Chapter 95: How to Manage Your Anger

TL: LittlePeach

Campione.

A massive criminal federation with all of southern Italy in its grip, Italy's answer to the Triads.

Their business acumen is creative and vicious enough to make even the Triads shake their heads in disbelief.

They set up garbage-collection companies, collect disposal fees from the government, and illegally bury toxic waste in farmland; they pass off cheap Middle Eastern oil as premium Italian extra virgin olive oil and sell it all over the world.

Money laundering, sucking in the dirty funds of countless corporations worldwide, is a given, and of all their many ventures, the biggest moneymaker is, of course, the drug trade.

Their annual criminal revenue from these staggering enterprises comes to roughly 3.8 billion euros, nearly five trillion won.

And on top of that, this Scampia Housing Complex was Campione's front yard, where its members swaggered around in the open.

No one, not even the Naples police, has ever once dared to raid this place.

"Wh-what the hell! What's going on!"

Now, with the sudden explosion sowing the first seeds of chaos.

Ping, clink!

Inside the wrecked office, I pulled the pin on another grenade.

'Hff. Haah.'

The acrid stench of gunpowder packing my nostrils.

The shivering vibration of a grenade on the verge of bursting.

And my own heartbeat, swelling after the long wait.

'Yeah. This is it.'

Tap, tap-tap!

"There was an explosion inside the office!"

"Didn't somebody just go in there?"

While I counted down in my head, the murmur of approaching footsteps drew closer.

The more they clustered in one spot, the more grateful I was.

I only had nine grenades left, after all.

Plunk.

"Huh? Wha..."

"Is that...."

KABOOM!

Right after the second explosion, I slipped neatly out of the office.

Paying no real mind to the gangsters rolling on the floor, caught in the shrapnel, my next targets were the ones who'd hung back far enough to dodge the blast.

Fwip, fwip-fwip!

"Gaaack!"

"Hurgh!"

While I swept my eyes over them and pulled the trigger at my leisure, the gangsters standing there dumbstruck crumpled helplessly and hit the floor.

"F-fuck! We're under att...."

Fwip!

"Kack!"

The one who grasped the situation and moved fast became the next target.

Thwack, crash!

Men who'd gotten halfway to drawing their guns pitched forward and planted their faces into the floor.

"Ah, huh?"

The ones frozen stiff, denying reality while their comrades dropped one by one, became my final targets.

Fwip, fwip!

"...."

One bullet each.

Eight gangsters caught in the blast near the office.

Six dropped by gunfire.

Fourteen men in all, sprawled across the floor at once.

I took a quick moment to check myself over, too, but aside from a few holes in my clothes, there wasn't a problem in sight.

'Nobody coming up?'

With everything gone quiet, I stood still and listened for any reaction nearby.

Despite the shock of the explosions, no one was coming up from the floors below.

All thanks to the second-floor club's speakers, rattling the entire building that loudly.

"Looks like I can stir up another housing block or two."

Through the gaping corridor window, I gazed out at another Campione apartment stronghold in the distance.

With that much distance between us, there was no real reaction from over there, either.

I went back into the ruined office and opened the steel locker.

"One, two, three, four.... eight."

There happened to be a thick shopping bag sitting nearby, so I upended the box over it and shook every grenade in.

After grabbing two Parabellum magazines compatible with my pistol, there was nothing else worth taking.

"Let's see...."

I stepped out onto the terrace at the back of the office.

Looking down, the vacant lot on that side was conveniently full of junkies rolling around, high out of their minds.

"Alley-oop."

Hop!

Hugging the shopping bag to my chest, I lightly threw myself off.

Five stories of apartment building didn't even count as a fall anymore.

Whoooosh.

Thud!

"Nghk!"

"Ungh! Uh-uhh...."

The junkies, stoned as they were, freaked out at the sight of me dropping suddenly out of the sky.

Then, clap-clap.

Clap-clap-clap.

"Oooh...."

"Whoa...."

With vacant eyes, they began to applaud, dumbly.

I flashed a grin at the junkies' admiration, then got straight into the car I'd parked nearby.

Vrooom.

"La-di-da."

Before long, I arrived at another housing block a fair distance away.

As I drove around scouting the area for a while, sure enough, they were absorbed in business, no different from the place I'd just torn apart.

Only the club's layout and music style had changed; the noise was exactly the same.

'Just looking at it fills me right up.'

Every time I glanced at the shopping bag resting on the passenger seat, my heart swelled with pride.

I took three grenades from it, then headed straight into the building.

With the bass-heavy woofers shaking the whole building, I once again strolled past the second floor and up to the third.

"Hey, Asian. What's your business here?"

"This isn't a place the likes of you gets to come up to."

Once again, there were Mafia gangsters blocking the way.

Having been through it once, the second time was far easier.

"I'm here for a job. My specialties are abduction, murder, robbery, assault, extortion, arson, and body disposal."

"Ah, er...."

"R-right. Go on up."

When I shoved my business right in their faces, the man on watch duty led me up with a grudging look on his face.

Reaching the fifth floor and taking a good look around, the headcount was a bit smaller this time.

Most of the men were gathered in one spot, so naturally, we headed that way.

"Heehee. Look at that. She fought like hell at the start, but the second the camera comes out, she's bawling her eyes out."

"Tsk. What a fucking waste. I should've been there when they abducted her yesterday. She's exactly my type."

"Wipe your drool, bastard. Hey, hold the screen straight."

"Honestly, she's nothing special. Girls like her are a dime a dozen in the southern brothels."

"Yeah, sure, bastard. Your dick's so big."

