. When the Roman moved into the Lower District, life had been far harder than it was now. Yet with those fearsome fists of his, Royce had beaten the troublemaking punks and drunks into submission.

Unlike Maroni, though, he hadn't had much ambition. To him, life's pleasures were smoking, drinking, and sorting out trouble for his hotheaded friend.

Royce often visited a bar where the most popular hostess was beautiful.

Jennifer. Her name was as bright and lovely as her eyes.

The first time he saw her, Royce blushed, and the absurd thought of marriage immediately sprang into his mind.

But he was exactly that sort of impulsive bastard. He rushed straight out of the bar, intent on finding a bouquet for the girl he fancied.

It was late that day, and the florist had closed. Royce broke the lock on a bicycle and rode toward the outskirts. He cycled for most of the night, crossing the rushing Gotham River and Brown Bridge, then climbed into an estate outside the city and picked a bouquet of dew-covered flowers from a flower bed.

Unsurprisingly, the household guards spotted him. Seven or eight Dobermans chased him down and cut off his escape routes, while flashlight beams left him nowhere to hide.

He managed to escape in the end, but gashed his thigh while climbing over the fence.

In his excitement, Royce paid no attention to the pain. Limping and laughing at the top of his lungs, he climbed onto the bicycle and fled amid the hounds' furious barking.

When Jennifer arrived for work early the next morning, she found Royce at the bar's entrance, barely alive.

Both of the poor fellow's legs were stained red with blood. His lips and face were utterly pale, and he lay slumped at the doorway like a half-melted plaster statue.

Jennifer was terrified. She was just about to call the police when the "plaster statue" held out a hand.

"Beautiful lady, please marry me!"

Royce raised the bare flower stems, a ghastly grin frozen on his face, and frightened Jennifer into screaming over and over.

It was a failed attempt at courtship, but fortunately, it had a heartwarming ending.

Royce eventually married Jennifer in that very same little bar, where the newlyweds received the patrons' most heartfelt blessings.

But Maroni, who should have attended, was absent-on his way to the bar, he had met a mysterious person who would change his entire life.

The turning point in the story was a riot.

Royce's honeymoon wasn't even over when the unrest sweeping Gotham struck.

Perhaps his fighting prowess had already become famous throughout Gotham, because nobody dared come looking for trouble with Royce that night. Hiding in the attic with Jennifer, he witnessed the terrible catastrophe firsthand while secretly worrying about Maroni.

That little bastard had gone out after dinner, muttering like a man possessed:

"I'm going to make it. I can finally leave this life behind!"

Early the next morning, a distraught Maroni knocked on his door.

"I killed someone..."

Maroni spoke, then dropped to his knees with a thud.

Royce was puzzled. They weren't exactly monsters guilty of every imaginable evil, but they still had a few lives on their hands.

Yet Maroni's next words made his pupils tremble.

"It was Wayne. I killed the Wayne family..."