Mob sorcery 5, p.2
Mob Sorcery 5, page 2
He then meets the Inaba twins and Kiyoko, who explain their scheme. Their plan is to let Mei publicly cause trouble, then kill her to destabilize Knightsgate. Vince later tells Alessia they should plan to assassinate Mei first in order to remind Aulfair of the power of the Lionetti Family. With suspicions that Ally and Kiho may have been involved, he checks on them and starts a relationship with Ally.
Chapter 1
The city of Aulfair sprawled out before Vince, surprisingly dull in the morning sun, and he wished it were on fire.
Not out of spite. Aulfair remained his home, for all its flaws, and he’d choose it over every other city in the USA in a heartbeat.
Rather, he wanted to see the city reflect the conflict brewing in secret, so that the millions commuting to work as he watched might pay attention for once. Days ago, he’d nearly died in what he thought was a minor corporate battle. Others had died, including a man he’d quickly grown to trust. The aftermath of that night still reverberated.
Yet he stood by the window of Alessia Lionetti’s grandiose office and saw none of the turmoil he knew gripped the city.
“Dollar for your thoughts,” Fia asked.
She leaned against Alessia’s massive mahogany desk, just behind him. Her long rust-blonde hair hung freely and she dressed casual by her standards. A designer jacket from last year’s fashion and tailored pants, plus a V-neck that showed off her bust.
“Inflation hit that idiom hard,” Vince said, and he caught Fia’s smirk. “Just musing that nobody in the city knows what’s happening. Feels odd that everyone living in a city run by the conglomerates is ignorant to what they’re doing.”
“I bet some people do know, but humanity apparently out-evolved the ostrich in the art of sticking our head in the sand,” Fia said. “Besides, it’s not like Aulfair’s going to explode.”
“A lot could change,” he admitted. “I was a baby the last time something this big went down.”
“Memories are short,” another female voice interrupted, approaching from the kitchenette attached to the office.
He turned and took in Alessia’s massive office. It was long. Almost cartoonishly so, with a lounge suite, dining room, and a small library of towering bookshelves. A fitting office for the leader of the oldest mafia in Aulfair, even if its glory days were long behind it. The kitchenette was larger than the one in his apartment.
Old apartment, really. He couldn’t return to his home right now, due to the extremely high risk of being murdered by the Yakuza.
Alessia approached the two of them with a silver tray laden with coffee cups. Her short black dress was all ruffles and frills, while sheer black stockings showed off her ample thighs. Long black hair cascaded down her back. Both women were wolffolk, with lush wolf tails and a pair of wolf ears. Although Alessia’s tail was noticeably thicker and fuller.
Not that Vince would ever say that aloud. He was dating Fia, and any man knew to avoid voicing comparisons to other women.
“People quickly adapt to how things are now,” Alessia said. “It wasn’t that long ago that the Lionettis ran huge sections of Aulfair, yet I guarantee you many would stare at you in confusion if you raised the idea.”
“I mean, even I knew you were important,” Vince said.
“Don’t you get regular lectures from millennia-old demons about life in the Roman Empire?” Fia drawled, crossing her arms. “Plus, you were already in the enforcer space. I once mentioned a political scandal from five years ago to an office worker in a bar and got a blank look.”
Alessia handed them both a cup of coffee before joining Vince at the window. She sipped hers carefully, eyes distant.
“More importantly, people don’t need to know to go about their lives,” Alessia said. “The city is settling into a new normal, as detestable as that term is. With the Yakuza retreating to the industrial south with Houou surrounding them, but no action being taken, there’s nothing to be alarmed about. The conglomerates will continue to scheme and maneuver, as always.”
The heist that caused this drama had been on Wednesday night. Today was the second full day since it had started, making it Friday. Vince had lost track of time and genuinely needed to focus on the day of the week thanks to how long the heist had run into Thursday morning. At least he knew it was still January.
