The Margin

The rain was heavy on the windowpane, the tapping of the rain on the roof providing a natural soundtrack for the quiet room, four men all inhabiting it for the time being. A man with jet black hair, combed back and cemented down with hair gel, sat there, immersed in the beauty of the evening shower. His eyes were languid and vacant as he looked out of the window blurred with raindrops, his hand cradling his chin, posing as its support. He wore was a three piece, navy blue suit, his slacks creased neatly and his breast pocket holding a neatly folded over, crisp, white handkerchief. Inside his jacket, was a shiny golden pocket watch, which was kept tucked away and served as a talisman for more than the majority of the time. On his feet were lustrous, black dress shoes, the laces tied up neatly and just to the point so that the aglets of his shoelaces wouldn’t scrape across the ground.
The man’s name was Daniel Francis Mitchell, and he was a man who possessed simple, yet ironically difficult desires. What he wanted could be, and almost always was, granted. Although, countless times again, he found himself without, due to his own sabotages. His fluctuating mood swings provided the perfect stage for rocky relationships that never lasted for long periods of times, which saddened yet provided comfort. He was a fickle man, and abhorred the restrictions and the covenants in bonds. Daniel was extremely insecure about himself so much so, that he decided to loathe the very things that were related to them. But, his longing was far stronger than his forced hate, festering inside of him and eating him up alive from the inside out.
He was also, mentally ill, his troubles with commitment stemming from it. Which, he embraced fully. Often, he would boast and gloat all about how he had gone completely mad. The dark circles under his warm amber eyes only made them pop more; vivid speckles of light brown scattered in them. They seemed to sing a song of sadness that was rimmed with silence. On the other hand, what made him smile was his cheerful niece Amanda, and his twin brother, David. He also resisted with them, as he provided more than half of the mortgage for the house, as well as simple provisions such as clothing and foodstuffs. Though, during a time like this, amidst the dark, and gloomy days of the bitter Great Depression, they were one of the fortunate ones. Though, all of that good fortune was the product of working under a certain man, who was a champion at the art of bootlegging.
The man was an immigrant from India who arrived in America in the ripe year of 1920, when the roaring twenties were just about to begin. The glamour and the rumors of America, the land of opportunity and fortune brought him as just one of the many immigrant who came search for a new start, or running away from famine or the harsh reality of living in a monarchy, which, the man was escaping from neither. He came out of the desire to see just if he could build the vast empire that America seemed to boast anyone could do, and if he could, to maintain it. At the start, he worked as a dishwasher in a quaint café in Chicago, which also held the secret of a speakeasy underneath its hardwood floors, behind the painting of a pinup of a red-haired beauty for the July issue of 1919. That very underground bar that kept the secrets of every crooked policeman, attorney general, governor, a man and his mistress and every impeccable woman who tickled her fancies by imitating a flapper’s dance with sinful temptation once their foot stepped through the door was the door to his success. In the spring of 1925, he was already a huge figure in the business of bootlegging, counting as one of the highest ranking underground bosses in the Chicago area.
His brown skin proved to be no problem since his voice was full of money—an endless supply of it, and the eloquence in his words made even his skeptics take a knee. The splendor of his being was a radiant bulb of light that invited people to take to him like moths to a flame, take heed to his every word as if he were a legendary conqueror, a king of a country. His intelligence certainly matched someone of superior ranking, as he easily held his own in a conversation of wits and business, as it were, those, were his forte. He was known simply by the letter Q, and his monogram was written on every business card he handed out and even stood as his cufflinks; a brilliantly polished set of 16 karat gold.

The story of both him, and Daniel Mitchell, started in the year of 1922. Over a simple accident in that very café.