Vaughn left quickly with the good news. Before leaving, he even remembered to pay the three dollars for lunch.
Perhaps this was the reason he was willing to dine at small restaurants; it wouldn’t be too expensive.
One could only hope that the people from the national union and the Federation of Labor this time wouldn’t be startled by the excellent “public security” of Golden Port.
The demise of the Red High Heels also indicated that both sides were one step closer to the “great decisive battle.”
On the way back, Lance heard two gunshots coming from the Port District.
Recently, there had been constant gunshots in the Port District. The fall of the Brotherhood did not make Bill the biggest beneficiary, which was the most ridiculous thing.
Many gangs were watching the Red Dog Gang’s joke. Those rapidly rising neighborhood families and outside gangs were quickly eroding the blank territory in the Port District and even began to test the Red Dog Gang’s territory.
Hopefully, Bill and his men could hold on. This was a tough battle. It’s unknown if they learned how to shoot when they were pimping.
Lance, returning to the office, saw Johnny standing outside the door. Johnny looked much more haggard.
He slapped his head, having forgotten about this matter. He had originally planned to hire a lawyer to sue Johnny for not repaying the money. According to the procedure, the court would support Lance’s request and auction his house to repay the money.
It was just that some things that suddenly broke out had prevented him from having time to deal with it, and he had almost forgotten about this matter, if not for seeing Johnny.
“Mr. Lance, I will transfer the house to you…”
Johnny used great courage to say this because this was all the glory and confidence he had in his life so far.
He had a failed family, a failed growth process, a failed marriage. The only proof that could make him feel that he was not a complete failure was that storefront and his own bakery.
Now, he was going to lose it forever.
He didn’t dare to bet on whether the bank would still sell his house for a thousand or so. This was his only choice.
Lance seemed to have given him a choice, but in reality, he had not given him any choice, just as when he decided to embezzle Lance’s salary, he had also not given Lance a choice or a way out.
Looking at the file bag in Johnny’s hand, a genuine smile appeared on Lance’s face, “I’m glad you made the right decision, Johnny. When the house is transferred to the company’s name, everything will be over.”
Johnny was a little dazed, stunned. His lips moved slightly, “Everything is over.”
Lance repeated with certainty, “Yes, everything is over, and everything will get better.”
He called a lawyer. Roben the lawyer came over quickly. After he finished reading all the documents, he drew up a contract for both parties to sign and also had Lance give him an authorization contract. He would handle the transfer procedures with Johnny.
For this, Lance needed to pay him $70. This was the smallest fee Roben the lawyer had charged since they had known each other!
So small that Lance found it a bit incredible!
Roben didn’t seem to mind telling the truth either, “I’ll keep $50 for myself, and then give a rookie $20. He’ll do a better job than me!”
Lance looked at Roben the lawyer’s shameless appearance, somewhat speechless, “You’re not lying.”
“I never lie!” Roben the lawyer quickly added, but meeting Lance’s gaze, he seemed to realize there was a problem with saying this, and then added, “Unless it’s for work.”
Looking at his thick-skinned appearance, Lance was just about to ask him to leave, but then thought of something, “I have a friend who plans to go to university to study law. Is there any way to stuff him in?”
Roben the lawyer was stunned for a moment. He frowned, “You’re asking me to smash my own rice bowl.”
But his brow quickly relaxed, “Even if a lawyer successfully graduates from university, it will probably be a long road before he can independently handle a case for you, Mr. Lance.”
“$10,000, and I’ll write him a letter of recommendation. I guarantee he can get in.”
“I’m not lying. I’ll keep $2,000 for myself, and $8,000 is for others.”
He didn’t forget to add, “You can pay me in cash.”
Roben the lawyer had many connections. Just stuffing a person into a university, whether they needed a high school diploma or not, was irrelevant to those who played with power.
Not even everyone could do it!
After settling on the payment time, Lance returned to his office and called Roger (the old man from the Empire Merchants Association), “Roger, do you know Johnny?”
“…Yes, it’s Johnny from Johnny’s Bakery. His shop belongs to me now. Ask the people in the Merchants Association if anyone is willing to do a little business there.”
“Yes, limited to our association members only. Either pay a fixed monthly rent, or according to a percentage of income. Ten percent for under $500, five percent for over $500…”
Wipe them all out?
No, this was mercy, even generosity!
At least, Lance didn’t take his life and even let him leave with the few hundred dollars he had left, right?
Lance believed that someone would soon inquire about this shop, and would pay the rent as a percentage.
The reason was simple: minimize costs.
He left this matter to Roger and didn’t care about it anymore. He would have more similar resources in the future to share with the people in the Empire Merchants Association. He wanted to organize the Empire Merchants Association into the largest comprehensive business group dominated by Empire people in the Federation!
