This Is the Academy! (3)
The Academy stood in South Woodlawn, and to the west of that district lay River West. The one thing these two territories shared was that they were the zones where the wolves and Banella had begun their push on the Little Wolf’s orders.
While Banella swept southwest to clean out the southern half of River West, Sarina and her wolves drove west and secured the central and northern sectors. The stark difference in their pace wasn’t because resistance in the south had been fiercer than expected, nor because the other areas had folded easily. It came down to pure skill disparity.
Yet Sarina refused to rest. She immediately set her sights on North Woodlawn, which lay north of the Academy. This time she would advance alongside Vincent Lumini, just as she had with Banella. In the meantime, Banella—temporarily, at least—took charge of River West.
Truthfully, the district sat right next to his original territory, and if no better candidate appeared, River West would almost certainly become his permanent domain. With that calculation in mind, Banella threw himself into managing the area even if his authority was only provisional. His first move was to build friendly relations with the local police and residents by eliminating the parasites who were exploiting the city’s chaos to run wild.
The result was a steady parade of every imaginable type and race dragged before him.
“Communists, rapists, Asians, metal men, hole men. This city really has gone to hell, hasn’t it?”
A dwarf communist. A troll rapist who had targeted human women five separate times. A group of Asians who had formed their own vigilante outfit and promptly begun committing atrocities in the surrounding blocks. And then the metal men and hole men—races so rare that even in a multi-species city like Hevilly they drew stares.
“Hey, where the hell are the eyes on that metal bastard?”
“Boss, that compass-looking thing on the left side is his eye.”
Banella’s face twisted in open disgust even after hearing his subordinate’s explanation. The compass-like fixture and the red gemstone eyes mounted on it were swiveling in every direction. Having both eyes clustered on one side was a signature trait of the metal men.
Of course, the creature could do nothing about Banella’s revulsion. Tape sealed his mouth and his limbs were tightly bound.
“Back in the day everyone lived according to their proper station. Now every last son of a bitch is scrambling to grab a slice of the pie.”
The casual, habitual racism rolled on.
“....”
Banella himself was human, but the majority of the underworld consisted of other races, so most of his own men were non-humans. For better or worse, his prejudice was sharply partisan—it was reserved exclusively for enemies, never for his subordinates or friends.
“Boss, what do you want done with the metal man and the hole man?”
“What do you think? Call the Underboss. Tell him we’ve caught some decent specimens.”
“Yes, sir.”
In the Little Wolf’s exhibition hall, the golem was soon to be joined by other trophies.
“Right, then the rest of them…”
Banella decided to be fair in his own way.
Three gunshots cracked out in quick succession—clean, precise, and impartial. The verdict on the communist, the rapist, and the Asians had been delivered.
His men began disposing of the bodies with practiced efficiency even without further orders.
“Tell the police chief the trash has been taken out.”
“Yes, boss.”
By the time Banella’s brand of impartial justice had concluded—
My two wives and I were attending to necessary business inside the Rufus Carlton Hotel. Specifically, we were going over the information Giovanni had purchased from the Rat’s Den.
“What the hell is this? Are we sure it’s reliable?”
“It doesn’t appear entirely certain. The report itself says it might not be accurate.”
The thick sheaf of papers Giovanni pulled from his briefcase contained everything he had bought from the Rat’s Den. I had expected him to simply summarize what he’d learned, but the sheer volume made that impossible.
Elena waved one sheet that mentioned the Carmen Family attempting contact with the Lusso Family.
“Elena, let me see that for a second.”
“Here.”
The information was simple but significant: Rita Carmen had sent one of her people to approach a caporegime inside the Lusso Family. The problem was that the caporegime in question happened to be Rita Carmen’s own younger sister—Viola Carmen.
To understand why a blood relative of a family boss would hold a caporegime seat in a rival organization, one had to go back in time.
When my father had forced the five families to submit, he showed them mercy and spared them from total annihilation. Of course, two of those families had lost their original bosses in the process and accepted new leadership. Still, the five families remained the most dangerous elements under our control. That was why they had been forced to accept the men my father dispatched into their ranks without complaint.
In Viola Carmen’s case, she had sided with my father out of long-standing resentment toward her older sister. Somehow that decision had turned her into an internal check against the Lusso Family.
