Mistakenly Forgotten

4. A Gift to Remember

Lucas’s, usual clean and tidy office was an entire mess. The two parallel double couches were torn into pieces, while the glass coffee table; laid broken and scattered, the wooden legs of the table slammed into the right glass wall that cracked up completely, the ebony desk scratched as if hit by something hard over and over again. The book shelf right behind the desk, distorted entirely with its frames and antiques, now turned into pieces scattered all over the now scratched wooden floor. What once was a swivel chair inside the office now laid outside through the small glass door on the left, thrown right through it, while it was still closed.

The three; Nick, Ariana and Vincent shook their heads in utter disbelief and looked at Lucas who just got off his phone.

“Who was it?” Nick questioned, stepping ahead while cringed, as the glass pieces scrunched right underneath his feet.

Walking casually towards the minibar, Lucas pressed onto the button as a small portion of the bookshelf on the right corner that was already broken, separated into two and revealed a neatly stacked minibar. He fixed himself a drink and turned to smirk with triumph at his brother.

“My men in New York.” He shrugged and sipped over his drinks.

Nick only shook in head in complete disbelief, “You can’t possibly be thinking about it? It hasn’t even been an hour to the raid!” he c****d at his brother.

“Thinking? I am doing this. That mother fucker dared to touch us, defy our name. Now his head on my broken shelf will be a mark of it.”

Nick rolled his eyes in complete annoyance, walking towards the minibar he fixed himself a burboun while passed two beers at Ariana and Vincent, who laid back on the torn rexine couches.

The two were siblings, children to Rachel's brother, Luca Francesco. 

“This is not like your unknown world Luke, where you might kill someone and no one would know.” He argued.

“Why are you being such a p***y?” Lucas retorted back.

Nick sighed in frustration but held back his anger. He was not the one to lose temper like his brother and he knew how to handle his ill-tempered twin brother.

“This is different, the media and entire police force is involved, they are even getting the CIA into it but luckily we have our sources in the CIA and Vincent sent the delivery in some other name and as we had no links with the order packages, we will get our name out of the mess in no time.”

“And what about that bastard?” Lucas questioned.

“He has an immunity on us. We hurt him; the entire world knows who could it be. Because Gordon is most likely to be hurt by someone he messed with and we are on the top of that list.” Nick pointed the obvious.

Lucas’s grip on his glass tightened but he held back from exploding, “And how do you think that asshole knew about our consignment?”

“You’ve got a mole.” Nick shrugged at the obvious.

“No s**t! And that’s exactly why he needs to die.”

“Who? The mole?” Ariana butted in.

“Yes! And no, not just the mole.” Lucas piqued with anger, “If the mole could tell him about our cargo, he would’ve possibly told them about me.”

Everyone went in complete silence.

Even though knowing about Lucas doesn’t seem to be much of a big thing but it was. Because as Nicholas and Lucas had the same physical appearance; Alejandro Santiago found it to be the perfect opportunity to stir clear his clean business from Mafia. Shifting the entire hotel chains under Nicholas, he orchestrated that he had only one son; Nicholas.

While he let Lucas, due to his abilities, handle the Mafia business. So, for the world the name ‘Santiago’ meant only clean business. This way Lucas could also roam around and people would only think of him as Nicholas. And no one would know about Lucas unless and until they either worked for him or some other strong mafia.

The door to Lucas’s office opened up while his large body guards walked in; holding a limp half-conscious, short Asian man, who already had one of his eyes blackened while blood trickled in a thin line, down from his left temple, smudges of blood smeared over his prickling thin beard-line and white cotton shirt.

Keeping his glass aside, Lucas smirked; as he finally had some thing to transverse his frustration on.

Sensing what was about to happen, Ariana lifted her hands up in air, “Okay! I am out.”

While Vincent sipped on his beer and shrugged, “I’d like to stay.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Nicholas also decided to walk out.

“Now… what do we have here?” Lucas smirked, walking towards the now slightly conscious man, who groaned slightly, lying over the piercing pieces of broken glasses on the wooden floor.

One of his men, stepped ahead and opened a drawer of his table and pulled out a rectangular box, zipping it open, he rolled it down and spread out the different extraction tools, placed perfectly, fixed. Lucas’s gaze darkened at the mere thought of torturing answers out of the man, his wicked side finally out in the surge.

“Now, which one should I go first?” he smirked, picking out a silver metallic plyer, his nerves jolted with the excitement of pricking the limp man’s nails.

“No… please… I… I will tell you everything, please… please don’t do this…” The man began begging for his life, thrashing over the wooden floor, hissing as the broken glasses pierced through his skin but he had seen Lucas’s sadistic side, which had no limits.

Lucas’s bent over his ankles, while keeping one knee higher than the other, grabbing onto the limp man’s nape and forcing his head near his, “Come on… don’t spoil revenge time for me so easily…”

He smirked and grabbed his wrist, the force too much for the man to pull away. He began yelling and protesting in response, “Please… I will tell you everything.”

