Tuesday.
I barely slept. I never did sleep a lot. Maybe my past haunted me, or I was just a sleepless person; it didn't make much difference.
With both bosses' permission, I ignored the work I had yesterday, instead focusing on research.
I didn't seek out Lord Shadowboon's approval; it didn't seem like I had to, but for Lord Woodborn. I told him what was requested of me by sending a messenger with a letter, and within half an hour, I got a letter back, telling me that I should do what was asked of me.
I guess I had everything laid out that was asked of me.
A lot could be done in a sleepless night. A night's work with bribes and threats and information collection.
Of course I didn't go out personally. I was the boss; I told others to go. I told them what to do and where to go. My job was organization and information. And if I didn't have the information, then I'd tell a few foot soldiers to go and get some.
I was a grunt for a while too, and I didn't think that the job was so bad. Just do what the boss says. And I hoped that the grunt I send, who I didn't even know personally, thought about the same.
Just do as he says. They should have had enough muscle and money to get what was needed. A cool head and a sort of competent aura were all that was needed for a job like that. The rest was just running around and going from one place to another to see who knows what.
What we gathered was in notes and loose pages, stacked on my desk right now.
Emilia helped, but that was kind of her job. She didn't ask why we were doing what we were doing. She never did.
She was more or less the leader of the grunts. She knew the women and men that worked for us. And she didn't waste time explaining things unless I asked. She was more of a doer than a thinker.
We worked well together. Her methods worked fast, and she worked faster.
And after the night's work, the clearest answer to the kind of vague request the boss gave me was "The Hopeless."
A relatively new gang. And criminals they were.
They were everywhere recently, or close enough to that that it felt that way.
They didn't just mind their business to make money. They pushed things as far as they went. Taking ground left and right, even people, and when they came into conflict with anyone else, they killed them.
They killed for power, for profit, and sometimes just to make a point.
They threatened far more people and far worse than we did and harassed those who didn't bend fast enough.
They moved drugs and weapons and kidnapped people to do the same to them. I couldn't confirm it fully, but it didn't seem like they drew the line at kids.
Lately, they'd started swallowing smaller groups. No-name crews that barely counted as organizations. Some joined willingly. Most didn't.
One crew on the east end refused to fold. Three nights later, their place was burned down. Two bodies were found in the street the next morning, laid out where everyone could see them. No message written. No symbol left behind. Nothing. But people understood what it meant.
All within the past year. All of it loud and messy. That left a bad taste. More often than not, there was some among, or a code among, the people of the underworld, if I had to call it that.
Twenty years ago, there weren't as many killings as there are today. But none of those fell on us. Killing was not our business, and as I said once before, the boss usually avoided it.
I didn't know what the boss was thinking, telling me that he wanted to kill all of them.
But it worked for The Hopeless; that much was clear. People get scared fast, and they used that power.
Their leader was someone supposedly called Alice Burr.
Mean woman, by all accounts. That word came up a lot. Mean. Cruel. The kind of person who enjoyed reminding others she could ruin them. Everything I had was secondhand or worse, but her reputation was clear enough.
Fear.
I'd worked for men who ruled by fear. Shouting and breaking fingers.
People stayed for as long as they could, and our turnover rate was pretty low too. People didn't so much leave as retire because they became too old or had something else going on in their lives. It was almost legitimate.
One liked to make people wait on their knees just to remind them who was in charge. That kind of thing never lasted. People ran, or they snapped.
I wondered, not for the first time, what kind of boss I was seen as.
I didn't yell. Not that I ever had to raise my voice. Everyone knew that their livelihood depended on their own competency.
And even then, I didn't beat them for making mistakes or make examples out of them to be seen as big.
If someone did something wrong, I told them, and if they didn't correct themselves with a reasonable amount of leniency, I replaced them.
Both in the press and smuggling.
The pay was good. Better than most other work, honest and dishonest. People were paid on time. There were no games about that.
Emilia was harder than me. She expected results and made sure people knew it.
She could be sharp when someone wasted time or tried to talk their way out of work. Or try to slime their way into more money.
But mean?
I didn't think so. Not really. She never crossed lines just to see if she could. And when things went wrong, she focused on fixing them, not punishing whoever happened to be closest.
Plus, the boss had an ironclad rule that way to be followed.
On weekends there would be no work done, except if really necessary.
Only those who specifically asked to work on the weekend were allowed to.
Strange, but who was I to question the boss?
Compared to what I'd seen before, this place was calm and nice.
Well, I went over the notes again, just to be sure.
Their routes, the known enforcers. Places the Hopeless usually hung out, and which they avoided, for now.
I marked everything I wasn't sure about. There was a lot of that. One day wasn't enough time, no matter how hard you pushed.
Still, it was something and better than what most could give.
Enough to start killing, I guessed. That was what the boss wanted.
Now all there was to do was wait.
I wondered for a moment what the boss was thinking, but then quickly dismissed the thought.
It wasn't my place to question him, and he usually had really good reasons for what he did.
I expected him to show up early. He usually did when he wanted something done fast. I kept listening for the sound of the floorboards, that heavy groan that came just before he appeared.
But it was only morning, and I knew that the boss lived a normal life next to the other one.
I heard he went to school not too long ago. Good for him. I never got the opportunity to, but I still ended up in a nice place.
I looked out of the window to the workers of the press down below.
Did Alice Burr ever look at her workers and think she was giving them a good deal?
If she thought of herself as a good boss. Or if that question never crossed her mind at all.
Some people didn't need to justify themselves.
I checked the stack of papers on the desk one last time. Everything I had was there. I couldn't pull more information out of thin air.
And that's how the day went. Morning, noon, and then afternoon.
When I wasn't expecting it, sometime early in the afternoon, that familiar sound came.
The floorboards groaned.
My shoulders tensed before my mind caught up.
The door opened.
He stepped in like he always did, like the room belonged to him already. Same clothes. Same calm face that didn't match his age or his eyes.
He looked at the desk. At the stacks. At me.
"You're done," he said. Not a question.
"Yes, boss," I said, and set the papers down between us.
He picked up the top sheet and started reading. I watched his face. Nothing changed.
I waited.
He flipped through the pages fast.
It seemed that he was rushed.
His eyes moved, stopped, and moved again. He didn't comment. Didn't hum or frown.
I stood there with my hands at my sides and waited.
After a while, he stacked the papers again, tapping them once on the desk to line them up. He looked at me then.
"This is good work," he said.
"Thanks, boss," I said.
He nodded once, like the matter was settled. Then his expression shifted, just a little. Not softer. Sharper, maybe.
"One more thing," he said. "If the girls ask you about this, you don't tell them anything."
"The girls?" I asked, though I already knew who he meant.
"Not a peep," he said. "Not a hint. Not a half-answer."
I nodded. They seemed to be a higher rank in whatever organization the boss had built beyond the press and gang. "Even if they press?"
"Especially if they press."
He turned toward the door, already done with the conversation.
"We'll start tomorrow."