Mob sorcery 5, p.3
Mob Sorcery 5, page 3
An odd feeling churned in his stomach, but he ignored it. “Bonus? After that heist?”
“Mei cheated you out of a large amount of funds. That meant the possibility of paying you more for the increasing danger never came up, when it otherwise would have.”
Fair. Even if it was unusual for Alessia to be so generous.
“More concerning is the fact you’re in immense danger and have been the direct target of both the Yakuza and Houou,” she continued. “Other than paying any extra expenses you incurred, my bonus is simple. I need you to move, Vince. You’re in constant danger and your apartment is unsafe. If you won’t move into the penthouse with Pola and me, then I’ll arrange for an agent to show you condos and townhouses. Pick one that isn’t obscenely priced, and you can have it.”
“Have it?” Vince repeated. “As in, you’re buying me a condo as my bonus for the heist?”
He felt the urge to clean out his ears. Fire magic wouldn’t help much with that, unless he wanted to incinerate everything inside his head. Would Alessia find it weird if he asked her to use her water magic to help so that he was certain he’d heard her correctly?
Fia shot him a concerned look and squeezed his thigh. His expression had obviously shifted without him realizing it.
“I would consider this an investment,” Alessia said, before hesitating. “It’s arguably a bonus, but a necessary one if I want to keep you in my employ. You’re easily the most valuable asset the Lionetti Family has at hand, Vince, and you’re at great risk. Houou has infiltrated your apartment, your every action is being scryed, and I can’t even let you return home for fear of being assassinated.”
Something about Alessia’s words irked him. He realized she was dancing between the ice queen persona she used during negotiating and her attachment to him. If anything, that frustrated him more.
“An asset?” he asked, eyes narrowed. “I thought we were partners.”
Alessia blinked and her tail froze in place. A soft hiss escaped Fia, who pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose.
“You are,” she said hurriedly, before straightening up and schooling her expression. A flicker of panic filled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant, Vince. You should know that.”
“I do.” He tried to force himself to relax and leaned backward.
His arms automatically came up and crossed themselves over his chest. He realized a few seconds later how defensive that looked, but not before Alessia’s eyes flicked between his face and arms.
Without speaking a word, Alessia rose and strode over to the windows.
Vince had long gotten used to the sight of Albion and the harbor from Alessia’s office. He was also used to Alessia standing beside the windows whenever she was being thoughtful or otherwise wanted to hide her expression. When had she learned this reaction and who from?
To Vince, it remained a form of power play. She could stand up and walk away from the conversation, all while reminding him of the sort of wealth she controlled. Most people couldn’t do this, because they didn’t own entire skyscrapers and penthouses with multistory windows good for brooding in front of.
Alessia had responded to his own unconscious gesture with a very deliberate one of her own. This discussion had taken a turn for the worse.
“Alessia, I don’t own an apartment, but I know how much one is worth,” he said, trying to regain control of the conversation. “Prices in Aulfair are eye-watering. Even the shitbox I live in is worth too damn much.”
“That’s not a condo,” Fia said. “Unless you want to buy an entire apartment complex.”
“It’d be nicer if it was a condo,” Alessia said. “The land is worth more than the complex from what I understand. If the cartel is ever dealt with or calms down, the developer will probably knock it down the next day.”
“I’ll thank Gaby for keeping my rent cheap,” Vince said.
Both women shot him a dark look. Praising the captain of a rival gang had not been a winning move.
He rolled his eyes in response. “My point is that this ‘bonus’ dwarfs everything you’ve offered me until now. Even if Mei hadn’t turned on us, I would have received less.”
Vince’s knowledge of house prices in Aulfair started at “too expensive,” but he was damn certain that a three-bedroom condo or townhouse in the inner city would easily cost more than half a million. Houou wasn’t building skyscraper after skyscraper out of a sense of charity, and huge stretches of the inner city were decades old, like much of Albion.
