6. Obi #2
“Take Ryu,” I said. “Both of you will be sufficiently intimidating. Remind the Director of the immense amount of blackmail we have hanging over his head.”
Ryu snorted. “Oh, I won’t let him forget.”
“What do we do then, Obi?” Leona asked. She started ticking off on her fingers. “Information. Money. Guns. Should we hit them back?”
“Yes,” I replied. “But Greco won’t bleed out. Not like how we attacked Volpe and drained his resources. Greco will just replace the men we kill.”
“So we need to go hard at his weaknesses,” Leona said. “With a bang.”
The problem was that Greco didn’t have many.
“Yes,” I said. “We need to strike purposefully, but we’re racing against the clock. Once the Camorra puts roots in New York…” I trailed off, remembering the moments of my past where they’d rolled over entire cities, sinking their claws into its people and systems.
“We won’t be able to get them out,” Leona finished, her mouth tight. “We’ll be finished.”
I let out a sigh. The Camorra were a parasite. “Yes.”
The plan would need to adjust as we went, but Greco was as brilliant as he was ruthless. He would expect our resistance and attempt to crush it. His grip was iron. We only had so much time before we were crushed within it.
“How do you know this?” Volpe asked. “You speak like you know him personally.”
I watched him from the corner of my eye while I circled our little gathering. I’d told our family some of my past, but sharing it again with Volpe set me on edge.
“As you likely know, the Camorra have enormous influence in Nigerian criminal gangs. They fund them and train them. In return, these Nigerian gangs pay a portion of their revenue to the Camorra, and the Camorra recruits from them. I was hand-picked as a promising prospect for future leadership.”
“In the Camorra?” Volpe asked, surprised.
I shook my head. “No, of course not. They’d never allow an outsider, but they work to instill loyalty in their recruits to empower them and better control them. I was one of those men.”
“Did you ever meet him?” Volpe asked.
I looked down at my hands. At the phantom blood that coated them. “I did. A few times.”
Leona’s eyes went wide. “You did?”
I rubbed my chin while the past enveloped me.
“About a week after I arrived in Italy for training, I saw him for the first time. I was at the Camorra compound in Campania getting assignments—in those days, I acted as an enforcer for them. I trafficked their drugs and worked in nightclubs to extort money. Many businesses in Italy pay the protection tithe, the pizzo, to the Camorra, and it was my job to gather it. When I saw him, Greco was leaving the compound in a caravan of armored cars with dozens of guards protecting him. Everyone moved around him. Like he was the center of their gravity, and all bodies in his space acted through his permission alone. I was almost…enamored with the idea of him. He never looked afraid, never watched his back. He was in complete control, completely safe, and he knew it.”
I blinked myself out of the memory and found Leona’s eyes piercing my soul. That woman saw me from the inside out. She knew how deeply I needed that control, that safety.
I envied Greco for it.
“Why do you hate them so much?” Volpe asked, drawing my attention. “If they trained you, taught you…what made you hate them enough to spend all these years planning to take them down?”
I leaned against the back of my chair. “A few months into my time in Italy, another soldier and I were assigned to work together collecting the pizzo. He’d just returned home from Colombia, where the Camorra was funding the rise of a new cartel that was trying to take over cocaine production in exchange for a portion of the proceeds and product.
I asked the man if this was common—if the Camorra often worked in other countries.
The man laughed. He said the Camorra funds groups all over the world to destabilize the area or to use them to control resources.
Then they inevitably swoop in to take full control.
They give these enterprises money. In turn, they own them and control them, while everyone does their bidding. ”
“Damn,” Leona breathed. “That’s how they expand. That’s how they control so much and have so much power.”
I nodded.
“They sound like the fucking CIA or something,” Caspian scoffed.
I shrugged. “Similar. I imagine that’s why the CIA didn’t mind working with Luciano and purchasing guns, likely at a steep discount.
However, the Camorra is the most consolidated power in the criminal underground.
They let no other organization grow strong enough to pose a genuine threat.
If they feel threatened, they attack and they eliminate. ”
Volpe braced his elbows on his knees. “But this is personal to you. Why?”
My eyes slid to his, a calculating look on his face that I recognized. My head tilted to the side. “Yes. It is personal.”
Leona sucked in a breath. “Is that when…?”
“Yes,” I said quietly, straightening my back.
“In Italy, I found out they funded the group that killed my parents. When the vigilante group I had joined destroyed them, the Camorra swept in and backed us instead. With their money and power, our group grew. They acted like our benefactors when it was their fault we existed in the first place. My hometown was only unsafe because they stuck their greedy fingers into my country, and my parents paid the price.”
Ryu ran his hand through his hair. “Fuck, Obi. You never told me any of this. When did you and I meet in this timeline?”
“Once I realized the truth, I kept my head low. I swore to myself I’d figure out a way to end them.
So I spent months acting dutifully, learning as much as I could, and keeping my eyes open for an opportunity.
I started watching Greco after that. Observing, listening, waiting.
I encountered him a few times, but he never took much interest in me.
I met you, Ryu, about a year later when I had enough respect to start the Shadows. ”
“And you decided contract killing could not only make you the money you needed to fight back against them, but it could also give you the contacts,” Leona said.
“Yes,” I answered. “I knew it wouldn’t be immediate, and I knew I couldn’t do it by myself, but I decided I would bide my time.
It would take careful planning, violence, and commitment, but I was suited to that.
It was a chess match, and I was playing the long game.
The issue we face now is that the board is not the same as I planned. We need to adjust.”
Volpe locked eyes with me again, and I saw a familiar sense of planning within them. The wheels were turning inside his head just the same as mine.
Perhaps he would be a useful tool after all.
A wave of quiet went over our group while the first step of the plan settled in. Ciel already had his tablet out. Wynn put his chin on Ciel’s shoulder, watching him type. Leona looked like she wanted to ask more questions, but she gave me a small smile instead.
I had spent eleven years planning to destroy them. My family would live in peace, or I would die trying.