There's a small pile of cash on the table, and a Rolex watch. There's four small grainy CCTVs stacked up in a square against the backside of the table, and your parents are sitting across from them, watching the feeds of your currently empty apartment.

The screens show the entrance, living room, your bedroom and Thatch's bedroom.

"Even if we sell the watch, that's not near enough." Ralf grumbles, sitting across from his wife. "We have until they get married, so there's still time."

"What else is there to do? We can't go to the manor and case it ourselves." Mellanny sighs. "I really thought he was going to be ruthless. That freak-."

"Woman." Ralf says icily. "Mind your words."

"You mind yours," she snaps back, turning her angry gaze to her nails. "He talked about Newgate like he was some kind of mob boss. I still can't believe he got so angry. You were so sure it was going to make everything go quicker, we should've just stuck to the plan."

"Well we are where we are," he grumbles. "He told us a lot about a lot of people, I think it would've been better if we'd snagged one of those Charlottes. Or that scary lookin' fuck with the scars and the casinos... But it is what it is, and we are where we are."

"Doll says they're on the way back." She sets the phone down on the table. "Two nights in a single hotel room, I just know that brute fucked her." Mellanny sneers. "She's not going to be able to distract him with a first night anymore."

"She said they didn't do that."

"I know what she said. No matter how much she obeys us, she's still a stupid girl." Lighting a cigarette she blows the smoke away from Ralf. "She's not going to admit to being a whore."

"Time will tell."

"Humph." Mellanny takes another heavy drag. "Tell me again, what're the plans?"

"You already know."

"I do, but sitting here in fucking silence is horrific. If we go over them again maybe we'll think of something more." She grouses, blowing smoke in his direction this time. "We're not nearly sick of talking about this yet, so we haven't gone over it enough."

Ralf sighs. She's not wrong. Half of their success the last few decades was because they went over a plan again and again until they were ready to throw themselves in traffic from it. They didn't hurl insults of stupidity at one another anymore, which helped them to go over things more before they got sick of it, but neither one of them had a whole lot of patience.

Not going over their plans enough was why they ended up where they did.

The original plan was to make you so perfect that you'd get matched with someone of higher social standing. Then they could use that leverage for their schemes, riding the coattails of the esteemed family you ended up with, and getting you to give them money whenever they asked. That's why they raised you the way they did, so you would feel irreversibly indebted to them.

Ralf hadn't wanted kids, him and Mellanny only got hitched because the Match Program was on the horizon. They might be volatile partners, but he wasn't going to be able to do what he wanted with some state-mandated fuck buddy. Because they got married voluntarily during the grace period, they got money for having kids.

You broke Mellanny's parts when you came out, though, so she couldn't pump out more little money bags. Maybe that's why she didn't give a shit about you either.

Halfway through the plan, however, a scheme gone wrong put them in debt to the wrong people. Mellanny had spilled the entire plan in order to save both their asses, and then their plan became his plan, and it wasn't just the possibility of a nice cushy life on the line. It was their actual fucking heads on the line.

"Fine." Ralf grumbles. "Plan number 1 is to watch these two, and see if there's any camera footage we can edit to make it look like he's abusing her. We threaten to give that to the NWO unless Edward-fucking-Newgate decides to pay us what we demand."

"Which is enough to cover what we owe, and enough for us to leave."

"Yeah. Plan number 2 is to use the footage to frame Doll by showing up and visiting and making it look like she's voluntarily working with us. We can get her to get into accounts or a deposit box, or whatever, and get us what we need that way. It might take longer, but if we can make decent payments we can get him to give us more time."

"Sure, she lied to him about her injuries, so she's still being a proper daughter at least. Little bitch has a mouth on her now though, so it's going to be hard to keep her under control." Mellanny points out.

"Yeah, well, if we gotta beat some sense into her we can just blame that bastard. Calling the NWO while we're there with her, so we can control what the idiot says to them this time." He says, waving away the cigarette smoke.

"Plan three then?"

"Depends on what we see on the camera feeds," he shrugs. "If they aren't getting along at all, then threatening Newgate won't work, even if we make a fake video. Doll might be sweet on him, but if he's wary about her, she ain't got the brains, or the moxie, to get into his bank account without playin' up the sweet victim card.

"If things are shit between 'em, then we can just grab her out of the apartment and sell her to him directly. He can validate her condition and put her to work." He explains. "We take whatever forgiveness he gives us and consider ourselves fucking lucky."

"And if things aren't shit between 'em, but nothing else works out?" The grin on her face means she remembers what he's going to say, but he says it anyway.

"Then we kidnap her, and let that oaf know he can either pay to get her back, or we'll send him video of what the young master does to her." Ralf says. "Doflamingo knows about the Edward family, I'm sure they know about him."

"Maybe we should let him have her anyway," Mellanny scoffs, lighting a second cigarette off the first. "Send that bastard video of it all."

Ralf laughs. "He really pissed you off, didn't he?"

"He should have really pissed you off too!" she barks. "Saying that shit to us while he was clearing out her room. Like we didn't raise her all her life. Acting like the two of 'em are better than us."

"Yeah, you stow that pride for this, hear me?" Ralf says, waving away the smoke from her cigarette, leaning across the table to point a finger at her. "We fuck this up and we're going to be the ones getting worked over. We ain't, neither of us, fresh meat, so you're not going to make any money on your back.

"We end up having to go with his plans, once he learns we fucked up, and it's more like we'll be working for him the rest of our lives, if we're lucky." He asserts before leaning back. "You want revenge, then we gotta be sure we've settled our debt first."

"Fine, fine."

Ralf's phone rings after a moment's silence and he swears under his breath. Mellanny doesn't even have to ask who it is when he sits up and loosens his tie before answering.

"Yessir," Ralf says in the best servile tone he can.

"My boys came home with extra funds in their pockets." Doflamingo says on the other end of the line, a cold sweat already slipping down Ralf's spine. "Where'd they get it?"

"Uh, Duh-Doll took her match on a date, so we bugged the place and took some petty cash." Ralf answers.

"I see," He hisses the word before laughing. The sound makes Ralf's skin crawl, and even his wife looks pale. "You love your daughter so much you're going to set up surveillance? Is that the story you're going to try to feed me right now?"

"N-No sir, we just figured that having more to work with might mean we could, uh, get more." Ralf offers, sweat dripping down the side of his face.

"I see." This time it isn't hissed, and he doesn't laugh. "More than incompetence, I despise liars. Liars are disloyal by their very nature, and disloyalty is something that angers me deeply."

"Yessir," Ralf says, almost surprised to hear the words slip out of his mouth.

"You don't want me to be angry, I'm sure."

"No sir."

"Then let's start with you telling me who your precious little daughter was matched with."

Ralf swallows hard. He was certain Doflamingo would already know, but the man he had on the inside might not have had access to see the result of his tampering. He wasn't sure if Doflamingo's ignorance was reassuring or concerning.

Or a test.

"Thatch, uh Edward Thatch, sir."

"Mm. That's less trouble than the hag." He muses, rolling what he knew around in his head for a moment.

"Tell me what you did to mess up your plan, after I went through all the trouble of making it functional." Doflamingo says. Despite his words he doesn't sound angry or amused. He sounds bored. A man like Doflamingo being bored concerns Ralf more than his anger. "Then you can tell me what pathetic ideas you've come up with to go with your bungled surveillance.

"After that I'm going to tell you what to do, and if you mess it up this time, I'll be drinking my evening wine from your worthless skull."