And given the response of both women to his brief mention of Gaby, he suspected Alessia didn’t want him living in cartel territory. Given the Lionettis lacked the influence they once had, he sincerely wondered where she wanted him to live.
“Like I said, this is an investment.” Alessia didn’t look back at him. “The mafia is a business, Vince. I want you as a partner, but I also need you alive and safe. Ordinarily, paying independent enforcers so much would be out of the question. The return would never be there. But you’ve proven your worth and—”
“My worth?” he asked. “I’ve done my job, Alessia. What you’ve paid me to do, even when the contract has been heavily in your favor or paid far less than the work should, because you expected me to fail.”
She turned and stared at him in shock. Anger shined in her eyes. “I never expected you to fail!”
“You explicitly refused to pay me the rate of a full squad of enforcers for the same reason Mei gave to Nina in the sushi restaurant weeks ago.” He pointed at her, and the billionaire glared at his finger. “You’d already paid for failures twice, and I wasn’t your only option.”
“That’s not—”
“Can both of you stop?” Fia snapped.
His girlfriend’s hand came down hard on his shoulder, and he hid a wince. Fia grimaced and rubbed some feeling back into his arm. No doubt she’d forgotten how easily he bruised from her strength.
But her stern expression remained in place. She stepped between Alessia and Vince and leaned against the edge of Alessia’s massive desk. Her rust-blonde tail shifted slowly against the wood.
“I’m stepping in as consigliere,” Fia said, voice low and full of warning. “I’m also stepping in because both of you are being overly emotional, and I have a better sense of why than I suspect either of you do.”
Vince kept his expression unchanged, but unfolded his arms. Getting angry at Fia wouldn’t help matters.
“First, Vince. Alessia is absolutely right that you need to move somewhere new,” Fia said. “And it needs to have better security. That needs to be a term of any new contract. Too many people might try to take you out or use you against us. Either make the move yourself, or we’ll do it for you.”
Harsh, but he forced himself to calm down. “Got it.”
She turned to face Alessia now, who narrowed her eyes at her subordinate.
“Alessia, if you want to offer Vince an absurd amount of money, it needs to be tied to a new contract,” Fia said.
Vince’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull. Wasn’t Fia on his side?
Alessia raised an eyebrow, her black tail dead still. “I believe Vince is deserving of a bonus given how the heist played out.”
“Sure, but we already have a cash amount he lost thanks to Mei. You’re doing everyone a disservice by one-upping that,” Fia said. “Especially if you want to run the mafia as a business. Vince is our associate, even if he’s an independent in name. You sure as hell haven’t offered me a house.”
The guilty look from Alessia spoke volumes. She ran a hand through her hair, pushing locks over one ear while looking down.
“The bigger problem is that there’s nothing stopping Vince from walking away if you give him a house as a bonus,” Fia added. She shot Vince a warning look, telling him silently to stay quiet. “I guarantee Quintus Hierum, or even the Inaba Twins, will be trying to poach him as word spreads of the heist. Possibly far more players. As consigliere, I have to say it’s foolish to throw away so much negotiating leverage.”
Vince held his tongue.
On the face of it, Fia was stabbing him in the back. But he felt better for it.
Fia wanted the mafia to fight to keep him, instead of throwing him treats for being a good boy.
Alessia bit her lip. Seconds passed in silence.
“Thank you for your advice, consigliere,” Alessia told Fia.
Eventually, her eyes met Vince’s. They stared at each other.
Alessia rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I assume you aren’t interested in my marriage offer?”
“Which one?” he asked.
She stared at him, slowly reddening. “I only made one, Vince.”
“Uh huh.”
Spluttering noises escaped the mafia don, and she dashed to her desk, grabbed the first thing she could, and threw it at him. It turned out to be a leather folder of some sort. He caught it and resisted the urge to open it.
“Don’t dodge my tantrum,” Alessia spat, still flushed and tail flailing behind her like a tornado. “If you’re going to flirt like that, you should…” Her eyes widened and she slapped a hand over her mouth.