The Lionetti Family had assisted the Yakuza in a daring raid to steal a soul egg from Houou. Except the entire thing turned out to be schemes layered within schemes.
The soul egg had been replaced with a fake by agents within Houou months earlier, and the real one given to Vince. Mei, the local head of the Yakuza, turned out to be an insane traitor who wanted to use the soul egg to become a nine-tail fox, known as a kyuubi, and take control of Houou by force. She still didn’t know the soul egg she’d taken off Vince was a fake, and he possessed the real one, containing the soul of Daji.
Alessia stepped away, waving them toward the dining table. She’d already drunk most of her coffee.
“Thank you for coming here, especially with Nina still undergoing healing,” she said to Vince. “I’m certain Ally will be able to finish the healing process for her arm, and it’s vital that we begin planning our next moves.”
Fia frowned. “If we’re making plans, why didn’t you invite Pola? Nina, sure. She needs to get her arm fully re-attached so she can get back in the fight and stop whining.”
“I don’t recall her whining much,” Vince said.
“She won’t whine around you, sure. Big bad liongirl needs to appear strong around her man.” Fia winked at him.
“They can be briefed later,” Alessia said. “We’re talking ideas here, not concrete plans for the mafia. Pola would get confused due to the hierarchy.”
Truthfully, Vince wondered if Alessia was leaving Pola and Nina out of the meeting to avoid arguments. Both tended to be headstrong, and Pola had grown more proactive lately. She used to accept her sister’s word without question.
As for Nina, the lioness simply didn’t get along with Alessia. Even if Alessia was trying to act warmer toward the lioness, she had no love for Nina’s brusque attitude and willingness to ignore decorum.
Or, put another way, Nina enjoyed needling people. Her knack for pissing people off couldn’t be denied. She’d managed to ruffle even Kiyoko’s feathers, and the Yakuza tengu rarely did more than raise an eyebrow.
“As I said, things are calming down.” Alessia made a face. “Unless something happens, I expect we’ll begin lowering security again over the weekend. That means we can begin making our own moves. So will everyone else.”
“Lucia said everything seemed fine,” he said.
Alessia’s bodyguard, Lucia, had been the one to give him the report on the current state of the city. Namely, that the Yakuza were sitting on their hands while Houou besieged them in the south of the city.
“It is,” Fia said. “Fine, that is.”
“More than fine,” Alessia corrected. “The heist might have been a trap, but we’ve come out of this smelling like roses.”
“You’ve come out of this smelling like roses.” Fia glared out the window. Her fingers crushed the sides of her takeaway coffee cup. “The heist wasn’t just a trap, it was a disaster. Duilio’s dead, along with Zaira and two of our girls. We’re damn lucky we didn’t lose almost the entire team. And despite Vince’s idea to hit the Yakuza, we got nothing—”
“Fia, I love you, but shut up,” Vince said.
His girlfriend stared at him, while Alessia laughed under her breath.
“I agree with Vince,” Alessia said. “Fia, shut up. You’re beating yourself up.”
She flicked Fia’s nose, causing her advisor to recoil with a scrunched-up face. Alessia then turned on her heel and strode into the kitchenette, her tail swaying from side to side behind her.
Ignoring Fia’s sour look, Vince wrapped an arm around her back. Her tail whapped the back of his legs as they followed Alessia.
None of them spoke while the don made three more coffees. The liquor and various flavored syrups remained untouched while Alessia let her fancy coffee machine work its magic.
Once they each had a caffeinated beverage, they sat around the mahogany dining table in front of Alessia’s desk. Vince wasn’t sure he’d ever sat here. The chairs were plush, but it was still a dining table. He wondered how often Alessia ate here, or if she was the sort to eat at her desk while working.
“Fia, surviving the heist was an achievement in and of itself,” Alessia said. “I know you feel responsible because you planned it, but I am the head of the Family and I agreed to work with the Yakuza.”
The other wolfgirl inclined her head and said nothing.
