BIA Ch. 144

“Ah, yes…”

I’ll keep that in mind… Samuel barely managed to answer. Bran gave Samuel’s arm a light tap, then spoke to Isaiah standing beside him.

“Well then, see you in a bit.”

In a bit… will we really see each other again?

Isaiah wanted to say that, but the words wouldn’t come out. Bran didn’t give Isaiah a chance to speak either, turning away. It looked like he was heading towards the back door.

What on earth does he trust so much to turn away so readily? Does he really think we’ll see each other again later?

A surge of anger belatedly rose in Isaiah. No matter how he looked at it, the ledger seemed like an excuse, a ploy to evacuate him to safety. But if he ignored Bran’s words and stayed here, the nagging possibility that the ledger was genuinely important couldn’t be dismissed.

No, it actually is important, isn’t it? That must be why Bran smuggled it out beforehand.

As Isaiah suppressed the urge to grab Bran, shoving his pistol uselessly into his back pocket, Samuel spoke from beside him.

“Hey, did you say something to Bran?”

“Say what?”

Isaiah retorted curtly.

“Then why on earth did Bran…”

Samuel muttered with a pale face, then clamped his mouth shut.

“Never mind, let’s go.”

When he went out the front door with Samuel, a black Ford was already waiting. Around it, five or six uniformed police officers and three or four men in black suits stood discussing something with serious expressions. The men in black suits were obviously FBI.

“Isaiah!”

Mickey, who was amidst the black suits, shouted as soon as he saw Isaiah. Instead of answering, Isaiah got into the back seat of the Ford. Kestrel already occupied one of the back seats, so Samuel had to take the passenger seat.

Mickey also greeted the men in black suits and quickly got into the car. As soon as he sat in the driver’s seat of the idling car, he fastened his seatbelt and asked.

“Where to?”

“Bell Financial.”

As the car pulled away from the front of the main building, the helicopter landed completely. The doors opened, and fully armed SWAT members jumped out. Leaving behind the sight of them splitting into teams and running towards the rear parking lot and the main building, the car left the church grounds entirely. It seemed arrangements had already been made with the FBI, as the police made no move to stop the car driving away right before their eyes.

“This is the first time in my life I’ve been this scared.”

As soon as they hit the road, Kestrel started whining. His face was pale as if he hadn’t been able to breathe properly while surrounded by the police and FBI.

“Did you commit a crime? Why are you scared?”

“Well, I’ve sinned exactly as much as you have.”

“You need to add the sin of being ugly to that.”

Isaiah ignored Kestrel, who was raising his middle finger, and asked Samuel.

“Anyway, what about Cedric?”

“We have to find him now.”

“What?”

As Isaiah frowned, Samuel grabbed the assist handle above the passenger window and sighed.

“That old man didn’t even come to the service today.”

“What do you mean?”

“He seemed to be in a bad mood ever since Chester showed up looking like a beggar at breakfast. When I stopped by after lunch, it looked like they’d had a huge fight about it. He said he wasn’t feeling well and might skip today’s service, so I told him he should still come, but…”

“You mean he really didn’t show up?”

Isaiah hit the passenger seat’s headrest and snapped, “Are you an idiot?”

“Didn’t you think something was strange then?”

“Hey, you’re only saying this now because you know. Cedric had been skipping services and member meetings for a while, saying his body wasn’t what it used to be. He didn’t even come to Bran’s baptism yesterday.”

That was true. Looking back, Isaiah himself had started taking Cedric’s absence from various gatherings for granted at some point. This had significantly influenced his positive assessment of Cedric. He thought the old man knew how to lay low appropriately instead of tactlessly showing up everywhere, especially since he was already set to hand over the Boss position. People tend to think alike, so the Kalisz Family members probably felt similarly.

“Still, today was the new Boss announcement day. He should have come.”

“Yeah, it would have looked better if he came, but what can you do if he’s not feeling well? Besides, he’s the one handing it over, not receiving it, so his absence was just a bit disappointing, not really a problem. Pastor Benjamin was supposed to make the announcement anyway. Was he going to come and do a farewell march or something?”