Then she reached for a coffee cup she hadn’t brought with her, only to realize it was still on the dining table. A strangled noise escaped her.
Alessia swiftly retreated to the kitchenette. The door slammed behind her, leaving Vince to stare after his boss in confusion.
Chapter 2
“Well, that was bound to happen eventually,” Fia said. “I kind of wish I wasn’t here.”
“Uh, why? You helped me out of a bind,” he said, torn between staring at the door and looking at Fia.
Which caused him to miss the approach of his girlfriend. She smacked him lightly upside the head.
“You’re being a dope,” she said. “Don’t pretend you’re blind to what happened. But…” Fia looked at the kitchenette and grimaced. “Let’s head to the capo bar. Probably best to check on the others on the way.”
“At this time of day?” he asked, pointedly looking out the window.
The bar didn’t open until evening in his experience.
“Alessia’s staffed it all day while we’re in lockdown. They’re running it as a café until the usual opening time. We’ll leave her alone so she can cool down and sort out the contract.”
She grabbed his arm and yanked him out of his seat without another word. Vince took control of his own motor skills, then followed Fia out the front doors. Looking back inside, he spotted Alessia peeking out of the kitchenette. He gave her a friendly wave and she vanished.
Alessia’s bodyguard, Lucia, awaited them immediately outside the office. She fiddled with her phone. Vince still hadn’t worked out what her magical focus was, as while she often wore bulky boots, she switched them out for fancy shoes when she had to dress up in a suit as part of her duties.
Lucia’s eyebrows shot up as she noticed Alessia hiding. “Uh, what the hell happened?”
“Sexual tension,” Fia said drily. “Is Ally still busy?”
“She switched to a new ritual at some point. Said it will take a while, so they’re all just sitting around, drinking coffee, and nibbling on snacks,” Lucia said. “The boss hasn’t messaged me yet, so I’ll leave her to… Take care of herself.”
Fia rolled her eyes while Lucia smirked.
They wandered over to the conference room they’d used for planning the heist over the past month.
A young, sweet voice with a New York accent drifted out the door as they entered.
“Sorry, I’m a little rusty at active healing,” Ally said, frustration writ all over her expression. “It’s different when I craft infusions. Especially as I don’t have to contend with another healing spell interfering with my own. Mama only knows the absolute basics, so I mostly learned from studying.”
“I’ve said it a few times now, Ally. Take your time,” Nina said. “I’m not going anywhere for a few days. Not unless you fix me.”
A small group of women hung around inside the conference room. When Vince had left, there’d also been a single man, Enrico, but he’d left at some point. Probably to get some peace and quiet.
A towering woman kneeled inside a glowing green magic circle. Her lion ears and long, thin golden tail betrayed her lionfolk heritage, but so did her gorgeous mane of blonde hair which spilled across the floor. Nina wore casual clothes, but her right arm was completely exposed and revealed a nasty magical scar and black stitches along the circumference of her biceps.
Opposite her kneeled a short, petite mystic fox with four voluminous red fox tails. Ally wore a cute sundress and her hands shined with the same green light as the magical circle. She was almost the polar opposite of Nina. Short, petite, lacking in chest size, and painfully cute and innocent.
“If you can even cut a week off Nina’s healing time, we’d appreciate that,” Vince said.
Ally jumped, and the light in her hands dimmed for an instant.
“Vince!” she squeaked, looking up at him and smiling. “You’re back. Is everything alright?”
“For a certain definition of alright,” he said.
Nina frowned at him. “I suspect we’ll be talking about that later.”
He merely nodded. “How’s the arm?”
Ally grimaced. “I can definitely shave a week off Nina’s healing time. The wound wasn’t even 24 hours old when they re-attached the arm, so it shouldn’t even scar. Mama’s told me stories about hunters who were cut in half and put back together back in Japan.”
Everyone in the room stared at Ally.
As if on cue, Fia glared at the only other wolfgirl. “Don’t even think you can come back from that, Pola.”