“Then what the f**k are you waiting for?” Lucas questioned, fixing the plyer the man’s forefinger’s nail by forcing it down through the slight outgrowth that was already painful enough as it was going to get. Forcing the grip to be stronger, Lucas pulled out the man’s entire nail, pricking it entirely off his finger as blood splashed out from the exposed skin and the man’s shrilling voice boomed throughout the entire office, “Waiting for this?”

With that Lucas, attacked his next nail but the man began blabbering everything in seconds as the initial pain was too much for him to handle, “Please… two men, American… came to me three months ago and asked about the next delivery to New York.” He blurted out and this made Lucas look up to him in utter suspicious.

“Why only New York?” he c****d, doubting if Gordon was the one infiltrating his men.

“I thought… they were some American spies but…” he exasperated in exhaustion but just as Lucas pressed onto his other nail, he began blabbering again, “… they were no cops, some sort of American gangsters.”

This grew Lucas’s interest in the entire situation, he wondered if Gordon was a fake upright and in fact did everything while working for another gangster. But again, there was no one who would go against Lucas and dare to mess with him.

“Which American gangster?” He questioned, pushing onto the plier.

“I… I swear I don’t know.” The man pleaded but Lucas pulled onto his other nail as well, frustrated at his lose due to the imbecile.

“Please…” the man begged after his loud screams echoed, “I… I can show you where the two men lived, they paid me last night.”

Lucas threw the man’s body on the floor and looked up to his bodyguards, “Take him, track down the Americans and bring them to me, alive.” The emphasis on his last words were clear to allowed his bodyguards to punch the two men into mashes, but to make sure that they still breathed.

Once the room was empty with only Lucas and Vincent left behind, the two sat down and reminisced over the entire scenario.

“I barely doubt, it could be any American gang, that would never dare to go war against us.” Vincent notified.

Lucas shrugged, “Could be.”

“How?”

“Whoever they were, they had an insight and the commissioner involved, whoever it is, they have the resources enough to withstand against us, enough to let them spread their network while ours is weakened because the commissioner would bug on our ass, while having no surveillance on them, they would spread their men and make a strong name.” Lucas elucidated.

“But I haven’t heard any name going around.” Vincent retorted.

“Then, you haven’t been listening carefully. Find out who could benefit the most by breaking our networks down. Search down that Gordon bastard, I want each and every strip on him, his life, his family, the number of breaths he takes per minute, everything.”

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Lucas, grunted his breath, holding a pressurized anger inside his brain. The metallic elevator doors opened up and he walked out of it, followed by two of his large body guards that wore casual clothes but their definitive appearance was enough to tell, that they were dangerous.

Passing down a wide carpeted, blue walled plain corridor, he entered the door that was on the far end. Inside the room was a large tech basement. With all kinds of monitors, computer systems and rows of digital operators clicking, signaling and wiring. All connected in a large wide eccentric semi-circle, leaving a huge space between the rows of the computers and the middle of the room. Fresh day light enlightened the insides of the florescent lit room, flickering through the all glass wall of the floor, that showed the floor was in some tower, at least twenty stories above the ground.

It was Lucas’s base of operation, where all the money transported is kept track of. He was responsible to carry out several deals and allocate their money and transport it without getting them checked into the world banks systems, probably affiliating a huge impact on the black market.

All the men and women that sat inside the room, wearing headsets and worked on the technical operating systems, stood up straight, the color on their faces drained as soon as they saw their boss, who barely ever made a trip down to the tech-room but today was an exception. Although there were several other data bases but this one was in Spain, which was the head of all the operation systems, networked throughout the whole world.

Lucas didn’t care to spare a glance at his employees and walked right towards one of the mainframe doors, passing down the monitors and TVs connected on the wall that showed different economy rates and graphs.

Opening the large metal frame door, he walked inside a large office, that had three, seventeen inches touch-screens placed on the black table, with three wires connected to them, flowing down and enclosing in cases. Different wireless routers and dongles were connected at different sites of the blue-florescent lit room with sparkles of yellow lights coming at different corners, denoting the different wireless connections.

Brian stretched his head out, from behind the monitor and saw a vehemently angered Lucas, standing in his casual jeans and t-shirt. Lucas had never stepped into his office, in such a casual attire and his current state showed that the crisis times were real.

Brian took out his hand and slurped over his smoothie, “Woah! The crisis is for real to feel.” He pointed at Lucas’s condition who only gritted his teeth, flexing his strong sharp jaw.

“How much have we lost by now?” He asked in monotonous tone, showing the main area of his current.

“Well…” Brian sighed and fixed his square glasses over his nose, “seeing the divine statics, since it has been sixteen hours to the raid and… Three hundred million.” He announced casually only making Lucas growl in response.

