BIA Ch. 40

From the start those guys who thought it was unfair that I, a non law student was getting grades in that class and started to sneer at me the moment they saw me. I waited quietly. Then finally when the words ‘criminal’s son’ came out of their mouths I started throwing punches. There were more than twenty students from our school in that bar but no one stopped me. They must have all been waiting for this moment to come.

But thankfully those friends all gave statements that were favorable to me during the police investigation and even willingly wrote petitions while I was in custody.

Because of that, I left school earlier than planned and more dramatically than I thought but it didn’t matter. Edgar Derby was very satisfied and more than anything Cedric Kalisz actually came to find me.

After that it went according to Edgar Derby’s plan. Indeed Cedric Kalisz wasn’t so cold hearted as to ignore the son of a subordinate who died because of him. Especially since that son was about to be thrown in jail for beating up a classmate who mocked his father. Cedric Kalisz got me out with considerable threats a suitable settlement and a huge bail and when I was kicked out of school he brought me into his organization.

I was put in charge of some of the bookkeeping purely because I went to a good university which definitely wasn’t something that should be given to a low level member. Chester had already sensed something at this point and rummaged through the ledgers that even high ranking members couldn’t freely look at finding fault with my handwriting saying it was too girly and other useless things.

I ignored him and continued to organize the ledgers while also taking on Cedric Kalisz’s small errands. Mostly it was transporting bribes to high ranking government officials or the wealthy.

Then I got a message from Edgar Derby.

1428436 : Thursday 2 AM Liberty Harbor Pier 9.

After I became a member of the Kalisz Family we communicated through the dark web. The message he left was the location where a Laotian drug dealer had left the drugs. I took those items just before the Barone Family members arrived and this turned the back alleys of Eloy City upside down. Not only drug dealers but even the police would gather and giggle about this story. The entire La Cosa Nostra not just the Barone Family became a laughingstock.

Edgar Derby and I had a slight disagreement about how to deal with the stolen drugs. Edgar Derby’s position was to hand them over to the drug task force to get them credit and create debt on their side. He calculated that it would make things easier for me in the future.

My idea was different. I heard that Mario, the boss of the Barone Family who was in prison was suffering from diabetic complications. That old man would do anything to get a reduced sentence.

1984720 : Mario broke the Omerta once ten years ago by giving in to the prosecution. You think he’d do that again?

1985375 : They say those who betray will always betray. If he was that strong willed he would have never given in ten years ago.

Edgar Derby eventually gave in to my stubbornness.

Sure enough a year later Mario betrayed his brothers for the second time in court and I sold off the hidden drugs. La Cosa Nostra ignored the Barone Family’s request to punish the punk who stole their organization’s drugs. It was the beginning of the rift between the five families.

Cedric Kalisz was very satisfied and let me freely manage a portion of the money I made from selling the drugs. I used that money to hire several Russian hackers. Then I bought an apartment in Saint Petersburg set it up as a hideout and had them stay there to hack illegal gambling sites. Among the hackers who stayed in the apartment at the time was a special cyber crime investigator from the FBI.

The money I extorted from hacking illegal gambling sites ranged from $80000 to $200000 per business. Small businesses that made a living from child’s play probability manipulation games like automatic roulette I simply extracted customer information. Then I sold it elsewhere or demanded $30000 in exchange for not revealing the hack. Once the money came in I demanded another $50000 on the condition that I wouldn’t hack them for the next year. There were no refusals.

For full fledged illegal sports betting sites or baccarat businesses I completely shut down their systems and then extorted $200000 to restore them. Those businesses already had several layers of security built in but the moment we neutralized it they would already be waiting to surrender. $200000 wasn’t a lot of money to them. Rather than spending a similar amount to rebuild their server network and restore their system it was better to just give the money and start business that day and steal the money of gambling addicts.

