Chapter 193 - Compulsory Time Off

At the basement of the mall, in a dedicated room just for the vipers, Niko winced as Damian poured a healing potion over some of the wounds Niko had. An awkward silence fell between the two of them, Niko clearly remembering what Damian had said during the fight.

Keith glanced between the two of them, clearly sensing the ‘strange’ feel of the atmosphere. “Niko, thanks for helping out.” Keith offered, hoping to break the weird sensation developing in the room.

“It was my fault, I didn’t do my job well enough. If I had focused more on security, we wouldn’t even be in this mess. I don’t even know how many of our men have been compromised.”

Keith frowned, aware of the implications. It remained yet to be seen if Lionel’s gang was the only one infiltrating the Seven Snakes from within. If such a small outfit could do it, how about the other major gangs? “We need a purge, but we have to purge them without tripping an alarm.”

“Who do we even trust anymore?” Damian sighed, having lost faith in the unity of the Seven Snakes. They had grown too big, too fast, resulting in a lack of security.

A rapping sound on the door could be heard, with Kyle and Mari entering, no longer wearing their armour. Mari’s face was still covered in sweat, her short hair slicked back with a glint under the underground arctech lantern. “That better be the last training session.” She snarled to Kyle, obviously puckered out.

“It isn’t. We still have to clean up the gang.” Kyle remarked. “The process will be painful, but necessary.”

“But how are we going to pinpoint who is betraying us? We can’t just accuse everyone.” Niko shook his head. “If you accused me of betraying the gang when I did not, my morale will plummet. It’s too hard to pull off during our reconstruction when we need everyone.”

“We won’t be doing that upfront - there’s an exceedingly simple plan in order to flush out the people. How many associates do we have in Raktor right now working?”

“Two thousand five hundred, plus a few more thousand civilian workers.” Keith asked, curious as to what the big plan was.

Mari’s eyes darted around the room. “Oh, I know. Kyle’s going to put slave collars on everyone and force them to stick to where they are. Sounds just like him.”

“Who the hell is this girl?” Keith glared at Mari, slightly expecting Kyle to kick her out, but instead Kyle ignored the disrespectful tone of Mari.

“Slave collars don’t work – they only serve to increase discontent and lack of loyalty among the people. We won’t be able to hold the gang together if we saddle everyone with a slave collar.” Kyle waved his hand dismissively. “But at least you’re thinking. Keith, Niko, Damian, this is our new hired mage, Mari.”

If Niko had water in his mouth he would have flooded the room immediately. First there’s Keith both better and younger than me, and now there’s a fucking kid who can wield arcia with her bare hands?! What the fuck?!“She’s just a kid! How could she be a mage? She looks weak as hell!” Niko exclaimed in anger, his insecurity bleeding through.

Mari bristled, staring down at Niko despite Niko being slightly taller than her. “Oh yea? Who the fuck are you? Last I saw, you were getting hopelessly outnumbered by weak ass thugs; sounds pretty ‘weak as hell’ to me. When I learnt Kyle was the boss, I didn’t think the vipers of the Seven Snakes would be this bad.”

The three vipers were obviously incensed, but relaxed when Kyle delivered a sharp thwack to the back of Mari’s head. “Cool it; you’re lower in rank than them. The three of them have seen more shit combined in their lives than their entire childhood, and they worked hard to get to where they are now. Now, focus!”

Kyle sighed as the room cooled down, clearly aware of the rivalry developing between his subordinates. Seems like nothing ever changes no matter where I go. Sometimes handling a criminal empire was also about wrangling social relationships and emotions.

Kyle had a straightforward solution to those who betrayed him in his former life: torture and/or kill. It was the cleanest, and if anyone came back for revenge, he would kill them, their families, and their relatives, and make sure that anyone related to them or even remotely interested in helping them. It was rudimentary to hijack local Council databases and track down their identity, even those falsified.

But Kyle knew where that road had led him– the betrayal by Xanius. Why would he take the same path when it had already let him down once? He had now seen the results of him treating his men well, resulting in Niko outright rejecting Lionel despite Niko knowing he might face certain death. That was the true loyalty that Kyle sought from his men, not one solely propped up by fear and violence.

Of course, Kyle was not going to stop being ruthless to outsiders. Instead, he decided to take things differently when dealing with internal affairs to prevent the same betrayal from happening. Being needlessly ruthless didn’t seem to pan out too well then.

Kyle called for Orisa’s clone, immediately asking questions about the holding capacity of Culdao Peaks and how fast the goblins could build something that sounded akin to a holiday resort. Keith squinted his eyes, trying to match what Kyle asked about the total number of associates. “What are you planning exactly?”

“It’s time for some compulsory time off.”

***

The next day…

Lucetta stared at the paper in front of her on her desk, trying to read it carefully, her finger tracing each written line for any typos or errors. “Great, loan agreement complete.” Leaning back in her chair, she sighed and relaxed, stretching her arms outwards and accidentally knocking over the arctech lamp right behind her.

“Oh shit, sorry, Dean… huh?”

Instead of the same usual guy that she had been working with, there was no one at the table, something Lucetta found extremely odd. She tried to rack her brains, thinking back to a day when the guy had not been sitting there. Dean is usually always on-time and almost always working overtime. Did something happen? A plague?