“f**k!” he gritted his teeth and turned towards the mantel shelf, victimizing the sets of steel routers placed on it as he punched through it, making the entire thick wooden shelf break into two, as everything scattered down with a loud thud.

Brian only rolled his eyes and shook his head. Everyone knew that now the authorities and media was involved and this whole fiasco had dragged the Santiago name to into a mud of mess were the Santiago name was derogatively criticized and laughed at in the whole mafia world.

 If anything, Lucas’s blood was boiling with hatred and revenge, as many of his major investors and benefactors who didn’t make even a single transaction without using his channels, were now pulling back due to the recent inconvenience.

While on the other hand, Commissioner Gordon was enjoying his payday, receiving medals of valor and appreciation from the entire world; for catching the money laundering trails of a huge mafia mess.

The door to Brian’s office opened up again and walked in, Nicholas, followed by Vincent and Ariana. The three held a face of entire distort and they were the last thing that Lucas wanted to see.

“Why did you bring these two?”

He pointed at Nicholas and Ariana who both shoved him a middle finger. If anything; Nick was always closer to Ariana while Vincent and Lucas shared a much admirable bond, given to their peculiar taste to violence. Ariana always wanted to opt for business and side with Nicholas but due to her combat skills and dandling interrogative and a sensible method of handling things, she was aristocrated by Alejandro on Lucas’s side, which only irritated Nick, as he wanted Ariana on his side.

Vincent stepped ahead and turned one of Brian’s monitor towards him.

“Hey!” while Brian protested, Vincent simply shoved him away making him stumble off his chair, while he took it for himself.

Opening certain mails, Vincent finally reeled all the information he held and turned the monitor screen towards Lucas.

Lucas, Nick and Ariana walked towards the monitor screen and watched all the pictures, articles and information that Vincent was able to extract on the entire scenario.

“You were right Gordon is doing it for a mafia but not just some mafia…” Vincent began shuffling through pictures and finally landed on a candid picture of Gordon holding a glass of expensive liquor all suited up and standing right next to a tall, brooded man, who was just as sparkly in his broad shouldered appearance and stubbled face.

“David Carrington.” Nicholas murmured recognized the man who was an American business magnet himself. “But how does he and Gordon…”

“He is one of our dealers in America but we cut off ties with him when he went into the Mexican drug ring.” Lucas elucidated his brother.

“So, this means he got Gordon to be his little puppy and then using it to break down your network now? For revenge or what?” Ariana put forth the question.

Vincent shook his head and shuffled through the pictures again, passing down different pages what seemed like magazine covers and finally landed on the article of New York Times, collaged next to an article of Forbes.

David stood holding hand a rock flashing hand of a tall woman, who had broad shoulders under her sleeveless boat necked pink formal dress, flowing down with a belt tightened around her wide hips and chubby waist. Yet her face emphasized elegance as brown hair waved and cut around it.

“She is Gordon’s oldest daughter Valerie. And David is getting married to her in two days. Your raid was a coincidental wedding gift by Gordon to David.” Vincent began explaining, “David is expanding the Mexican’s business; who by the way are our biggest foes as we have occupied their territories; and so just to get back at us, David used his father-in-law to be to break our networks by infiltrating our men and Gordon would get his big paycheck for fake good police work for raiding on your ass and a good share out of Mexican’s new expansion as they have already cut on three of your American investors. So, it’s a win-win for them.”

Lucas stood still for a moment processing the entire information, his brain still blazed at David’s audacity to go against him. After all, when David came to Lucas, he was still a small entrepreneur who was looking for a Mafia shelter to fill his plate and help his business grow. Lucas was the one who saw the potential of success in him but now looking at his lude and tawdry way to get back at Lucas, just to please the Mexicans; had uncertained Lucas’s mind on revenge.

He just didn’t want David to repent or pay for doing Lucas wrong, he wanted him suffer prolongingly, which would now only satisfy Lucas’s mind.

He looked back at the image of the woman, standing right next to David in his engagement pictures.

“Nick, you said you had links with the CIA?”

Nick nodded his head, “They helped cleared the mess but that was because they owed me one previously.”

“Don’t worry, they will owe you more after I am done with David and his f*****g new family.” Lucas gritted and turned towards Ariana, “Prepare the jet and leave for New York, I will have my team over there contact you both.”

Ariana looked with confusion while Vincent nodded his head, preparing for the next mission.

“But wait!” Ariana interrupted, “What are you planning?”

“Get that bride!” he ordered in a plain tone while Nicholas just shook his head.

“It won’t solve your problem!” he argued.

Lucas shrugged, “Your CIA will raid the Mexican hideouts, that I happen to know very well about, they will have to because the Mexicans have been shitting loads of drugs in America. While I give that bastard David and his c**k sucking father-in-law a wedding gift for a wedding that’s not going to happen, because there won’t be any bride.”

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