Mob Sorcery 4 - Ch5

“If we’re worried the Yakuza just tried to intercept Nina and me, should we be worried about Mei?” Vince asked.

“Yes,” Alessia said flatly. She crossed her arms over her breasts and her tail swished once, low against the ground. “I’m doubtful whatever happened was anything more than a fishing attempt for info, but we can’t drop our guard for any reason.”

The other women nodded in agreement.

Nina leaned against the table with her gauntlet. “Where are we meeting her? I’m assuming the estate again to avoid prying eyes?”

To everyone’s surprise, Alessia shook her head. “No. Houou have spread so many rumors that we’re working with the Yakuza, that a public meeting will hardly raise eyebrows. We’ll meet in the Sommet. I’ve booked out a restaurant.”

Ah, the ease with which Alessia said she booked out an entire restaurant in one of the most popular areas in the city. Every so often, Vince was reminded of the gap between the billionaire wolfgirl and the lower classes of the city. Just how much money was she dropping for a single meeting?

“Why not here?” he asked. “It would be cheaper.”

A grimace creased Alessia’s beautiful face. “We still don’t know the extent of Mei’s magic or what she excels in. Inviting her inside our wards could grant her access to more secrets than I’d appreciate her knowing, or let her sabotage us in ways we may not discover until it’s too late. She doesn’t need to rip my skin off and wear it to be a threat.”

He nodded.

As an eight-tail fox, Mei stood as a powerful ally—and a potential enemy who could take out the Lionettis by herself. Even if Mei lacked experience as a warrior, her raw power allowed her to crush Nina and Vince by herself.

He expected Daji to titter and add something, but she remained oddly silent.

Alessia looked at all of them, then the map on the table. She bit her lip.

After several seconds passed, she nodded. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Don’t keep Pola waiting too long, Vince.” Her cheeks reddened. “And don’t be a stranger. I had expected to see you yesterday morning, even if Pola clams up when I bring up New Year’s Eve.”

Fia snorted. “Cute. She’s embarrassed over how plastered she got. You know how many enforcers saw her dry fucking Vince in the club?”

Alessia ran a hand down her face. “No, but I can guess. At least she was clothed.”

“I mean, she tried stripping down.”

A strange noise escaped Alessia as her face became more tomato-like by the second.

“I’m impressed you can remember,” Nina said. “Why the hell did we wake up naked in Vince’s bed, by the way?”

Lucia whistled. “By ‘we,’ you mean…?” The bodyguard pointed at Fia and Nina.

Fia rolled her eyes. “Pola wanted to go back to the penthouse. Nina, you wanted to go back to the apartment. The two of you grappled for a bit. Vince broke you up before Pola broke anything and ended up washing dishes for a month.”

Alessia sighed. “And I bet Pola slunk back home in a drunken stupor. Assuming she didn’t stay up drinking with the girls until even earlier in the morning.”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I’m pretty sure we had, uh, plans with Vince. Except we were all drunk as shit and basically collapsed. Funny what that much alcohol does.” Fia shrugged. “So, yeah.”

With the newfound knowledge of her sister’s NYE escapade, Alessia made her retreat. Vince watched her and Lucia go, then turned to see Nina and Fia eyeing each other off.

Nothing was said for far too long. He cleared his throat, but they ignored him.

“I’ll head down and say hi to Pola,” Nina eventually said. “Keep her from doing anything silly if she learns Vince is up here and ignoring her. Like Alessia said, don’t keep her wait too long.”

The lioness messed up his hair before leaning down for a kiss, but waited for him to initiate it. He obliged. She shifted in his arms, pretending to be demure and meek for a short while. Her tail wrapped around his leg and he wondered if she’d actually leave.

After several long seconds of staring into his eyes, she strode out of the room.

Fia stared down at the huge map laid across the table. Vince wasn’t sure if she had genuinely ignored them, and realized he didn’t care.

“Should I ask what that was about, or am I better off not knowing?” he asked the wolfgirl.

He circled the table while waiting for an answer. Her blonde tail shuffled against the floor nervously. Fia shot him an awkward sidelong look and pushed her hair behind her ears.

“Alessia gave you that big explanation about why Pola’s not involved in the heist, right?” she said.