Lucetta looked around the office, noticing a few other empty tables as well, her suspicions growing even stronger. She spotted Keith entering the office, making up her mind to ask him about it. She quickly placed the edited contract on a pile of them before carrying them over to Keith’s table. “Sir, all done! Verified.”

“Good job, Lucetta.”

“Sir, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I think there’s something wrong in the office.”

“Something wrong? What do you mean?”

“There’s a few clerks missing, and I don’t recall hearing anything about what happened to them.”

“Oh, you mean Dean and the others? They are on vacation.” Keith smiled but soon became afraid as he watched Lucetta’s expression darken significantly. “Err… Lucetta, are you okay?”

Lucetta’s eyes twitched, her mind harkening back to the last two months of back-breaking work. “Vacation…? They get to go on VACATION!? And when were you going to tell me about it? Huh?”

“The vacation location is not set up for maximum capacity, and we still need people here to hold down the fort. Look I’m not going on vacation yet either, and both you and I need to cover for the rest. It’s a rotation thing implemented by the boss, so you’ll get yours in turn.”

“So I have to cover for fucking Dean now on top of my own work!?” Lucetta wanted to burst out about all the insane hours that she had been working but soon realised Keith had also put in an equal amount of hours, if not more. This working environment is pissing me off!

“Look, you’ll get to go on vacation in a week, I promise,” Keith assured her in hushed tones, trying to calm Lucetta down.

“Then why are you whispering it to me like you don’t want others to hear about it, hmm?”

“You know for a fact that there will be a riot for who wants to go first! I can’t have everyone going on vacation at the same time!”

Lucetta found that rational, knowing that the mall and the Seven Snakes still had to function somehow. “You promise? Really?”

“Yes, really, really, now please stop holding that pen like a knife!” Keith smiled meekly, letting out a sigh of relief as Lucetta returned to her own seat grumpily, plopping down onto the chair.

During the lunch break, the remaining clerks were all aware of the missing people. “Hey, if Dean isn’t around, who the hell is going to handle the daily payments to the vendors and suppliers? We need to fulfil our end of the contract, and I can’t move forward with my tallying of goods without his approval.” The clerks gossiped about the clerks not at work, mentioning how hard it was to take over their roles.

Lucetta realised just how critical Dean was to the operation of the Seven Snakes, herself slightly surprised that a single small clerk held such a role in the first place. Apparently, Dean had been working at this role under Keith even before the establishment of the hypermall, not missing a single workday.

“I heard Dean even came into work sick one day – he truly is a model worker. Not that I want to be like him, though. If I got hit by the same illness as him, I wouldn’t even think about coming into the hypermall.”

Lucetta gritted her teeth, more and more infuriated by how much work just got dumped onto her.

Through the rest of the workday, the remaining clerks, too, began to grumble, complaining about the additional workload that Keith was layering on top of them. “Gone for three days? Do you know how much shit needs to be done in three days!” One of the clerks shot back at Keith, who was now desperately going around the office trying to calm the clerks down.

“Look, if it makes you all feel any better, I’ll do my fair share as well. Lucetta, if you’re done you can work on Dean’s-“ The snapping sound of a pen made it clear to Keith to not continue saying anything.

Lucetta stomped her feat as she walked over to Dean’s table, her fierce grip nearly fracturing the wooden table’s surface. Calm yourself, Lucetta; treat this as a learning experience. She took a deep breath, pulling out Dean’s list of work tasks to complete.

Dean was in charge of the payment of vendors for supplies and other miscellaneous stuff – minor items that the gang and mall needed to get by. Lucetta was not acquainted with accounting but was well-versed in basic math and budgeting. She pulled up the last two weeks’ payment records, trying to double-check Dean’s work and stay up-to-date.

However, as she trawled through the historical receipts, she noticed a clear discrepancy that didn’t make sense. “Hey, Ally, you mentioned you tally the goods bought from vendors and suppliers?” She asked one of the clerks who was complaining about Dean leaving.

“Yea, what’s up? Are you taking over Dean’s role now?”

“I need to cross-check something.” Lucetta hauled the accounts book over, matching with the logistic side on whether the goods were accurate or not. With every transaction, the records seemed to be perfectly clean, causing Lucetta to doubt her own math skills. Did I calculate wrongly? If I’m right, there should be more than a million rakels overpaid to vendors for the wrong amount of items.

As if on cue, the following transaction proved to be suspicious – in fact, Lucetta had never even heard of the vendor before. “Ally, who’s this vendor?”

“uh…. Huh? I've never seen that name before.” Ally leaned over, her eyes scanning the document. “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Check the date of delivery, maybe it’s a related name or you just wrote it down wrong.”

“Hmm… I don’t see that name anywhere. Who the hell is Dean paying to? We should report this to Keith.”

Lucetta quickly brought up the discrepancy to Keith, who only grinned in response as though he had already been expecting it. Lucetta wasn’t dumb, immediately picking up on what was happening. “You… you had them go on vacation so you could expose their wrongdoing.”

“Exactly. Dean has been coming in every day like clockwork. Either he’s the ideal employee, or he’s got something to hide.” Keith nodded, smiling at Lucetta’s ability to infer so quickly.

Lucetta quickly leaned over the table, whispering to Keith. “Listen, I’ve been hiding something too. I’ve been hiding it at my desk. If you send me away for five, no ten, no twenty days of vacation, you might be able to find it. ”

“Nice try, Lucetta.”