To The Bitter End || frerard

-prologue: The Bella Morte-

Frank's POV:

There were rumours floating around the town of Belleville that there were to be pirate docking soon, this was bad. Well for everyone else, but not for me. You see, when pirates are in town the poor souls running shops and market stalls are so busy worrying about them than the short Italian boy notorious for pinching things from right under their noses. Those are the good days to be me. Especially when the guards who are usually so busy making sure the poor folk like me don't steal from those who aren't, are too caught up in the pirates' antics.

I wondered which ship of drunken idiots it would be this time. No matter who it is, it's always the same, they'll come in and trash the place, take most of the good stuff and drain the town of liquor. There is a couple of good things those drunken idiots are good for though, information and loot. Lots of loot.

Things taken straight from pirate ships are difficult and incredibly dangerous to get, that's why they are worth so much sold on the streets. I was going to try my luck with this lot of pirates and if all goes well I would find something good.

• • •

A little over a day later they were here. They were reeking havoc over the town and looked damned pleased with themselves for it. The market was in complete ruins and anything worth taking was long gone, but I had my sights set on a much bigger prize. The dragons den itself, The Bella Morte. I knew the two words to mean 'beautiful death' in English and found myself wondering why the ship's name is in another language and why Italian out of any of them.

I shook my head slightly to clear the petty thoughts away and kept slinking towards the ship itself. The Bella Morte and it's crew had never docked in Belleville, nor had a crew ever left the town in such a mess with no clear sign of stopping.

"Make all the mess you want and take as long as you want," I thought to myself, "But your gold is mine," a face splitting grin broke out on my face at that thought.

Upon reaching the docks the first thing I noticed was the absence of people. Usually when pirates were in town it would be bustling with guards fighting to keeps them away. But there wasn't. The eeriness worried me for a moment and sent several bubbles of doubt through my brain before they were dismissed, I would do this no matter what.

I checked my belt to make sure there were still a couple of sharp daggers there just in case I needed to fight my way in or out. They were there and ready, and so was I.

I ran low to the ground across the dockyard and scrambled up the gangplank onto the the ship's deck quickly in case there was someone near by that I hadn't noticed. With my already small frame crouched behind a barrel that was most likely filled with rum I scanned the deck and planned my route down into the ships hull. This was my last chance to turn back and probably would be until I had gotten the gold. I had to do this, no matter how foolish, I just had to.

Almost as soon as I made it bellow the deck I discovered that I was not alone on this ship. There was someone happily whistling away and banging away at what I assumed to be pots and pans. They were likely to be the ships cook. Silently, I shook off the nerves that we're beginning to resurface and continued down the narrow corridor to where I hoped the storage hold would be.

My hunch was right and there was in fact a lot of gold stashed away in there. It was in chests, bowls, pots, pans and anything else they could find. It seemed like they almost had too much and needed someone to take some of it off of their hands, I was glad to be that person. I pulled my leather loot sack from my back and set it on the floor of the hold and began loading golden item after golden item into the bag. There were golden tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, goblets, coins and even just lumps of the stuff. It all went in my bag.