He nodded.

“Well, it’s only partially true.” She sighed and looked away from him.

Her figure appeared smaller than usual, and he sidled up next to her. He wrapped an arm around her and she pressed against him. Her tail whapped against the back of his legs and her ears twitched happily.

“Even if I’m not officially consigliere, Alessia’s given me the power and responsibility in all but name,” Fia explained. “This is my first job in the new position. I need to prove myself.”

“Unlike all the times you proved yourself as a capo?” Vince asked drily.

“That’s different. Back then, I handled a lot of stuff, but even if things went wrong for a big job, Pola would wear the shit. Now? I’m officially in charge, not just a capo being subordinated stuff by Alessia and Pola. So…” She bit her lip. “I didn’t tell Nina, but she’s sharp like that. I could get her to handle the heist and it would be easy. She’s done this a dozen times before.”

“Maybe not to this extent, but yeah, I get it.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not ignoring her expertise entirely, right? That was a big reason Alessia hired her.”

“Oh, shit no. I’d be a shit consigliere if I cut Nina out of the planning phase. But I want to get as much done as I can without her, and then use her as my advisor to catch what I miss. Nina’s like the cheat sheet for an exam. If I ask her too early, I learn jack shit. Also, uh…” Fia chuckled, scratching the back of her neck. “Kiyoko’s more interested in getting you involved in the planning. If she’s behind the stunt with the SUV, it was probably because I’ve kept you away from planning and she wants time with you.”

What a benign view of things.

Vince reached out and tapped the huge map. He’d wondered if it was canvas, but it was a heavy paper of some sort.

And rather than a map, it turned out to be detailed building plans. Multiple levels were crammed onto a single huge piece of paper, including various handwritten notes that had been digitally scanned and reproduced.

“Is this our target?” he asked.

“Hopefully,” Fia said. “It’s an old storage facility the Sorcerer’s Guild once used for magical artifacts. Houou bought it nearly twenty years ago. Given how little they appear to use it and the expense of renovating a place built to such a high level of magical reinforcement, it’s unlikely it’s changed much.”

“Even if they’re storing a soul egg in it?”

“It already has three vaults.” The wolfgirl ran her finger across the map and pointed out three small rooms, each of which lay behind airlock chambers inside the building. “The only thing Kiyoko thinks they’ve added is a new building for staff. A prefab structure outside the main building isn’t in the plans, probably because the guild automated protection of the facility. They’re probably keeping the security team and soul egg extraction staff there.”

Vince looked at the exterior layout on the map. There wasn’t much room on it for a new building. “That sounds like a weakness to me. This place will be warded like Camelot but I don’t see how the exterior fence can hold any powerful wards. They’d have to be in the main building.”

Fia nodded. “That’s our thinking as well. I’m trying to dig up what I can about the facility from guild archives, but that’s expensive and time consuming to do without alerting Houou. We should assume the wards protecting the main building are effectively impregnable. Even so, this is more like a brute force bank heist thank something fancy you’d see in the movies.”

“So we’re not tossing the soul egg between our backs for ten minutes while the guards comically fail to spot it,” he said drily. “I figured.”

The two of them stared at the building layout. Even with the whole thing on paper before them, it didn’t help Vince much.

He didn’t work with building plans much, let alone on a scale like this. Visualizing the building and what they needed to do proved difficult.

“Why paper?” he asked.

“Kiyoko brought it in. I assume she prefers working on paper, although it’s probably easier for something of this scale. Working on this digitally would be a nightmare to zoom in and out, plus scroll across.” Fia shuddered.

Vince could imagine that. Once they had a bunch of people in the same room, they’d all want to focus on different things.

With a big sheet of paper, it could be pinned to a wall and everyone could cluster around it. Easy. Sometimes the old methods worked best.

“I think we need to scope the facility out before we commit to any plans,” Vince said. “If Houou have altered the layout, then we’re flying blind. The internal layout is one thing, but we can at least see what it looks like externally.”

Fia had given him a sharp look, but her face softened as he spoke. “Good. I’d worried you wanted to try to break in early. That would be nuts.”

“I don’t have a death wish.”