“If it’s false it’s false, if it’s true it’s true. What the hell does ‘it might not be’ even mean?”
The Rat’s Den’s standards were far lower than I had anticipated—something unthinkable for any information broker who dealt with our family. The usual vendors provided every possible proof, and the intelligence we purchased from them was both detailed and highly accurate.
“Luke, the Rat’s Den material is only for reference,” Felicia murmured sweetly, pressed close against my side. “It’s still useful for getting a rough idea of which way the wind is blowing.”
Elena looked at her with open distaste. “There are limits. This stuff is too thin, too shallow.”
“Boss, how about this one?”
When I kept reacting negatively, Giovanni produced what he clearly hoped was a trump card. I took the sheet with cautious interest. Once again it concerned Rita Carmen.
The damned woman had apparently hired a detective to uncover the truth behind the day my father died. That detective turned out to be one of my father’s old colleagues—a wolf the five families had raised to serve as their own limbs. It was surprising the old fixer was still alive at all, let alone that he had left the underworld to take on private investigative work. Given that my father had mentioned him several times, it seemed Rita had played the strongest card she possessed.
What made this particular report valuable was its relative depth; the usual hedging phrase “it might not be” appeared only once.
“Looking at this… couldn’t it be that the Carmen Family didn’t kill the Godfather?”
“You think? To me it feels more like someone is deliberately trying to plant that idea.”
Felicia’s observation made sense. Rita Carmen was an intensely secretive woman; the fact that she was openly advertising her search for my father’s killer suggested Eddie Sanchez’s narrative had taken root so deeply that she felt forced to take such drastic measures.
“Elena, what’s your take?”
“Take? There’s nothing to take. It doesn’t change anything whether that woman does this or not.”
She was right. Besides, the Carmens’ actions were encroaching on territory that belonged to Elena and me. Discovering who killed my father and exacting revenge was our right, not hers.
“Giovanni, do we have files on the other people my father planted inside the five families, like Viola Carmen?”
“One moment, boss.”
His tone told me he had already reviewed the material. We already knew about Viola inside the Lusso Family. The new sheets concerned the Sanchez and Dragovich Families.
According to the Rat’s Den, the men my father had sent into the Sanchez Family now controlled their own semi-autonomous zone. The group inside the Dragovich Family had sworn complete loyalty to Mikhail Dragovich after their leader was eliminated. None of this would have happened if our family had remained strong.
“Giovanni, are all these details we didn’t already know?”
“Some of it overlaps with existing intel. And like you said, there are still plenty of ‘it might not be’ disclaimers.”
“They’re certainly interesting… but it feels like reading a cheap tabloid.”
Giovanni explained that the sensational quality was exactly why certain people deliberately bought information from the Rat’s Den. In a sense, the Rat’s Den functioned as the underworld’s unofficial newspaper.
“Giovanni, one second.”
“Yes?”
I leaned in and whispered my real question into his ear. “Was there any information on me and Elena?”
“…I figured you’d want to see it, so I kept those aside.”
His reply was low, quick, and concise. Our brief exchange ended there. I would examine that particular file through him later.
“By the way, boss. I hear Sarina has completely swept the area around the Academy.”
“It wasn’t Sarina working alone.”
She had the wolves under her command, plus Richard Banella and his men assisting. Now she was preparing to move into North Woodlawn together with Vincent Lumini.
“Miss, should we remain on standby?”
“Yeah. Sarina doesn’t seem to be struggling at all.”
Despite the faint note of anticipation in Giovanni’s voice, Elena answered without emotion. I had been meaning to speak with her about redistributing territories now that we had claimed new ground, including the proper allocation of districts to each caporegime.
“Giovanni, good work. Elena and I will go over the rest of these ourselves.”
“Yes, boss.”
The moment Giovanni left the room we focused on the Rat’s Den documents. Some time passed before I spoke again.
“Elena, there’s something I want to discuss.”
“What is it?”
Her eyes immediately flicked toward Felicia. Felicia, for her part, showed no intention of leaving.
“Now that we’ve gained new territory, don’t you think it’s time we redistributed the districts?”
“…I suppose you’re right.”
She seemed to agree, at least in principle. Felicia, ignoring the conversation entirely, simply rested her head on my shoulder and closed her eyes.