“More to the point, it’s overly simplistic to call the heist the trap. Everything was.” Alessia looked pointedly at Vince. “Even before I hired Vince, Houou and Masaki Hatoyama intended to erase us. I thought we’d poked the bear and allied with the Yakuza to defend ourselves, unaware that we’d played into the Yakuza’s hands. Surviving this mess would have been an achievement. Instead, the mafia is the strongest it’s been since my father’s assassination. Our territory has doubled, investors are approaching us, we’re actively recruiting, and I can say we have elite enforcers again.”
“Is that me or Nina?” Vince asked drily.
Fia smirked. “I don’t think I want to answer that. Nina will kill me no matter what I say. She’s so proud of how well you fought, but if I shittalk her for losing her arm, she’ll rip mine off.”
A knock sounded on the door. One of the bodyguards poked her head in. A plate of danishes hovered in her hand, which she deposited on the table.
Vince took one, even though he wasn’t sure if he really needed more sweet things after the breakfast he’d eaten. It was a damn nice danish, though.
“So, planning,” he said.
Alessia nodded, mouth covered by her coffee cup. She lowered it and sighed. Her ears twitched, and the sunlight streaming through her floor-to-ceiling office windows twinkled on her earrings.
“I want to wait until the weekend before making plans regarding the Yakuza,” she said. “By then, Mei should have recovered. Our intel from the Inaba Twins is that it will take her days to a week to begin this new ritual of hers to absorb the fake soul egg. If what you heard from them was correct, the fighting will intensify once that happens. Should Houou crush her swiftly…”
“We can’t enact our plan to take out Mei first,” he said.
“Exactly.” Alessia’s eyebrows lowered ever so slightly. “Otherwise, I expect a battle of attrition to begin. The ‘new normal’ of the past couple of days will settle in for weeks, perhaps. Enrico’s preparing a contract in the other room for exactly that reason.”
Vince winced. He’d almost forgotten the lawyer’s presence entirely, as the man had kept his silence when he’d arrived with Ally this morning.
What did the old man make of the antics of the women?
“Today, I want to deal with your current contract,” Alessia said, focusing her gaze on Vince.
Vince’s expression turned to stone. Immediately, both women broke down in giggles.
He scowled at them. “What?”
“I told you he’d react like this,” Fia said.
“You did.” Alessia shook her head. Her wolf ears twitched with each giggle that escaped her mouth. “My apologies, but you do a poor job of acting businesslike, Vince. Nina pulls it off because she always has a gruff edge, but you go from overly friendly and flirtatious to poker face too fast.”
“Uh huh.” He did not appreciate their teasing.
Wasn’t the whole point of negotiation to have a poker face? Maybe he should ask somebody other than Nina how to approach this.
Who the hell could he ask?
“So, the contract is a bit of a mess,” he said, dropping the poker face. “Mei planned to cover all the expenses. I don’t know if you got the money from her, but…”
“The vast majority of the expenses we incurred for equipment, magic tools, infusions, and other incidentals were wired over a week prior to the heist,” Alessia explained. “We’re only short Mei’s grandiose promises to pay everyone extra. Including you.”
“Especially me,” Vince said drily.
She shot him an annoyed look and kicked him lightly under the table. Her tail wagged, so he simply winked at her. For some reason, their playful actions caused Fia to grin. Alessia’s face reddened once she spotted Fia’s face.
Alessia coughed, and Vince knew his dreams of financial security had gone up in smoke.
Okay, that was harsh. Even with Mei’s extra cash, the heist was far from retirement money. Including the amount she’d originally offered, his total payment would have fallen just shy of half a million, particularly once he took out some of his expenses. Nina’s expenses would skyrocket thanks to the damage done to her enforcer gear, which cost a ton more than his.
Before, they could have bought a new apartment outright with their combined payment. With just Alessia’s payment, that was out of the question.
Hell, he worried if she’d be in the negative after what Teru did to her.