The gangsters were huddled around a single phone screen, passing it between them.

Something about abducting a tourist, selling her to a brothel.

They snickered together over the porn they'd filmed themselves.

'Ten. Fewer here.'

Eight gangsters gathered around the video.

Two more chatting over cigarettes in a corner.

That was everyone.

"Ah, this is no time to be standing around. Let's hurry on inside."

The gangster escorting me had nearly joined the viewing party before snapping back to his senses.

Ping, clink!

But I had already made my call.

Rolllll.

"Hm?"

Someone spotted the round object rolling up to his feet and made a puzzled face.

While he blinked blankly, the grenade burrowed precisely into the center of the men crowded around the phone.

KABOOM!

"Wh-what the!"

By then, I had stepped back a couple of paces from the blast zone.

Watching the two men standing off on their own jump out of their skins, I pulled the trigger.

Fwip, fwip!

"Gkk!"

"Urk!"

Floor cleared.

Afterward, I headed for the office located in the same spot as before.

There was no steel locker inside.

The building layout was identical, so I'd secretly been hoping there might be something else, too.

'What a shame.'

So that's why there'd been fewer people than last time; this time, the response came back immediately.

Five or six men who'd been patrolling downstairs came bursting up the stairwell, shouting.

"What is it, what's going on!"

"Fuck, are we under attack or something?"

It was right as they discovered, faces frozen in horror, their comrades massacred all together in one cozy huddle.

Fwip, fwip.

"Guhk!"

"It really is an attack! We're under attack!"

Bang, ba-bang!

Screaming at the unexpected ambush, the gangsters reflexively opened fire on me.

They ducked behind the nearby pillars, settled into cover, and poked just their muzzles out to yank away at their triggers.

Bang! Ba-bang!

'Four left.'

Not that it mattered. I strolled across the corridor and angled my gun in from right beside them.

Fwip! Fwip!

"Augh!"

Fwip-fwip!

"Gack!"

Once the firefight wrapped up, the noise around me settled again.

Before long, an uneasy mood began to creep through the whole building.

"!!!, !"

The shock of a grenade could be papered over by the club's beat, one way or another, but repeated bursts of gunfire carry an entirely different kind of weight.

Sensing something was amiss, the club music cut out clean.

"...!!, !!!"

Glancing outside, I spotted a few people making a swift escape from the building.

There must have been other gangsters running the club below, because I could hear footsteps sprinting up the stairs in a hurry.

'Rather than keep poking at this place, better to flip at least one more building.'

The moment I made the call, I stepped out again onto the terrace connected to the office.

Below it, same as before, was a vacant lot with junkies crawling around.

Hop!

"There! The office door's open!"

The gangsters who'd just topped the stairs behind me were shouting, but my body was already busy savoring gravitational acceleration.

Thud.

"Unghh."

"Ooogh."

These junkies didn't seem to have it in them to applaud.

Setting my disappointment aside, I circled around the side of the building and hid myself among the club customers spilling outside.

It was just as I was approaching the clustered rows of parked cars.

"...Oh?"

Then, out of nowhere, a bright red convertible in the distance caught my eye.

A single car parked in a corner spot, visible through the gaps between countless vehicles.

"No way."

I headed for my own car first.

The parking area was chaotic with customers scrambling to flee as well, but the lot was so wide that pulling out wasn't hard.

I drove at my leisure to the parking lot in front of the other block.

"It's the one."

A smile crept onto my lips before I knew it.

With that crumpled front bumper, it was the car, all right.

Though where its owner had gone, I couldn't say.

"Heh."

So this must be how it feels to cross paths with a sworn enemy with nowhere to run.

Now that I'd finally gotten started on the work that needed doing, it seemed the heavens had decided to hand me a gift.

The urge welled up to pull every last pin in my bag right this second and dump them all inside that car.

But my anger was not so light a thing to be settled with a single grenade.

Hunger is the finest seasoning, after all.

'Good thing I borrowed the car.'

As it happened, the car Taebaek No. 1 had handed over was stocked with all sorts of useful equipment.

One of those, a GPS tracker, went into the convertible.

It had come with adhesive included so it could be mounted, but with the roof wide open, there was no need to bother.

After that, I strolled back to my own car.

"!!!, !!!!"

"!!, !!!"

Word that I'd already torn up two apartment blocks must have spread to the other buildings nearby.

People who'd been partying in the untouched blocks started getting herded outside.

"Why the hell are you kicking us out!"

"What! Do you even know who I am!?"

Ignoring their shouting, the armed Mafia members began scanning the area with sharp, suspicious eyes.

Bang, ratatat!

As if to psych themselves up, they raked their rifles at the empty sky.

"Aaaieeee!"

"Wh-what on earth is going on!"

Only at the gunfire did people finally start screaming and running.

It was as countless junkies got kicked and sent tumbling by the feet of the fleeing crowd.

"...Found him."

The moment I saw his face, a simmering anger boiled up in one corner of my chest.

The bastard who'd crumpled my Vespa and hocked a wad of spit at me while I lay sprawled on the ground.

He squeezed out through the clustered ranks of Mafia men on watch and made for his car.

The urge flared up to floor the accelerator right then and flatten him along with his car.

'Hold it.'

But in the end, just barely, I held it in.

There were grenades and an LPG gas cylinder in my car, and countless civilians, even small children, all around.

Grrrrrrr.

'Hold it, Le Wei inside me.'

Somewhere along the way, my urge had earned itself a name.

Still, giving it a name did seem to help a little.

*

Author's Note

Le Wei: ...?

*****

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