A Man of Honor.

Chapter 25: Remade

"Mafia is a process, not a thing. Mafia is a form of clan-cooperation to which it's individual members pledge lifelong loyalty... Friendship, connections, family ties, trust, loyalty, obedience - this was the glue that held us together." ~ Joseph Bananno "Joe Bananas."

After the incident at the docks Roman had me setting out to start outsourcing our little dust racket. This was where we really began setting up phoney dust shops to rob from bogus orders to the SDC that we'd rob and get reimbursed for. Some of these we used wiseguys for but others were just business owners in Roman's or Junior's neighborhoods that had good relations with the family, some of these ties went back decades.

We also started contracting some of the more local gangs to do our dirty work for us. Like how the 24k Dragons were under the wing of the Kuroi Kuma Clan the Torchwick family had a number of gangs that it permitted to operate within its territories so long as they kicked up a percentage of the profits.

We still used the White Fang for some heists but we made sure that they were smaller ones where there was a large margin for error and plenty of reason to let other people see them. In short they were the shit jobs and they're the ones that managed to get a page in the newspaper. And I was happy to be mostly uninvolved with them. Mostly being a relative term, I still had to accompany them on a few just to see that things were kept in line, apparently Cinder had specifically asked Roman to play babysitter on some of those jobs.

Other less common jobs happened with some of Adam's finer recruits. Like this one person who just wanted to be called Lieutenant, he was a strong son of a bitch with a bad attitude to match. But when we needed to get into this one SDC warehouse by the railyard he was able to cut right through the walls with this massive chainsaw he insisted on carrying around. It was beastly and loud but he was certainly able to make short work of walls and doors.

Somehow Cinder had tightened the screws to Adam and we were seeing the results. Though few of these terrorists were exactly sociable to me or any other humans they at least were made to understand that Roman and I were the professionals and they needed to listen to us. They did so begrudgingly. Thankfully George was a regular on these heists so if I needed anyone to listen to me and talk to the others I was able to turn to him.

And all the while I was getting ready for my club to be opening in the next several weeks. I only had to look in on the refurbishment now and then to check on the progress and occasionally check out some of the talent and other services that Mr. Fontane had been hiring for the club. I was pleased that we had found a good head bartender and head chef for the place along with a regular band that could play plenty of the old songs quite well.

But still most of the decisions and heavy lifting I left to Mr. Fontane so I could focus more on my real work of stealing dust. Which was why I was so amazed to see how the place looked when it was finally finished.

"Woah!" I said as we stepped into the main floor with Fontane flipping on the lights. The dust and cobwebs were cleared and the tables were all set out just like it would be when opening night came around. Lights illuminated the stage and I watched as it gleamed off the polished wood of the bar. "This is amazing!" I said running my hand over the surface and looking at the supply of liquor that waited on the shelves.

"So you like it then?" Fontane asked me.

"Are you kidding?" I asked him, taking a seat at the bar. "I think I could drink here every night."

He smirked proudly at that. "It took some work to get this place back to how it used to be... I had to get rid of all the old disco stuff and restore a lot of the art deco furnishings."

"It's perfect," I said to him. "I trust that those checks have been coming through all right?" I asked him.

"Mr. Torchwick has been making sure that everything was paid for. We used some of his union guys so it wasn't too expensive to refurbish it. Well not too expensive for us anyways." He said with a chuckle, it was nice having cheap labor from the unions. Friends and members of the family didn't have to worry about paying out the ass