Perhaps in the short term, it was still just a “little bug,” but Lance believed that as opportunities arose and broke out one after another, the Empire Merchants Association would eventually play an important role on the stage of the Federation and even the world.
A little later, Hiram brought more than twenty young men to the company.
“Is the Boss in?”
He asked.
A girl named Corinda pointed to the office door, “He’s on the phone inside.”
Hiram knocked on the door. Hearing Lance’s response, he opened the door and poked his head inside. Lance was sitting in his chair, his expression looking somewhat displeased.
“We’ve discussed this matter before. We agreed to wait at least until the second half of the year before raising the price…”
“I know, but my liquor is sold at a lower price than others. We talked about this before I left!”
“I’ll help you promote, even recommend people to stock up from you…”
“And now you’re playing this game with me?”
His tone was already a bit impatient, but it was clear that he was still forcibly restraining his emotions while holding the receiver.
After another minute or two, he suddenly said, “To hell with your f—king friendship!” After this last sentence, he slammed the receiver down on the phone’s base.
Hiram knew that now was not the time to bring the newbies in. He went out first, let the newbies look around, and then returned to the room alone and closed the door.
“Lance, what happened?”
Lance had just lit a cigarette and was playing with a matchbox in his hand.
He held a corner of the matchbox with his index finger and thumb, then flicked the matchbox outwards. Just as the matchbox was about to slip from his hand, he added a little force, pinched it, and then let it slide down, repeating this action.
This was just a subconscious action, like people who like to play with lighters have various ways of playing with them (just using their hands, not involving other organs).
Although he didn’t like matches, he also didn’t like the smell of kerosene, so he could only play with matches.
“Luigi’s liquor is going up in price.” He glanced at Hiram. “We’re almost sold out of our liquor. I was planning to order another batch, and he told me the price has gone up now.”
Hiram walked across from Lance, pulled out a chair, and sat down. “Didn’t we agree with him last time on six months and $800,000 worth of goods?”
Last time they went to Yalan, what Lance and Luigi had discussed was that within six months, he would order at least three batches of goods from Luigi.
The prices were $200,000, $300,000, and at least $300,000.
At that time, Luigi had agreed very readily, saying that he was willing to give Lance a cheap price in order to open up the smuggled liquor market in the Federation.
As a result, the first batch was almost sold out, and Luigi was already not planning to fulfill his promise.
There was actually another reason for this.
The promulgation of the Federation’s Prohibition Act led the whole world to discover that the exorbitant profits from smuggling liquor into the Federation were far higher than other things.
No matter what you smuggled into the Federation, it was not as good as sending a case of liquor. Even those who smuggled people were now secretly transporting liquor when they had nothing to do.
When the profit of a business exceeds people’s psychological endurance, they will frantically pour into this industry.
Except for those that were too far away and not very profitable, many gangs and even countries in Yalan were already smuggling into the Federation on a large scale.
Luigi originally thought that this market needed to be cultivated and maintained, but who knew that after the stricter Prohibition measures began to be implemented, the smuggled liquor market exploded in an instant!
The Federation government had helped them light a fire. The profits from smuggled liquor continued to double.
The current situation was that Luigi could make two or three times the money by selling his liquor to others, but from Lance, Luigi could only make one time the money.
From a capitalist’s point of view, this was actually not less profit, but a loss!
Compared to the higher offers others gave him, he didn’t want to do Lance’s business anymore.
The Summurians were a united front to the outside world, but internally there were also many factions. The faction Luigi belonged to and Mr. Pasoretto’s faction were not the same thing. He didn’t have to give face to Mr. Pasoretto at all.
And there were also some contradictions, friction, and conflicts beginning to brew within Summurian Island itself.
The relationship between the four major families had become a bit more tense than before.
Under the impetus of various factors, Luigi decided to raise the price.
If Lance accepted his new offer, he would still give priority to supplying Lance, and they would still be very good friends.
But if Lance did not accept his offer, then he could only say sorry. Although they were friends, he couldn’t stand in the way of him making money, right?
Just as he finally said to Lance, “If you think you are more attractive than money, you can go and try with others!”
This made Lance very angry. He was a man of his word, and he also hoped that others would be men of their word.
“Should we talk to Alberto?” Hiram wasn’t very worried about the liquor supply not keeping up.
Nick’s side had already brewed a lot of liquor, completely able to cope with the current daily consumption. But to expand the scale, they had to continue to increase the scale of brewing, which required more crops for brewing.
Of course, there was also a little bit of risk.
The Bureau of Hazardous Materials had been investigating this matter. It was said that they had already begun to search those home breweries. Even private brewing for self-consumption was no longer allowed now.
The ranch was a relatively large target. Perhaps Lance still had to reconsider.
As for whether to talk to Alberto, this matter was not urgent yet, although it was Alberto who had introduced Luigi to Lance.