A beautiful wolfgirl with green eyes and long, luscious silver hair pouted at Fia. Her bust matched Alessia’s impressive size, if not Nina’s, but her most notable feature was the wolf ear she was missing.
“I didn’t say anything,” Pola whined. “How would you survive that?”
“An empowerment spell, probably,” Nina said. “I use a basic painkiller spell in battle. Dulls the impact when my punches hit something really hard, and meant I wasn’t a crybaby after I lost my arm. Based on what that Teru bitch could do, I wouldn’t be surprised if she lived through getting cut in half and had someone sew her back together. Hell, I’ve always wondered what fucked up Quintus’s leg instead of just going off rumors.”
Nicki padded across the room and ran a hand over Pola’s head. The harpy had lurked by the windows and wore her usual pink plastic jacket. Her current appearance utilized an illusion to give her bigger breasts, but otherwise looked like a beautiful harpy with short black hair. Bony bird legs protruded from the bottom half of her legs.
Pola’s single ear twitched in response to Nicki’s gesture, and she tilted backward to stare up at the harpy’s hand.
“If you can re-attach an arm and get sewn back together, how come Pola is missing an ear?” Nicki asked.
“Um, because I lost it,” Pola said, blinking at Nicki as if she’d asked the dumbest question in the world.
The harpy glowered at Pola, then pivoted to face the rest of the room. Ally giggled at her expression while sprinkling powdered catalysts on the floor. Presumably, somebody would have to clean up that mess later.
“She really did lose it,” Nina said. “I’m not sure you’ve ever watched the videos of my fight downtown…”
Nicki shook her head and rubbed her arms. “Nah. Too… creepy given I was carried away. Even the parts after I’m missing, I see the crater that fox made around me and just…”
Fia’s arm slid around Nicki and squeezed her shoulder. The harpy shot her a smile.
“Well, I hit hard,” Nina said. “And my attacks are made to pulverize and skewer. I didn’t rip Pola’s ear off with my hands while I was grappling with her. She took a glancing blow to the side of her head from one of my earth spikes that nearly killed her and left a mess.”
Both Lucia and Fia grimaced. Nicki shuddered at the image.
Whereas Pola merely pouted. “Don’t make it sound like I was getting my ass kicked! I broke your barrier! And broke your arm. There was blood all over you.”
“Yours, mostly,” Nina said.
The lioness’s tone was matter-of-fact, rather than prideful or dry. She was speaking of her fateful battle with Pola, which had changed the course of both women’s lives, as if she were talking about the highlights of an old boxing match that nobody particularly cared about.
“Anyway, that sort of damage needed an instant infusion,” Nina said. “A good one. If I’d lost my arm outright, instead of carting it back, I’d…” She stared down at her wound. “Well, I’d be haggling with Alessia about how expensive of a prosthetic I can buy.”
“Wait, so you can’t regrow limbs at all?” Nicki blurted out. “What about when I lost part of my wing in that ambush?”
“It’s possible, but every hour after the wound occurs hampers recovery,” Ally said. “If cast in the minutes after a wound, a healing spell can completely restore an individual to full health or regenerate even missing limbs. Immortals can survive near obliteration in myth for this reason. But for mortals, healing magic has hard limits. After a certain point, it’s more about transforming the body or grafting on a new body part.”
Nicki stared at the fox in confusion.
Ally grimaced. “Um, if you’d been sent to hospital, they probably could have regenerated your wing. There’s something known as the 24-hour wall. Almost any wound can be healed within the first 24 hours. After that, it becomes complicated. Not everyone is willing to alter their body to undo an injury.”
Pola placed a hand over her missing ear and looked away.
“That’s why I kept my arm,” Nina said. “There was no guarantee they could have dispelled the curse within a day.”
“It’s also why cancer and degenerative diseases are still a problem,” Ally added. “Once the disease takes root, curing it means effectively rebuilding the affected parts of the body. Aging faces a similar problem.”