“I hate to be the one playing bad cop, but I think I need to pull a Nina,” Vince said, resuming his poker face.
Fia grimaced, while Alessia blinked several times at him.
“We knew the heist was bad, but the damage got far worse. Especially as the main reason we didn’t pull out was because of your obligations,” he said.
Alessia shot Fia an odd look. Mostly because the blonde wolfgirl rubbed the back of her neck.
“We knew the Twins, illusioned as Agent, were interested in the heist a few days beforehand,” Fia said. “The day we, uh, redecorated your desk.”
Alessia’s eyes turned to slits. “Ignoring that last part, I understand. We were in too deep, but…” She sighed. “You’re pushing for more money, Vince. That’s not the issue.”
“I think it is,” he said. “Nina nearly died. Hell, I did, too. More than that, Nina’s expenses—”
“I’ll cover any expenses you sustained during the heist,” Alessia said hotly.
Her hands clenched into fists before she lowered them beneath the table. Hurt flashed across her face and she glared into her coffee cup for a few seconds, before draining it and retreating into the kitchenette.
Vince remained seated. He needed to stand his ground, even if seeing Alessia like this played at his heartstrings.
Fingers rubbed the back of his hand. Fia gave him a strained smile.
“I get it,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I think you do need to stand up for yourself. But I don’t think Alessia is about to play hard ball. For once.”
He snorted. “For once?”
“Maybe rub that in her face when she comes back. She can play the sensitive princess, but not after being the ice queen.”
When Alessia returned with another cup of coffee, her tail hung low and didn’t move. Vince eyed her warily.
Was he about to see the return of the ice queen who nickel and dimmed him on every negotiation?
“To be clear, Vince, we’re far beyond the point where I want to battle you over small matters,” Alessia said, voice soft. “I won’t write you a blank check. But you’re too valuable to fight with over a few thousand dollars.”
“Nina’s enforcer outfit costs six figures.”
The don’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull. “And she just wears that around? That’s market rate for top contracts.”
“I mean, people usually don’t chop her arm off or knock her around the place.”
“Merda,” Alessia muttered. She straightened up. “I’ll cover the repairs, but she’s not buying a whole new enchanted outfit unless she proves she really, really needs one.”
So much for being beyond the point of battling him, but he let that dragon lie. But he would take Fia’s advice.
“Uh huh. I’ll take what I can get, but you really can’t act sour when you constantly play the miser when it comes to money, Alessia,” he said. “Especially after bragging about how well the mafia is doing.”
She spluttered, then scowled at Fia. “You’re never on my side.”
“I am your consigliere.”
“Mine, or Vince’s?”
“Yours, but I am Vince’s girlfriend. You could consider me the advisor within his pride.” Fia grinned.
Alessia said something in Italian. Presumably something unkind, given the way Fia looked at her.
“I’ll make things clear, Vince,” Alessia said, trying to wrest back control of the conversation. “I’ll pay out all current contracts. The previous one was supposed to end after three months. I’ll bring it forward a month as there’s no point keeping it current. Juliet was hired by Houou, and they’re not our primary target anymore.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll still need to deal with her, because—”
“That’s your problem,” she said snippily. “I’m giving you over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Vince. Try to just take it and be thankful.”
Wincing, he realized how ungrateful he had sounded. “Sorry. And thanks. I do appreciate it. Even if it is for work.”
“It’s for a job well done,” Alessia clarified, relaxing a little. “That’s not the end, though.”
“You want me to sign a new contract.”
“I said we’d talk about that over the weekend.”
Vince stared at her in confusion. Even Fia raised an eyebrow. By now, she’d finished her coffee and ran her fingers around the rim of her cup.
“I can’t make the associate offer again. Immanuel is too interested in you. But at this point, I want to make it clear that, if you do take future contracts, you are an associate in all but name, Vince.” Alessia stared into his eyes. “But the bonus I’m offering is independent of that fact.”
