A Man of Honor.

Chapter 15: A Light at the End of the Tunnel.

"What do you mean, like do I carry a membership card that says "Mafia" on it?" ~ Willie Moretti.

With the war averted for a moment and a somewhat stable peace established I was able to throw myself fully into the business. I told Junior that night over the cigars that I wasn't sure what I should do with the money I made from the hit. He was thankfully sympathetic to my plight of having blood money so he suggested I simply invest it back into the neighborhood.

So I did.

I spoke to some of O-Ushi's accountants that actually kept track of the money and managed to get myself set up with a portfolio. I became partnered with more businesses and within the next week I was having team CRDL make collections for me. I was still O-Ushi's bagman but now I had so many investments to collect from that I needed the extra hands to collect all of them.

I invested in everything from toy stores to strip clubs, offering money and protection where I could. This meant that when some of these businesses had trouble they came to me to solve it. 

This one strip club called The Red Lantern for example had  an incident where one guy tried getting a little handsy with one of the dancers. When the bouncer tried intervening he got stabbed by the creep. The cops arrested him for assault but he didn't stay behind bars for very long and proceeded to stalk the dancer and even attacked her boyfriend one night. The owner asked me for help and we decided to run this guy out of town.

Cardin and his team's penchant for cruel pranks became a real help in this life. We decided to harass the guy and give him a taste of his own medicine. I managed to find the guy and I had Russel tail the son of a bitch. Within a day he learned where he worked, where he slept, where he got his fucking hair cut. I had Dove pay off his employer to fire his ass, I had Sky and Cardin wreck up his apartment while he was out. Cardin even broke the air conditioning and hid some bad meat in there so the place stank. When that didn't make the guy leave we upped the stakes. Russel I learned was pretty skilled at lifting cars so we stole his and parked it by a hydrant and filled the interior with cement after smashing it up so it would have to be towed.

A couple of badges spotted us doing this but they clearly saw that I worked for Junior so they only nodded at me and drove off letting us write some threatening graffiti on the dented hood.

After that and a few nights of throwing some bricks through his window the guy left town. The Red Light was grateful and handled the expenses for getting him to leave.

With CRDL working for me I started to get a handle on some of them and their skills. Russel as I had learned was pretty sneaky and good at stealing things, especially cars. He hadn't come from a privileged family so stealing was second nature to him. I had some of O-Ushi's drivers call him when they saw some wheels to boost. Some of the cars he delivered to Tonen's shop but since the Clan was getting chummy again with the 24k Dragons I arranged for some of the stolen cars to be delivered to some of their chop shops as well. They couldn't pay me as much as Tonen could but it helped improve relations and pretty soon I was helping finance some of their other operations.

Dove as it turned out had plenty of old friends from his old combat school that did amature tournament fights and with his suggestion I met with a couple of his old pals to get a gambling scheme together. We had them agree to draw out some of the fights so they would only end after a certain number of rounds. Dove would bet on his old friends to win after an exact number of rounds so we could get a pretty hefty payout. And since we weren't asking the fighters to take a dive and sacrifice their honor it went well.

With a half dozen tournament fighters on the take it managed to become a relatively lucrative racket gambling on fights. Dove was even sure that he could convince some of his old friends back at Beacon to throw their fights in the Vytal Tournament so we could make a bundle gambling on fixed games. The Vytal Tournament was still ages away but I looked forward to setting that up and collecting a hefty haul of lien.