Steve's Irritation, a Sense of Unease
Late at night, Steve lay wide awake in his luxurious king-sized bed.
Even though it was long past midnight, he felt absolutely no drowsiness at all.
Strange, why am I so incredibly on edge today? he wondered, staring up at the dark ceiling.
Is something bad about to happen?
Steve had once proudly served in the US Military.
He had fought brutally in the first Gulf War more than a decade ago and was later stationed in Haiti with elite US forces.
After being honorably discharged because of a combat injury, sheer chance had led him to cross paths with Charlie Croker and the others in the criminal underworld.
For five or six highly lucrative years, the tight-knit group had worked flawlessly together.
They had successfully burgled the fortified safes of several ruthless drug lords, violent gangs, and wealthy tycoons, securely raking in well over a hundred million dollars in untraceable cash.
Charlie Croker had always strictly and honorably insisted the ill-gotten gains be split completely evenly among the crew.
But money that came so easily and in such massive, staggering amounts gradually blinded Steve with pure, unfiltered greed and dark desire.
Finally, a little over a year ago in the winding waterways of Venice, they robbed a highly secret stronghold belonging to the Italian Mafia.
They made off perfectly with the Mafia's staggering, one-ton stash of pure gold bars.
That single, glittering ton of gold violently ignited the simmering greed and cutthroat ambition growing like a cancer inside Steve's chest.
In the past few chaotic years, he had poured nearly every single cent he earned into secretly hiring his own heavily armed mercenaries.
When Charlie Croker's brilliant plan succeeded and they gloriously seized the Mafia's massive ton of gold bars, the trap was violently sprung.
Steve struck ruthlessly during the snowy celebration, right on the mountain pass, just as they were happily about to divide the massive loot.
He not only aggressively grabbed every single gold bar for himself, but he also coldly shot dead Charlie's wise mentor and close friend, the master lock-picker John Bridger.
After keeping the entire, staggering hoard entirely for himself, for more than a year now, to be completely honest, Steve hadn't actually felt particularly elated.
His newly recruited, heavily armed former underlings began to deeply resent him because of that massive ton of gold sitting in his vault.
Steve had to spend a massive amount of agonizing time and lethal effort systematically eliminating every single subordinate who greedily wanted a larger share.
Since that bloody purge, though he had quickly flashed more untraceable cash to recruit a brand-new squad of men, the damage was done.
Steve now fundamentally trusted absolutely no one but himself.
Consequently, in this huge, sprawling luxury villa where he lived, his isolation was absolute.
Apart from occasionally hiring bonded, professional cleaners to rapidly tidy up the estate under heavy guard, he allowed no one inside.
He heavily preferred to aggressively raise the outer perimeter walls and install a massive, overlapping battery of surveillance cameras rather than let a single armed guard set foot inside the main house.
His ever-growing, suffocating paranoia made him fiercely fear that a greedy underling might violently target his mountain of gold again.
After all, those adorable, heavy, glittering bricks were entirely too mesmerizing.
Even he himself meticulously, obsessively checked on them several times a single day just to feed his bottomless greed.
He simply didn't believe anyone else on the entire earth could possibly resist their raw, magnetic temptation.
Wait, the gold bars!
A sudden, terrifying thought violently flashed through Steve's paranoid mind.
Cold sweat broke out instantly across his broad back.
He shot upright in the luxurious bed, his chiseled face turning incredibly grim and pale.
Lately, Steve had been heavily plagued by the suffocating feeling that he was being closely watched.
No matter exactly where he drove in the sprawling city of Los Angeles, he had a distinct, undeniable sense that someone was actively spying on him from the deep shadows.
Steve trusted his raw intuition implicitly; it was a primal, survival ability that had saved his life on the bloody battlefield many years ago.
His first, immediate suspicion naturally fell squarely on Charlie Croker.
Having worked intimately with Charlie and his highly specialized crew for several years, Steve was naturally, fiercely wary of their capabilities.
In his calculated view, Charlie and his elite team were terrifyingly effective.
Aside from being entirely too principled and not nearly ruthless enough to pull the trigger, they were all highly capable and incredibly troublesome individuals.
If it absolutely hadn't been for that specific ton of gold bricks being so overwhelmingly alluring, he might have stayed loyal.
Steve wouldn't have been able to resist their glittering charm regardless of the danger.
He probably wouldn't have actively wanted to provoke the meticulous Charlie and the others either, knowing the heat it would bring.
But clearly, the bloody, unforgiving grudge had already been permanently formed in the freezing snow.
