A Man of Honor.

Chapter 52: The New Vale Bratva.

"A prudent man... must behave like those archers who, if they are skillful, when the target seems too distant, know the capabilities of their bow and aim a good deal higher than their objective, not in order to shoot so high but so that by aiming high they can reach the target." ~ Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince.

The next couple of days were quiet. Busy, hectic and full of work but relatively quiet. Mostly it was helping Sophia to secure whatever belonged to Nicky, making sure that the transfer of the real power went as smoothly as possible and putting claim to whatever rackets Nicky and his loyalists had which I was starting to learn were quite substantial.

Aside from his drug rackets, which were easy enough to seize, we found that he had multiple counterfeiting operations, arms dealings and all kinds of other businesses we were now taking hold of. This was usually done by either convincing whoever ran the front to join with us or face consequences. Not that it was difficult, news was getting around fast that Nicky was on the run and his officers were gone so many didn't have a choice but to bend the knee to Sophia and start kicking up their profits directly to her. Others weren't so easily swayed and usually we got rid of them. O-Ushi wasn't joking about shipping off bodies to a pig farm. But thankfully most of those people knew better than to let that happen.

The real trouble was the street gangs. The Bratva had almost twice as many street gangs under its wings than both the Kuroi Kuma Clan and the Torchwick Family put together. It was almost feudal how they managed these gangs, giving them territory and tasking them with putting the drugs out on the streets. Any gang that didn't kick up enough profit was fair game for others to take down or allow them to fight and expand their own territory in the city.

Needless to say, a major power shift became problematic. Half the gangs in the south side territories weren't willing to bend the knee to Sophia and seemed to think that they either needed to wait for Nicky to come back or that they had the opportunity to free themselves from the Bratva entirely. This wasn't good and we soon found ourselves arranging to have certain gang leaders either bribed or threatened depending on their attitude and value to us.

Those gangs that did bend the knee to the Old Guard weren't of much help either. They saw opportunity to expand their spheres of influence by attacking those who opposed the Old Guard in the hope of gaining their favor and expanding operations, especially after Roman handed over that warehouse along the river, everyone was eager to let the drugs flow into the city but Sophia was keeping them regulated as she promised dealing them out to the loyal gangs as she did before and sat on the rest of the supply. It actually put me at ease.

Before any of the gang wars could escalate to anything that would warrant police interference Sophia, with Roman and Junior's blessing called in the cavalry. She called on the Desperados to come into town and provide extra muscle on the streets to help stop any violence. This had only taken three days and already the gangs were quieting down. Many realized their supply of drugs wouldn't last without Sophia's help so they made agreements while the loyalists learned that starting shit wouldn't do them any favors and calmed down.

Those few inbetween that didn't get taken care of were quietly eliminated over time.

It wasn't always this easy. By this time there were no less than five captains loyal to Nicky who didn't capitulate and hadn't yet been eliminated. Some people found Nicky's apartment and we managed to bring back some personal items just for Deery to use to find him but it didn't work to our advantage. All Deery was able to tell was that Nicky hadn't left the kingdom, but aside from that things were shaky at best. He had clearly left the city and from what she could tell he was on the move. Since he hadn't gone back to Atlas we could only assume that he was staying to try to fight it out but no one had much hope for him. And most of this was happening under the nose of the cops and everyone else, most of it didn't even make the news, the violence was usually kept more or less behind closed doors. To them it all appeared pretty standard.