“There are many things that make a difference between a criminal mastermind and a clown with an expensive suit and a fancy hat.

One of them is, without a doubt, an even fancier hat.

Another one would be problem management capabilities.

If you plan on walking down the path of a criminal mastermind, you are in for a truckload of shit. And I’m talking about major size problems here. The ‘look outside the window and see a shark’ kind of problem. And the funniest part is, that pile only seems to grow bigger and bigger.

That usually happens when you either suck at doing your work, or you have a rotten luck like mine.

One needs to be prepared for anything, anytime.

So, the lesson here is: a criminal mastermind can always handle it.

Sadly, like I said earlier… I didn’t start my path as a criminal mastermind.

It was the growing pile of shit that forged me into one.

”

• ••••

“Oh, FUCK!!!” 

The alarm was beeping so hard Lawrence could swear it was driving him mad. Yet, not hard enough to completely drown his down-spiraling thoughts. Funny how life did that.

Fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck! That’s Mika’s smartwatch! I specifically told her not to ring it unless it was absolutely necessary… Is she really in trouble?

No, she’s childish, not stupid! She knows what ringing my alarm means. I can’t treat this as an accident! She’s into some deep shit…

A few hours after they returned from the sewers hideout, Lawrence realized the whole incident might have been avoided if he had gotten a way of knowing Mika’s exact location. And since letting the same dog biting you twice was downright stupid, he made sure to look for a way to stop that problem from bothering him again. Thus, and in lack of a better choice, he gave Mika his old smartwatch, which had a ‘find me’ app installed and linked to his phone.

That thought got Lawrence partially out of trance. The phone! He had to find her!

At the moment, he was so nervous his sweaty hands seemed to have forgotten how to perform even the simplest motions. Things like taking the phone out of his pocket, unlocking it and opening the ‘find me’ app, it was all so difficult he almost dropped it in the process. His fingers frantically ran through the screen, and his eyes were darting around, looking around, hoping it would find her already.

Oh, find her he did.

“QuickBrick & Co: Administration Offices”

In the worst possible place of all.

Lawrence’s heart was flooded with fear… and rage. A most beautiful, and effective combination. For you see, a man with fear is wary. And a man with rage, is relentless. And, with the proper conditions… A man with both is a calculative killing machine.

Lawrence laughed. It was a cold, eerie laughter he would have been worried about, were he paying attention to such little details.

“Problems simply won’t let me be, will they…? Very well then…” His voice was a promise of a painful death.

“I have no choice but to end them myself.”

• ••••

Jhonny Chace considered himself a very patient man.

He had always known he was meant to be something bigger. Something more than a mere cog to keep society running until he rot apart and broke. Like his father. Life spent between bill stacks and coffee cups, jumping from office to office until he was too old to work. And what had the old man achieved? Nothing.

He had decided long ago he would not become his father. He wouldn’t work for others: Whatever he did, he would do it for himself. He was number one, number two and number three as well. And anything that stood before him would be removed. Not out of hate, not for some idiotic pursue of vengeance. No, he knew life all too well to mind such useless feelings. It was mere survival. “Nothing personal, just business” was his own personal motto, after all.

That’s why, when he learned from one of his ‘field men’ that there was some new wannabe Villain messing with him and his business, he wasted no time in cursing the bastard or yelling at his men for their incompetence (despite having more than enough right to). Instead, he immediately her down and made sure she wouldn’t bother him again until he dealt with her.

“Still, this is unsettling.” Jhonny looked at the report on his screen from the comfortableness of his luxury office chair, a fine glass of whiskey in one hand and a mouse in the other. “This says the traces left behind in the abandoned house belonged to a man… Yet the person reconsidering their life choices in my ‘guestroom’ is almost certainly a girl.” Unless it was some kind of new-generation gender issues thing. These days about, you couldn’t know for sure if you were talking to a man, a woman, a non-binary gender person or a rescue helicopter.

Of course, there was a big chance his men had made a little mistake. His expert had brought back one person to him. Nothing more, nothing less. And, in Jhonny’s experience, he was never wrong.

However…

“It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.” Jhonny looked outside the giant glass panel shielding his office from the savage wind that was normal in a building over fifty stores high. “I will warn my people to be on high alert until further notice. At this point, a ghost could come out of nowhere and jumpscare us… You never know.”

From his side, the vastness of his growing empire could be perfectly observed. Buildings tall enough to touch the Sun. Lines and lines of people, all under his control, one way or another. It was certainly a sight to warm one’s heart. And, the cherry on top, as if to make sure he was satisfied whenever he looked outside that window, a giant billboard with neon lights, announcing its name to anyone who, by any chance may have gotten there without knowing.

“QuickBrick & Co. : If you’re dealing with cement, we are your best choice!”

• ••••

At this point, I feel like I owe an explanation. The reader of this book might find him or herself somewhat confused over these past few events. Now, for the sake of enlightenment (and a logical order in this story), I shall reveal a teeny tiny piece of information that I owed to you, from a few chapters back.

