The upstairs room at the Alibi had gone from clutter to command center in a matter of weeks. The desk was crowded with notebooks, empty mugs, ashtrays stacked with cigarette butts, and one humming computer screen that Francis hadn't taken his eyes off in hours.
The last lines of code were in place. The candy-colored tiles slid across the screen, clicking together just the way he remembered. Bright pops. Score tally. The kind of thing people wouldn't be able to stop playing even if they wanted to.
Francis leaned back, lit a cigarette, and exhaled slow. "Done."
Lip, slouched in a chair with his hoodie pulled low, raised his head. "You mean—done, done?"
"Done," Francis said again, smirk tugging faint. He clicked through one last test run, the game responding perfectly.
Lip whistled low. "You just made a goldmine, man. Like actual, legit millions."
Francis didn't answer right away. He just stared at the glowing screen. For once, this wasn't about hustling on corners or paying off dirty cops. This was clean. Straight. Something that could last.
But he knew better than to think it would be simple.
---
The First Problem
Two days later, Francis sat with Lip at the kitchen table, paperwork spread out between them. Fiona stood at the counter, arms folded, watching with suspicion.
"What's all this?" she asked.
"Company papers," Francis said, flipping a form. "You can't just drop a game like this and expect it to stick. Need an LLC. Copyrights. Patents. Otherwise, someone bigger takes it, slaps their name on it, and we get nothing."
Lip groaned, running his hands through his hair. "He's right. It's not just about coding. You need legal backing, contracts, distribution channels. App stores aren't gonna look at some South Side address and hand over millions without paperwork."
Fiona's eyes narrowed. "So you're saying you're legit now?"
Francis smirked, not denying, not confirming. "This is clean. I'm not hiding it."
She didn't push, but she didn't look convinced either.
---
The Lawyer
By the end of the week, Francis found himself in an office downtown that smelled like leather and money. The lawyer across from him was a sharp-looking woman in a navy suit, eyes cold but calculating.
"You're telling me you developed this game on your own?" she asked.
"With help," Francis said, nodding toward Lip.
"And you want to register intellectual property rights, file incorporation, and secure distribution?"
"Exactly."
She tapped her pen against a legal pad. "That means filing fees, compliance documents, tax paperwork. It'll cost you."
Francis leaned back, flicking ash into a clean glass tray. "Money's not the problem."
She studied him for a long moment, then finally smiled thin. "Then you'll get what you need. But if this takes off the way you think it will, you'll need more than me. You'll need a team."
Francis smirked faintly. "One step at a time."
---
Launch Prep
Back at the Alibi, Francis turned the upstairs room into an office proper. He bought a whiteboard, covered it in schedules, launch strategies, potential revenue projections. Lip filled notebooks with tweaks and bug fixes. Debbie even popped her head in one night and painted the walls blue to "make it look like a real workspace."
Kev wandered up once, beer in hand, staring at the screens. "So this is it? Candy and colors? People gonna pay for this?"
Francis didn't look away from the screen. "They won't just pay. They'll beg for more."
Mickey, lounging in the corner, snorted. "Still think weed and guns are faster money. But hey, you do you, Gallagher."
Francis just smirked. "Why not both?"
---
The Snags
When the application went through to the app store, they hit their first snag. A rejection notice. Missing tax ID, incomplete company registration.
Lip threw the letter across the room. "Bureaucratic bullshit!"
Francis stayed calm. He picked it up, read it again, and folded it neatly. "Then we fix it. Step by step."
He called the lawyer, got the paperwork resubmitted, filed the missing IDs. Every delay was another lesson. Every rejection was another push to get sharper.
At night, when the house was quiet, he'd sit by the screen, cigarette smoke curling around him, eyes narrowed at the glowing icons. The empire on the streets was already building. But this—this was bigger. Cleaner. Smarter.
And it scared him more than the dirty work ever had.
---
One night, Fiona sat down across from him, her face tired but curious. "So what happens if this blows up? You really think you can handle all that money, all that attention?"
Francis leaned back, considering her words. "That's the point. To prove I can. To prove we don't have to scrape forever."
She looked at him, eyes softening. "Just… don't forget why you're doing it."
Francis smirked faint, tapping ash into the tray. "I never forget."
---
The Launch
Two months of grind, paperwork, coding, and late nights later—it was ready. Candy Crush was live.
The first downloads trickled in, then doubled, then exploded. Numbers climbed so fast Lip sat staring at the screen, wide-eyed. "Holy shit. This is real."
Francis just leaned back, cigarette between his lips, watching the numbers rise like it was all part of the plan.
But he knew this was only the beginning.
Clean money brought clean problems—competition, taxes, corporate sharks waiting to bite. But Francis was ready.
He wasn't just here playing the South Side game.
He was rewriting the whole damn board.