The F King:A Bad Boy Romance(67)

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."