At Samuel’s words, Kestrel snickered, “A mafia boss’s farewell march, I’d like to see that.” Samuel shot Kestrel a fierce look before continuing.

“Most importantly, the atmosphere with Chester had been tense for a while. He made it incredibly obvious that he was reluctantly handing over the Boss position. How desperate must we have been to hold onto hope until the very end? Thinking maybe, just maybe, Bran would become the Boss instead.”

He was no ordinary cunning old man. He used a lawyer to spread rumors beforehand that Chester was chosen as Boss, fueling conflict among the subordinates, while he himself blatantly showed his disapproval of the designated successor, making his absence from the service seem natural. Of course, he didn’t forget to put Bran and Chester under the same roof, ensuring they’d be at each other’s throats. He said they should use this chance to live like real brothers, but Cedric couldn’t possibly have been unaware that, given their personalities, they would only become greater enemies, never friends. Moreover—

「If I die before then, Raymond will open this. It states that after liquidating all current Kalisz Family businesses, the remaining profits and all my assets will be donated to society. It’s not just me. If either of you dies or gets seriously injured, this envelope will also be opened.」

Having created an environment where they were eager to kill each other, he emphasized that everything would be over if either one died or was injured before the Boss announcement. At the time, Isaiah thought it was a measure to protect them both, but it wasn’t. It was for his own plan. Because both needed to be alive to wage war like this today. They had to maintain this confrontational relationship and stay unharmed until the decisive day, no matter what.

“..…”

At this point, worry overshadowed admiration. The thought arose: could this really be the end? Would Cedric, such a clever old man, truly not have designed a follow-up plan? Wouldn’t he have prepared second and third contingency plans for the scenario where Chester died and only Bran survived?

Of course… of course, Bran wouldn’t just be passively taking it either. Yes, he probably sensed something was off. That must be why he smuggled out the ledger beforehand. Ah… but judging from the conversation at the church, it seems even Bran didn’t know Cedric would involve Barone. Does that not matter? Ahh, I don’t know…

While Isaiah’s head was about to explode from thinking, the car sped along the shoulder of the cordoned-off road, reaching Bell Financial in an impressive six minutes. Just in case, Isaiah grabbed both the caddy bag he brought from Virginia and the fishing bag from Tayton before getting out of the car.

Arriving at Suite 2527, Isaiah placed the fishing bag and the caddy bag on the desk, which had gathered dust in the meantime. Then, throwing open the door of the cabinet in the corner, he called Samuel.

“Take this.”

He pointed to the fishing bag inside the cabinet, and Samuel asked, “What is it?”

“You’ll know when you open it.”

Samuel took out the bag.

“Bran told me to give that to you.”

Isaiah said only that and went to the window. The M24A2 he had set up on the windowsill four days ago was still there. As he put his eye to the eyepiece pad of the scope mounted on it, Kestrel approached and spoke.

“Don’t tell me you were planning to shoot from here?”

He opened the adjacent window, gauged the distance to the church, and remarked, “It’s incredibly far, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it almost 1400 yards?”

“1480 yards.”

“Crazy.”

Kestrel clicked his tongue. Isaiah ignored him and adjusted the scope’s fine adjustment dial. Lowering the magnification by 1.4 times from the previous setting, the entire view of the church instantly came into focus. The number of police vehicles had multiplied in the meantime. About twenty ambulances seemed to have arrived as well. More than half of those were likely vehicles mobilized to transport corpses. Indeed, countless bodies were being carried away in sacks, not even stretchers. The surviving members who miraculously escaped injury were being apprehended by fully armed special forces members.

Amidst this, he was just about to increase the scope’s magnification to confirm whether the man smoking a cigarette in handcuffs, surrounded by police in a corner of the parking lot, was Bran or not.

“Hey, Lanius! Is this really what Bran told you to give me?”

Samuel, who was examining the ledger inside the bag, shouted. Even from a distance, his voice sounded extremely bewildered.