I’m talking, of course, about the information Lawrence discovered after Ka… Ke…Eh… Red Beard’s interrogation.

You’ll see: Red Beard wasn’t merely blowing smoke when he claimed there were really big people behind them, and that pretty serious stuff would happen were something to happen to them (you can go back to the chapter and try to prove me wrong, though seeing how I’m the narrator, I would advise you against it). As it turned out, there was more truth in his words than what Lawrence initially suspected.

But, to make it all clear, let us talk a little bit about QuickBrick & Co.

The company was, without a doubt, one of the biggest, most important business in the construction line in the whole States Union. If not the best. Now, the thing about QuickBrick is, they are a company specialized in heavy construction, wide-scale projects and whatelse. To put it shortly, in the dart game of construction, they would be a ballista bolt.

However, twenty years isn’t nearly enough time for a single company to establish itself at the very top of its line of business. And it was exactly twenty years the time that had passed, from the current time of events, since Jhonathan Chase had opened the by then little business with nothing but his hands and a couple of paid workers. And so raises the question: how was such bubbling growth possible?

The smartest of you probably already know that answer.

Jhonathan Chase was an ambitious man. He wouldn’t settle for average. No, he would aim for the top, and he usually got what he wanted… By any means necessary.

In his case, this mean was contraband.

As it turns out, in Jhonny’s days of ‘vagabonding’ (Or what he liked to call reconnaissance on the overall situation) he had found a somewhat interesting offer from a desperate retired sailor. The actual details are uncertain, but to say that the general went along the lines of “I’ll get what you want where you want it, no questions asked.” It was a tempting offer, of course, but nothing Jhonny could work with. He had nothing to ship anywhere, even less in the tiny space provided by the old sailor (less than car trunk, really) on his boat.

And then the great idea came to him. He had no use for that offer… However, that didn’t mean others didn’t.

It was an unimportant side job. Something he did temporally, until he found better ways to earn money. But it was a start. And one thing led to another… and with Jhonny’s brains for business and a fair share of good luck, he was now the leader not only of one of the biggest construction companies, but also one of the most important oceanic contraband in the States Union.

Jhonny expanded his business, of course. He never touched the darkest side of the black market, though. Exotic animals? Of course. Banned merchandise? Sure thing. Drugs? Human trafficking? Not a chance in hell.

For some reason, the Yakuza didn’t seem to understand this.

It had been some time now since they had first reached out for him. They wanted to use his boats to import their drugs. It was simple, and it was lucrative for both sides. Except Jhonny didn’t want to, so he refused.

Big mistake.

One simply doesn’t say no to organized crime. No matter what kind. Yakuza were famous for cutting your head off and dissolving your body in acid. Not exactly the best adversary to pick up a fight with.

Yet, Jhonny said no again. He had enough power to stand his ground.

Or so he thought. Then all his empire started collapsing.

His ships went missing, or the merchandise was stolen, or caught by coast guard. Raw materials for processing had disappeared almost entirely, so suddenly it made no sense. Quite a good portion of his men resigned. Some beaten in the street by seemingly random punks. Others offered better job offers somewhere else. The means didn’t matter. The result was everything he had built in twenty years falling apart in a matter of months.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And Jhonathan Race was not scared of desperate measures.

So anyways, he started blasting.

Quite literally so.

He had decided that, if the Yakuza wouldn’t leave him alone, he wouldn’t leave them either. And there are few better ways to piss someone than blowing their house on their noses. So, starting with his home city, Worne YK, and moving on until they let him alone, he started bombing places.

Jhonny was no madman, of course. He made sure not to get innocent civilians killed. But he was no saint either. And one good way of making money, it turned out, was to offer his services to the victims of these ‘tragic accidents’. The Gahara Sweets and Cheat and the Brickback were mere victims caught in the crossfire. Some Jhonny couldn’t worry about.

And that’s where Red Beard and his homies came in. Theirs was a simple mission. They were supposed to blow up a Yakuza hideout disguised near an orphanage while the kids were out for a state-sponsored three day camping vacations. And return for their next assignment. Except they didn’t.

Lawrence knew all of this. He also knew that, by stepping into this problem, he was messing with both one of the greatest double-faced companies in all of the States Union, and the Yakuza, which would be self-explanatory as to why it was bad to mess around with. He also knew there was no turning point now: whatever he did, he would be into this mess for a very long time.

And hell, if he got out of it alive, he was ready to call it a win.

AuntieMaysLittleCousin

I swear to God I fell asleep about four times writing this chapter. I'm not even sure if I wrote it right... I guess you guys will have to help with the edit. But I wanted to release this one today so... Please bear with me.

On other news, new cover. Yey! I personally like it. I do have kind of a biass though.

Anyways, I'm off to sleep, I hope. Cheers!