Chapter 354.


    <strong>Chapter 354. Forming a Strategic Alliance. (6/10)</strong>


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s not that I don’t trust you-”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, I get it. You already said it, I’m just being difficult because she gets to know and I don’t. I like watching mysteries as they unfold so I’ll suck it up and figure out whatever your little scheme is on my own. Maybe I’lle up with a good story to writeter on out of all this.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“So, what do you say? Will you hear me out, or not?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">Lea took a deep breath and held it in for a minute. She slowly exhaled out a long sigh and said, “Haaaaaaaah. Fine. As your girlfriend said, it wouldn’t hurt to at least hear what your n is. I can decide what to do after hearing it. Follow me. We can talk in private upstairs.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yuna, wait here for the time being.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, you womanizer.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m not womanizing.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She rolled her eyes, “Sure you aren’t.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m really not,” I grumbled discontentedly as I followed behind Lea up a set of stairs past the reception desk.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I was led into a small office space. It was pretty messy and disorganized. It could hardly be called an office with the condition it was in. There were motorcycle and car parts strewn about the room on the ground and desks in the room.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I took a seat across from Lea at the desk in the corner of the room. She raised her legs up on the chair. Her right leg was t, parallel to the seat, while her bare left leg was raised up perpendicr. She had her left arm hooked over her left knee and her right hand holding her left elbow.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“So? What is it you wanted to talk about? If you tell me you fell in love and couldn’t get me out of your mind after our first meeting despite already having a girlfriend, I''m going to have to ask you to leave.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I rolled my eyes and countered, “Fall for you? That’s a pretty funny joke. I don’t have such a strange taste in women.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Are you lookin for a fight?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Heh, you’re the one who started it, Ms. No Boyfriend.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Shut up and get to the point. I don’t like wasting my time. I’m a busy girl.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Busy doing what? Riding around the city crying about your pitiful search for a romantic partner bearing no fruit?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">She puffed out her cheek and grumbled, “Shut up, just leave me alone. I don’t want to remember. Guys are jerks.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I shook my head regretfully at this woman squandering her charms and said, “If you showed guys your cute side you’d probably have better luck.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“There isn’t a single cute bone in my body.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You look pretty cute right now though.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Womanizer.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m not a womanizer. I simply state the facts.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Liar. You just said you don’t have such strange taste in women yet you just imed I look cute.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Something can be cute but that doesn’t mean I like it. It’s also entirely possible I abhor cute things you know.” I didn’t, but she didn’t need to know that.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What the heck? So you’re saying you don’t like me because you think I’m cute? How does that make any sense?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Putting that aside, as you said, we should cut the small talk and get to the meat of what this is really about.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What you really mean to say is you want to dodge the question, right?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">I cleared my throat, “Ehem. To take down Swastika, I need you.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You mean my gang.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes. I can’t fill you in on everything, but I can give you an idea of how it will be done. First, I want you to take Yuna in, let her go around staying at each of your gang member’s ces. To provide her protection. I’d like them to rotate in and out keeping an eye on the ce she works at from a distance.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? What does this have to do with your n to take Swastika down?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Nothing yet. I haven’t gotten to it yet. This is what I’m asking for. Just let me finish.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Continue.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“It’s unlikely your people keeping an eye on where she works will have to do anything, but in the event Swastika shows up and sees through her disguise, I’d like your people to get her out of there and to somewhere safe. Right now Malory thinks she knows where Yuna works, but in reality, Yuna only works at that location on Saturdays. The rest of the week she works at the second store location. I n to make arrangements with the Owner to let Yuna also work Saturdays there for some time. When Malory shows up at the location she thinks Yuna works at, I n to have one of the workers there exin that she quit.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Of course, they aren’t going to believe it, but the n is to turn this into a war of attrition. Essentially, to keep their people looking for me and Yuna and distracted as much as possible. Your gang will also y a critical role as well in drawing their eyes and keeping them distracted.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You want us to go to war with Swastika over one girl?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No. I want to keep them distracted. For while they are distracted and think they are the hunters, they will be the ones who are being hunted when their backs are turned.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What? In what way? By who?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“By me.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You? What can you possibly do?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“They think I’mpletely harmless. They don’t know what I look like when I’m disguising myself either.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“So what?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I have a n to take out their brain. Not just to take out their brain, but to turn it against them.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? How? Are you thinking of going undercover and infiltrating them to somehow convince their leader to betray his own gang? That’s absolutely impossible.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No. That is not how I n to achieve this. Assassinate the leader and make use of him to give out orders that will lead their entire gang into a trap.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Assassinate him? You? Are you crazy? There’s no chance in hell that’s going to happen.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“There is though. I have the perfect bait. A big fish he won’t be able to ignore getting his hands on. It will be enough to lure him out and reel him in.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“A big fish?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Yes.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“What is this big fish?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Unfortunately I can’t go into details on that either. You will need to trust me. Once the brain is out ofmission, that is when the hunt begins. When they’re in chaos, that will be the time to strike. With the n I have in mind, they won’t even be aware their leader has been assassinated.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Let’s say you are able to do this. What does this… hunt… entail?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I’m d you asked…” a nefarious smile grew on my face.


    <span style="font-weight:400">I opened my mouth and exined in great detail the order that would be issued and how everything would go down.


    <span style="font-weight:400">As she listened, a sharp gleam appeared in her eyes.


    <span style="font-weight:400">By the end of my exnation of how zero casualties on her side would be possible, her eyes conveyed the horrible grin she had on her face hidden beneath her face mask.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“If you really can get things to that stage, the endgame really would be a piece of cake. They’d be like flies running headfirst into a bug zapper. Nothing more than prey walking into a lion’s den.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Exactly. But what this hinges on is whether we can upy all their eyes on us so they don’t notice the capitalizing hunter directly behind eyeing them in secret.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You won’t tell me any specific details of the hunter’s n?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No, I cannot. It’splicated and very sensitive information. The smallest information leak could ruin everything. We only get one chance with this n. If it fails, it’s not something that would work again. It’s do or die. Eat or be eaten.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I see. In that case, I’ll have to refuse.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaaah. May I know why?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“I can’t trust you. You could be working for Swastika and this could all be an borate trap. If I’m not careful, and I blindly trust you, the ones being wiped out could be my side. The ones with zero casualties might end up being Swastika instead.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Certainly, that is entirely possible. Declining for that reason does make sense.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“The only way I could trust you is if I have a hostage that is valuable to you. How important is your girlfriend to you? The reason you’re having her stay with us isn’t it to give us that hostage to win our trust?” I couldn’t deny, her reasoning wasn’t wed.


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No. It’s simply for her protection. I wouldn’t give Yuna to you to be a hostage. If you want a hostage, you can take my life hostage if you want.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? And how would I do that? You’re going to be running about staying low, aren’t you? I’m not going to be able to keep my eyes on you and I’ll probably lose track of you.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“You could strap a bomb to me that will remotely detonate at the press of a button or automatically explode if I flee the city or try to remove it or something.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Where do you think I’m going to get something convenient like that?”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“No idea.”


    <span style="font-weight:400">“Then it looks like we’ve arrived at a roadblock in negotiations.”