“I’ll mention to Kiyoko the idea we want to see it in person for planning. I still have three major problems to deal with, though.”

She turned her back to the map and leaned against the table. The room’s windows were internal to the building and blacked out with magic, making the room feel almost claustrophobic.

Of all the rooms on this level, Vince liked this one the least. It had a sterile, business-focused atmosphere that Alessia typically avoided in the tower. The atrium was an altar to opulence, her office a self-contained mansion that felt lived in, and even the hallways possessed an old-fashioned feel that avoided the sterility of office cubicles.

Not so in this room. A stock photographer would love it.

Fia rubbed the bridge of her nose and Vince placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Sounds like you need a break,” he said.

“Let me at least say my piece.” But she shot him a smile. “My problems can’t be solved so easily, but you might be able to mull them over. The first is easy. We need to work out how much muscle to take. You and Nina are one thing, but how many capos and enforcers go with you? How heavily do we tap into our vaults of magic tools and infusions?”

“I assume we’ll have a better idea after we meet with Mei,” he said.

“Ideally. I still worry. Even our best capos will be facing grim odds. If anything goes wrong, they’re the most likely to die. Money only goes so far.”

That, Vince understood. He was only taking this job because he felt they had a shot with Nina and the Yakuza together.

If he thought he was going to die, there was no chance he’d take the job. But for the Lionetti enforcers, the choice might come down to walking away from the Family or accepting the job. Alessia would offer them a huge wad of cash, but they were corporate enforcers and taking dangerous jobs was part of the deal.

“What else?” he asked.

“Getting inside is one thing, but once we’re in, somebody needs to be able to crack security,” Fia said. “The internal wards will be the sort of thing that only specialists will be able to crack. I need to check with Nina if she has anything in her bag of tricks, but I doubt your dragon can crack the equivalent of a bank vault.”

He shook his head. “I’d run dry, even if I started downing infusions.”

The difference between building wards and ordinary barriers was the depth of power backing them. A personal barrier could only stop so much magic at once before shattering, but building barriers and wards could be powered by generators. As such, breaking one required specialized spells, immense power, or exhausting the generator.

Vince’s reservoir was deep, but not “building generator” deep. He could crack light building wards at best, but even that was far from a sure thing.

“Kiyoko said she had a vault-cracker. I wanted a backup option, in case they prove unreliable or…” Fia trailed off, then sighed. “Well, there’s the third problem. Kind of. See, we need to determine handlers during the operation. We have a basic plan and it’s dangerous.”

He raised an eyebrow and waited.

“Mei is going to shroud the entire facility in her own wards, cutting off communications and teleportation. That way, even if they spot us and try to disable their own wards to get a message out, they can’t do it. No reinforcements. Downside? Mei will be there.” Fia met his gaze as her shoes tapped on the floor. “We’ll need an external handler to manage the operation, plus somebody with you. I don’t like it.”

“You’re worried about a double-cross,” Vince said. “If you’re outside, Mei can just kill you and we’ll have no clue. If you’re inside, she can give the Yakuza different info and orders to set us up.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “My plan is for us to have two handlers. One inside, one outside. Nothing can stop Mei double-crossing us, but if she does then we’ll know immediately. I just need somebody I trust to handle the operation work on the inside.”

“You’re staying outside?”

Fia snorted. “Alessia won’t let me go in with you. What’s the point of making me consigliere if I immediately get myself killed? No, I’ll need to hire somebody. Somebody we can trust not to betray us. They’ll have to be a former capo. I’ll speak with a few and then set up a meeting.”

Her tail wagged slowly, striking the legs of the chairs. He rubbed her shoulder with his fingers. Fia’s eyes tightened and she refused to look at him.

“Not sure I can offer much advice,” he admitted. “If it helps, Nina could act as handler on the inside if you want to avoid sending somebody else in. You’re already worried about getting people killed on this job.”

“I know, but…” She bit her lip. “It needs to be done right. What happens if you trigger a ward that cuts off comms? Nina might be busy fighting, so an internal handler could—”

“Be focused on not dying when a six-tail fox tears into us,” Vince said, tightening his grip. “That’s the exact reason Alessia won’t send you in. Talk it over with Nina, Fia. Speaking of which, we’re late for drinks.”

