When I lost my job, I had no other options. When money and food got short, I finally decided to become a criminal. At first I thought the decision wouldn't be easy at all, but it fit me way too well. I decided on small things at first, pick-pocketing small sums of money, stealing some store's objects and selling them. I had to be very careful not to ever get caught, and to only make people miss the things when I am already long gone.
Eventually, it became so easy to simply steal things inside a crowded train that I could almost do it blindly. Life was oddly easy, and although my heart pounding every time I took my skills to action yelled at me how wrong it was what I was doing, no guilt ever fell upon me.
That is, until, one day after months of living the good life out of other people's money, I robbed the wrong guy's cellphone. It was from a high-office politician in the line for a nice restaurant, while he was leaving. I had no clue that, first, his cellphone would have thousands of list of bribery and all those kinds of corruption scandals, and second, a tracker.
I knew I was gonna get caught when I opened up the tracking device e-mail, and worst of all, it was precise, he knew exactly where it was. But I had a leverage right on my hand, an ace in my sleeve. I contacted his secretary right from his cellphone, and she redirected to him almost instantly.
He was soundly surprised, but as soon as I called his name, he tried to threaten me. "I will do things worse than death to you" he said. I swallowed all the fear I had and said with the a voice that I tried my best to sound confident "no matter what you do, I have all the documents and e-mails you have on my hard drive currently, and I scheduled it to send automatically as anonymous charges to the police". It was all a lie, a gamble, for my life and for his. Silence followed my sentence, and I could hear my heart beating. What guarantee I had that his men weren't on his way already to my place?
My fear began to melt and my lungs began to work normally after a single sign that he took the bait came from the other side of the line, a hard sigh, followed by a sentence in a way down tone compared to his first accusations. "what do you want, money?".
"No, that I can have" I said almost, trying to hold off my anger "I want something you can't give to me, but I will accept a ticket and passport to our neighbor country, with two hundred thousand in cash, just to be sure". He sounded puzzled, but surely enough agreed, and said he would have it in less than half an hour. We eventually left to the airport, where I'd give him his cellphone in exchange for all I asked.
He seemed worried, wearing some hat and sunglasses not to stand out. As soon as I got to him, he gave me the ticket, and I gave him the cellphone. I was about to leave the country, and I have to admit, I never thought I'd see a man so happy to have his cellphone back. Happy no, relieved. Possibly all his threats would be turned back to him if he was ever found out. He swiftly left the place after the exchange.
As I sit on my first class spot, I ask for a nice cold drink. I soon open my cellphone, open the e-mail app, and the message pops up "Automatic e-mail sent". A smirk comes to my face. I just put in motion the biggest corruption scandal in my country, and I am safely traveling away from all that. In the end, there is no honor among thieves.