After Steve violently stole the gold and ruthlessly killed the older John Bridger.
He knew very well that things could absolutely never go back to the comfortable way they were between him and Charlie's loyal crew.
Steve quickly calculated the exact timeline; it had been a year and a half since he betrayed Charlie and kept that ton of gold entirely for himself.
Although he had meticulously set up many complex, international contingencies beforehand.
Which should have ideally kept Charlie and the surviving others wandering blindly around Europe for a long time searching for his hidden self.
Steve also knew perfectly well those elaborate digital and financial arrangements wouldn't fool a mastermind like Charlie forever.
Calculating the passing time, they absolutely should have realized the massive deception by now.
They might have even successfully tracked his hidden financial movements all the way here to the United States.
The more the deeply paranoid Steve thought about it, the more highly likely the terrifying scenario seemed.
Coupled perfectly with the persistent, suffocating feeling of being actively watched recently.
Steve's racing heart sank heavily into his chest.
He strongly suspected Charlie and the others had indeed already arrived in Los Angeles and successfully found his heavily fortified hideout.
"Those damn, relentless bastards," he hissed under his breath.
At the terrifying thought of this looming possibility, Steve's tense mood grew even more incredibly irritable and violent.
He immediately got out of bed and went quickly through a secure side door in the master bedroom to the adjacent tactical room.
Inside the dark room, a massive, glowing LCD screen hung securely on one reinforced wall.
On it, more than twenty different, high-resolution surveillance feeds were densely displayed in a grid.
Steve walked quickly to the glowing screen and began to examine every single feed incredibly carefully.
The sweeping monitors around the villa, distributed aggressively at the main gates and along the high walls, showed absolutely nothing unusual in the dark.
Steve snatched up the heavy tactical walkie-talkie hanging securely on the wall, turned it on, and barked at the guard stationed at the main gate.
"This is Steve. Is absolutely anything happening out there at the front gate right now?"
He could actually see perfectly clearly from the glowing surveillance feed that the armed guard was standing at his post, working diligently under the lights.
However, Steve was incredibly, deeply paranoid by nature.
Moreover, he knew perfectly well that Charlie possessed a quirky computer genius named Lyle operating under him.
That specific hacker could easily, flawlessly breach most complex security systems in the entire world without breaking a sweat.
So Steve was also fiercely, intensely worried that the perfect surveillance footage he was currently seeing might have already been digitally hacked and replaced with fake, seamless loops.
After the walkie-talkie crackled sharply with static for a tense moment, a familiar, gruff voice came through the speaker.
"This is the main guard post, Mr. Frazelli. Everything is completely normal at the front gate. You can rest easy."
"We guarantee absolutely no one will disturb you tonight."
The heavy security stationed at the main gate came directly from a highly professional, bonded security firm that provided expensive, paid services strictly for the luxury villas in this exclusive area.
They absolutely weren't Steve's own recruited subordinates, so their professional voices naturally carried a tiny, suppressed hint of irritation and impatience.
Clearly, they had been aggressively disturbed by Steve's paranoid check-ins exactly like this many times lately.
But it was precisely because they absolutely weren't his own greedy men that he could feel somewhat at ease.
He didn't have to constantly worry about his mountain of gold being violently targeted by them from the inside.
After completely confirming it was indeed the familiar, uncompromised voice of the guard, Steve let out a heavy sigh of genuine relief.
He muttered a quick thanks and snapped the walkie-talkie off.
Just as he was reaching out to hang the heavy radio back up on the charging wall mount.
Steve suddenly noticed one of the specific monitoring zones on the LCD screen completely go dark and instantly turn into a square of violently hissing static.
The very next moment, a deafening, piercing alarm violently blared throughout the entire tactical room.
Steve's chiseled face darkened into a mask of pure, unfiltered fury as he lunged aggressively to the side and grabbed a heavy, loaded AK-47 hanging securely on the weapon rack.
Because he knew with absolute, terrifying certainty that the blacked-out surveillance zone was located exactly in the highly secure room where he hid his twin safes.
And the piercing, relentless alarm meant the specific weight-monitoring trap Steve had carefully set beneath the heavy safes had just been triggered.
"Someone violently broke into the villa and found the safes where I kept the gold bricks!"
Steve was both intensely anxious and blindingly furious, the thick veins on his calloused hand gripping the steel AK bulging noticeably.
He rushed aggressively out of the tactical bedroom and charged madly down the stairs toward the first floor of the villa, fully prepared to kill.