I hacked a total of thirty illegal sites in half a year and the money I extorted from them alone easily exceeded the Kalisz Family’s total revenue for four years. But I didn’t want to hear Chester’s nagging about whether I was a saint of justice or anything like that and I didn’t need to draw unnecessary suspicion so I tried a larger scale illegality. It was a so called carousel fraud where I imported goods in bulk within the EU illegally collected sales tax on those goods and then exported them again. It was stealing taxes so no individual was harmed and since the taxes were ripped off from European countries the higher ups who received Edgar Derby’s report turned a blind eye. Rather a high ranking official from the CSI (Container Security Initiative) openly demanded a cut through Edgar Derby and that was when I first thought that there was no difference between the government and the mafia.

2370381 : Too mild.

Even so Edgar Derby was dissatisfied.

2452026 : We’re making enough money.

Edgar Derby was silent for a moment at my reply. Then after a while a message popped up.

2370381 : Bran what do you even think the mafia is?

Strangely it was as if I could see an expression in the text.

That’s right what is the mafia?

I was suddenly curious but I didn’t have the time to seriously contemplate that question now.

If I didn’t have time and couldn’t find the answer myself there was only one way. To copy the answer sheet of the person next to me. Whether that was the right answer or not was a problem for later. I imitated other mafia around me and put drugs and women in the club I was running. I even shot and killed people who caused trouble in the business. Every time I went to the club I saw people passed out from the drugs I sold being dragged out by the guards. They were mostly thrown into the alley without any measures taken.

As the days went by there was no hesitation in the finger that pulled the trigger. Instead it took a long time for me to fall asleep. Now I understood why my father drank so much every day and why he couldn’t fall asleep without drinking.

In exchange for the quality of my sleep my position within the organization became more solid. Chester was a big reason for this. Because the only heir was digging his own grave I was relatively more noticeable. We were even the same age so it must have been even easier to compare us from an outside perspective.

Chester defied Edgar Derby’s and my prediction that he would die before thirty and stubbornly survived. It was all thanks to his mother Grace and his aunt Angelina. They couldn’t let their only bloodline go like this so they joined forces and dragged him to all sorts of prayer houses rehabilitation facilities and recovery centers and barely managed to get him off drugs.

It might have been a stroke of luck for a father named Cedric but for the Kalisz family organization, it was a major misfortune. It would have been better if he was addicted to drugs and locked up in his room but he was running around trying to help his father and only causing accidents so it was even more of a living hell for the organization members.

Around that time some of the western district that Chester managed was practically a playground for the Martino Family. It started at a club. Late one night a few mid level members of the Martino Family who came to Chester’s club to drink got drunk and started a fight with the club staff. Chester was afraid that the trouble would grow so he resolved the issue by not charging them for their drinks but when the word got out this became a kind of repertoire among the Martino Family. Later not only mid level members but even low level members would openly cause trouble in Chester’s district. But even then Chester couldn’t do anything.

Only then did I remember Edgar Derby’s words about Chester Kalisz, that it would be better for him to die early. It was a statement that it would have been better from Cedric’s perspective not Chester’s.

Either way a bloodless takeover was a set procedure. When I was at ease like that that’s when it happened.

A stranger burst into the casino bar that Chester managed. The stranger boldly raided the casino bar on Saturday evening when there were the most people. The stranger who had been wearing a balaclava since getting out of the stolen vehicle pushed through the crowded entrance and went straight to the hold’em table. Then he shot and killed three people sitting in the middle of the table with a pistol and then left the casino bar with the same leisurely pace as when he came in. All three of the dead had more than half their heads blown off and all three were members of the Martino Family. There were no other casualties.

After that two similar incidents happened in a row only in Chester’s district. I used the word ‘similar’ instead of ‘same’ because the weapons and methods were different. Unlike the casino incident where a stranger with a pistol attacked the other two incidents were long range assassinations using sniper rifles. Two people were shot and killed on their way out of a club and two people had their heads blown off by bullets while drinking at a rooftop bar.

The fact that all the victims were members of the Martino Family and the crude methods made it obvious to anyone that it was Chester’s doing. Of course, Chester acted like he didn’t know anything.