Lance shook his head slightly, “Let’s not tell Alberto for now. I’ll see how to teach them a lesson first.”
He was already thinking about how to teach Luigi a lesson. Then, after thinking for a while, he remembered the reason for Hiram’s visit. “The people are here?”
Hiram pointed to the door, “They’re all waiting outside.”
The Lance Family was still recruiting people from outside. The smell of gunpowder for the great decisive battle had already begun to appear. Recruiting people now was not only for self-protection but also to gain more benefits from this chaos.
The more people there were, the greater Lance’s power, and the louder his voice would be.
“Let’s go, let’s see our new brothers first!”
The two went out of the room one after the other. Hiram shouted, “Everyone come over!”
Soon, another twenty or so young men came. Most of these young men looked like they came from the lower class of society.
Almost all of them were wearing old, washed-out formal wear, probably inherited from their fathers or even grandfathers.
Some would wear dusty flat caps. A group of young people stood together, giving Lance the only feeling of being young and full of vitality!
Even though they were wearing old clothes, it still couldn’t hide the youthful vitality and heat emanating from them!
Lance shook hands with them one by one, and then expressed his happiness at their joining the Lance Family.
Now they had a few more rules for recruiting people. Either they were alone, or they had brothers and sisters at home.
As for those who still had parents and relatives alive, but were the only child in the family, the Lance Family would not accept them.
Although he had accepted many at the beginning, that was a situation where there was no choice. Now that the Lance Family was gradually stabilizing, he would no longer recruit these people.
After all, losing a child is one of the most terrible things in any era!
These young men all seemed particularly excited when they saw Lance. Lance was the idol of many young Empire people. Being able to get close to and talk to their idol made some of them so excited they couldn’t speak clearly.
Lance shook hands with them, hugged them, and encouraged them. For these young people, this was the most uplifting voice of this era!
After saying goodbye to these young people, Lance always felt that there were two or three people among them who were a bit strange, but he didn’t pay too much attention.
After all, in this era, the only place that could give them a salary and respect was here.
For two or three days in a row, the entire Golden Port seemed to have quieted down again, but only relatively.
In these two or three days, many things had actually happened. For example, the newly arrived young people began to perform their duties, following Mador and the others to begin military-style training.
And this matter also made Lukar and his men feel secretly alarmed, because it wasn’t just them who had received formal military training; now Lance’s group had also begun to conduct military-style training.
This made some agents of the Bureau of Hazardous Materials feel nervous. The special title of “agent” could no longer provide them with a sense of security.
Another example, Johnny had already left his house with his luggage… no, not his house, but Lance’s house. His things were also thrown out. The new tenant did not plan to make bread.
His scraps of copper and iron were quickly disposed of by him. It was said that a bakery had hired him, giving him a salary of $45 a month.
And for another example, the firefights in the Port District had become more frequent than a few days ago. Outsider forces were said to have invaded the city center, but it hadn’t reached the point of a firefight yet.
The entire city had been invaded by outside forces. On the contrary, the Empire District seemed much quieter. Even the property prices in the Empire District had seen a small increase recently.
Finally, the new specialist from the Liji Group arrived in Golden Port. They had already determined that Bridge’s death was a traffic accident and at the same time refused to admit that Bridge had died during work hours.
The Liji Group stated that the company would close on time at 6:30 every day, and they did not force anyone to work overtime. Therefore, after 6:30, whatever happened to Bridge had nothing to do with the Liji Group.
Whether it was compensation for work-related injuries or a pension, they refused to pay Bridge’s family. They even intended to sue the deceased Bridge and his family for damaging the group company’s image and causing abnormal fluctuations in the stock price.
Perhaps Bridge himself had not expected that not long after he died, the group company he had fought for until the last moment would not show him the slightest warmth, but would instead sue him…
If he had known, perhaps he would have crawled out of his grave and spat a mouthful of old blood on the faces of those directors.
The first thing the new specialist did after arriving was to continue to execute the cases left by Bridge. The Empire Merchants Association and Lance were sued.
This was the first time Lance stood in the defendant’s dock. The Liji Group’s legal team produced some evidence, claiming that their price appraiser had admitted to colluding with Lance to create this contract fraud.
Roben the lawyer hired his alumnus to defend Lance. Both sides, and even the judge, knew what the situation was. This was like a very tacit delaying tactic.
The two sides argued back and forth, then said they needed to supplement the evidence. The judge also took the opportunity to rap his gavel and leave some questions for the next hearing.
In fact, it wasn’t just the Liji Group. Other financial groups also swindled people in this way, and perhaps their methods were even dirtier!
There had been cases before where group companies hired scammers to defraud employees, making these employees go bankrupt, in order to solve these burdensome matters all at once.
This might sound like… an incredible fabricated story in some other countries.
But in the Federation, this was something that happened every day.
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