Beware The Water

Loose Ends

Shorter called for a meeting at Chang Dai  at sunrise. The first thing the guys had noticed were the obvious bruises and stitches on Shorter's face. His sunglasses did a good job at hiding his black eyes but he'd need a mask in order to make his gang not worry.

"Jesus Christ, Boss." Smiley leaned in to get a closer look only for Shorter to face palm him away.

"I'm fine. I got some news about this witness."

Sunshine turned his head fast. Kairi got to him before he did. Shit, he swore to himself. "Boss, can I talk to you in private?" He stood up with urgency to warn against this dirty intel before it hit the table.

"Not now." Shorter brushed him off. Sunshine sighed in defeat and slumped back into his chair. "I got a location."

"Location?" Sing asked. "How? We've ran through our current sources and nobody knows who or where this person is."

"Actually some whispers are getting passed through the grape vine." Sunshine corrected. "But the info hasn't been filtered out by the serpents or confirmed by Viper so-"

"So there's no time to waste. Viper's busy with June's sister planning a funeral. This is up to us." Shorter told them, "I swung by the location last night to make sure it was legit. There was a cop car posted out front. Our guy has to be in there."

Sunshine, Smiley and Sing all exchanged glances. Smiley was on board with whacking this guy but Sunshine and Sing remained hesitant.

"You sure Viper would be alright with us moving forward with this?" Sing asked. It was no secret that Viper was well respected in the mafia, so much so that he was Shorter's second. Shorter was the Boss, yes, but Viper had his own crew that dealt with intel, so moving forward without his knowledge on this thing in particular could be seen as disrespectful to him and his serpents.

"Viper would want us to do anything to get Hook out." Shorter reassured. "He's closer to that guy than any of us. You think he'd want us to waste another day?" Sing nodded in agreement. "Sunshine. What do you say?"

The blonde felt that they needed to wait. There was a reason why there was an order to things, so to skip ahead because everyone was impatient felt like a reckless thing to do. "Guys, I think we need to hold this off until Viper gets back and confirms with us."

"Confirm what?" Smiley asked, "The Boss dropped by the location and there were police. What more confirmation do we need?"

"I agree." Sing said, "We finally have a place. We have the man power even without Viper being here. Let's just get this shit over with."

"Do you wanna be the reason why Hook gets beaten another night in jail?" Shorter guilt tripped Sunshine into finally agreeing to go through with the plan. It still didn't feel right though. "Great. Sing, I need you to drop by one of our stash houses and grab us some silencers. This is going to be quick. Normally I'd have me and one more guy but we need this scene to be spotless."

"Cleaning crew. That's us." Smiley looked over at Sunshine who rolled his eyes.

"Obviously idiot."

"We'll take the van. Go over strategy tonight." Everyone agreed and exit the back room of the restaurant, all going their separate ways until the meet up later that night.

Shorter had made his way to the kitchen, greeting the cooks and some of the girls that worked there as part time servers. He grabbed a to-go box and filled it up with his and Lux's favorites with extra fortune cookies. They all noticed his purplish face but decided to not say anything and simply smiled, saying to tell the rest of the guys hi for them.