I flopped back in my chair. "Holy shit."
Skylar shuffled closer to me and reached out to grab my hand. With how things had been going, I had almost started to think we were getting near the other end of the tunnel. The Bertolini's were not in control of New Ashby anymore. We were. As Jace would put it, their assets had been seized.
But now this? I didn't doubt him for a second, it all made sense, but was this a war we could win? I looked at Jace, at the calculating mind behind the eyes and knew, like always, he had a plan.
"Where would we even start?" I asked.
"That's the exact right question," said Jace, "and I've got the answer. First of all, the operation continues as normal here in New Ashby in the meantime. The bosses all know that I've got major personal issues with the Picollis. The Bertolinis directly helped them, and it goes without saying what they did to you. So these other bosses, they're kind of content to keep the situation at arm's length. They think either we, or the Picollis, or the Bertolinis will come out on top and then we'll fall back into line. Same old in-fighting shit that's been happening for over a hundred years. But we know we'll never be their bitches."
"Right."
"So, the problem with this is that as soon as we make a move directly against one of the families that isn't the Picollis or the Bertolinis, they'll know that this has … uh … transcended the personal and this war is now a matter of business. You see?" asked Jace.
"Yeah, that makes sense."
"When that happens, these lines between the families will get blurry like what happened between the Picollis and the Bertolinis. They might even disappear entirely. On one hand that will mean we can no longer pick them off one by one. On the other hand, that would mean we only have one monster to kill instead of a swarm. Either way, it doesn't change where we need to start."
"Which is?" asked Skylar.
"The first move we make has to come out of the blue and it has to be big and it has to hurt them where it counts the most. The wallet. The single biggest cash cow for the Old Mafia now is this ‘F' drug, and all its variants. It's taking the streets by storm, and it's raking in the money. Nobody can figure out how the fuck to make it, I've had top guys working on it and we can't do it. At first I thought it was coming from New Ashby, but it turns out it's not."
"But now you do know where it's coming from?" I asked.
"Yep. It's coming from Highston. That means the Acardi family is running it, and they were supplying the Bertolinis with enough product that I thought it was actually coming from New Ashby."
"How did you figure that out?"
"The police did it for me. I got a guy, haven't found a computer system he couldn't hack into yet, he's a genius with that shit. Anyway, I provide all the hardware he could possibly want, I keep him safe, and in return for all this fun I let him have, he's happy to take instruction. I thought that ‘F' was well beyond the point where the authorities could ignore it anymore so I wondered if they had any leads before I started the search from scratch. Turns out the cops think it's one guy who's manufacturing this. They're calling him "The F King" and they've got a bunch of people going undercover to try and work their way up the supply chain to get to him. No luck so far, but I'm sure we can do better."
"Better at what?"
Jace looked pointedly around each of the faces in room. "We're going to Highston. We're finding him. We're taking him out of the equation and we're going to kill every other fucking Acardi who gets in the way."