King of the Underworld by RJ Kane

Chapter Two Hundred Twenty-Eight

Adrik

Smith looked to Ivan, somewhat confused. Stephen moved the red dot to Smith’s chest so he could see it. Ivan pointed to Smith’s chest. “You got a little something there…”

Smith looked down, then immediately back up. He was speechless. I knew Stephen would keep his sight on him for the rest of the meeting, just to prove a point.

Gus laughed quietly. “You du mbass,” he said, shaking his head. “Sir, we’ve been scouring the city trying to find where they’re making the brawn. I’m sure you know it takes a specific setup to produce, so they can’t produce it just anywhere. To get enough to replace the whole city’s supply of regular drugs, they’re going to need a massive operation. We’ve found two smaller operations. One in Vito’s area of the city, one in Niko’s. Neither of those are large enough, in my opinion, to produce enough to fully replace the supply, but they’ve been running non-stop since we found them. It’s possible, I guess, if they’ve been working at this for a while.”

“The one place we’re having difficulty getting near is the docks. It’s in Sal’s area of the city and it’s crawling with his men. My guess is they have a larger operation there, but we can’t get close enough to confirm that,” DJ said.

“You have the exact location of the smaller operations?” I asked.

“Yeah. We’ve got guys watching it all the time, since we don’t know when they’re going to try and replace the supply. We’re not depending on Sal to give his dealers the heads up. If they start moving their supply, we want to know,” Gus said.

“We’re going to need the location of those two. The third is at the docks. We’ve confirmed that one. It is large enough to replace the whole city’s supply. The other two are likely backups,” I said. “How many dealers do you guys know for sure will help us?”

“There’s a couple hundred in the city, at least. I’ve only talked to like 50, DJ talked to another like 40-50. Chen? How many have you talked to?” Gus asked.

“At least 40, maybe more. I did not realize there would be a test on that later, so I wasn’t keeping track. But I’ve talked to at least 40, Chen said.

“That’s most of the city’s dealers. You’re sure the ones that work for Sal, Niko, and Vito are with you and against selling brawn?” Ivan asked.

“Yeah, no question. Sal’s dealers are actually the most angry about this. There’s a couple that are happy at the thought of getting paid for a weekend of not selling, but most of them are pi ssed off that he would try to bring it back. It almost started a war between the dealers and Sal the last time. We might sell drugs, but we’re not tryin’ to ki ll nobody. We’ll facilitate bad habits, but we have standards on what we sell. Most dealers know the really bad addicts and we purposely rip them off so they don’t overdose. The dealers talk between each other in most areas of the city, too. We know who buys from who and I’m not selling to someone who’s already bought from another dealer to keep them from overdosing. It’s all about making money, but we’re also not in the habit of killing our customers. Addicts are mostly misguided people, man,” Gus said.

under his breath. We all looked to him, expecting an explanation. “Some

“Does he have something he’s holding over you to make you sell for

first. Other dealers that work for him are

know anything about this plan? About

from him since he’s been down there.”

this was all over. I needed them to want to work for me. The fastest route to loyalty was honesty. “Massimo and Dario are

were

is good. He’s the only boss that stayed loyal to me. The rest of them have their own agenda right now,” I said.

moment. “This makes everything make

you mean?”

This is no man’s land, but we all consider it to be Ghost’s territory. The people here and the people in Armando’s area are happy. Like almost obliviously happy. They don’t realize there’s anything happening in the rest of the city. But

happy with him? Because of his increase

crime has increased in his area. Much of that crime is because of his people, too. The guys he has working for him are all thugs and mostly out of control. It doesn’t take anything to set one of them off. The people who live in his area have been living in fear for a while now, but they’re reaching their limit. They’ve

you know so much about Sal’s part of town when

good idea what’s

said, in Russian, “I know. I think your idea of using the people is still a good one. We might not be able to do this as quietly

other areas of the city.”

else, you can get word that we’re taking care of their problem,” Viktor said, still in Russian. “If you get rid of all the bosses but one, you’re going to need the people to be loyal to you. We can’t take

it’s still a good option. I’d still like to do this as quietly as possible, but it’s looking more and more like that might not be possible,” I said.

moment when Smith asked, “so, are

what?”