He yanked her away from the table, eliciting a yelp. Her tail flailed about and she grabbed his jacket in surprise.

“Vince!” she gasped.

“I bet you’ve been holed up here all day, and probably weren’t any better yesterday.” He ran his fingers along Fia’s jaw, causing her to shudder in his grip. “Pola is waiting for us. Let’s head down, have some drinks and fun, and relax for the night. Tomorrow’s another day. We have weeks to plan. Hmm?”

Fia’s wolf ears flattened against her head. She glowered at him.

“You’re being unfair,” she said.

He scratched beneath her chin and she nearly panted. Her head instinctively tilted upward, welcoming his attention. Then her eyes widened and she leaped backward.

“Don’t do that,” she hissed, face red.

“Pola loves it when I do that,” he said.

“Of course she fucking does, that traitor,” Fia muttered.

“Especially in bed.”

She stared at him, before running a hand down her face. “Maybe. And wipe that grin off that your face.”

Her hand swatted his arm as she strode past, her tail kicking up a storm on the way. He followed her to the elevators. The bodyguards from earlier remained outside, still intent on their game.

The capo bar remained the same as always, albeit restored to full glory now that Christmas was over and the capos had their special drinking hole back. An L-shaped bar glowed in the corner, complete with far too many bottles of spirits sat in front of a crystal splashback. While a handful of tables occupied one side, the occupants of the bar piled into the black leather couches and booths on the other side of the room.

Nina stood out among the smaller wolfgirls among the couches, but Vince ignored them at first. Instead, he walked up to the bar. A bartender wolfgirl trotted up to him.

“Do anything fun over Christmas, Liz?” he asked the bartender.

Liz shot him a smile. “I steered well clear of the Saturnalia celebrations, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve heard you didn’t.” Her ears twitched as she looked at Fia.

Fia hunched her shoulders. “Does everyone know?”

“I dunno, Pola, do you think we know that Fia’s fucking your mate?” one of the other capos called out.

The gaggle of capos cackled when Fia whirled on them, fire in her eyes. A silver-haired wolfgirl rose from the pack, dark cocktail in hand.

Pola Lionetti matched her sister in build and looks, but with a wild, untamed streak rather than Alessia’s polished beauty. An impressive bust attempted to escape the top beneath her fur-lined jacket, and she wore a miniskirt. Long silver hair cascaded past her ass, but only a single wolf’s ear twitched atop her beautiful head. Green eyes glanced between Vince and Fia.

Pouting, Pola bounced up to Vince. “You kept me waiting. Everyone else got to see you before I did, and I invited you here.”

He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into a kiss. Her eyes widened, but she leaned into him greedily. Her free arm wrapped around him. She plonked her glass down on the bar before holding him against herself and trying to suck his soul out through his mouth.

When he broke the kiss, Pola nibbled on his lip, unwilling to give him more than a fraction of an inch of separation.

“I take it you’re not worried about Fia,” he said drily.

Pola blinked, then looked at Fia, who stared back.

“Oh. Hi, Fia,” Pola said. “Did you want a turn?”

A breathless laugh escaped Fia. The capos practically deafened them with their raucous laughter, and Nina shook her head.

At least Vince didn’t need to worry about Pola and Fia fighting over him. Nina, on the other hand…

Pola shot a triumphant look back at the lioness as she preened, leaning against him. She even pulled Fia closer, as if the fact both wolfgirls were with Vince was proof of something.

For the first time, Vince realized he actually had three girlfriends. Three girlfriends in the same room, in fact.

He wondered if he’d regret that tonight. Even if he didn’t, he was about to find out how they all got along in close proximity with him around.

- - - - -

Commentary: This chapter is a little shorter than usual, because I deleted a fair bit of the Fia discussion. It was turning into a big talkfest of heist planning that I realized was better suited to be done over time and in a more dynamic manner (e.g. with Vince actually looking at the facility, or when with Mei). I got some serious writer's block with this chapter too.

Otherwise, there'll be some harem shenanigans before resuming the heist planning. Vince hasn't actually had all three of them in one place due to the timing of when he got together with Fia (or, really, Fia with any of them at all).