I don't own Hetalia, okay? I know it's been a while since I have updated this one, but I will get it done. Anyway, enough of this A/N, on with the fic!
Francis sighed as he looked at the glass of wine in his hand. He had such good relations with the New Orleans Mafia. His boss had sent him to Chicago after a bad meeting with a Julius Vargas. It was well known all around the various underground circles that he had owned the south side of Chicago in essence. Sure, he didn't physically own all the buildings but all the businesses in the south side all had to pay to him and often were fronts for his operations. But Julius had been run out of New Orleans and he was denied the use of the Carribean for smuggling. Just how that man planned to get the hooch from Louisiana to Illinois is beyond me. I guess up the Mississippi. Francis thought. But Julius slipped his mind when he had thought back to the encounter with Arthur. He had told him that he was just there to start a business of his own. Which wasn't entirely a lie. He had a burlesque house and bar in New Orleans but when things were getting hot in the organization that he was working with, a coup where one of the big boss's underlings were trying to take over and wanted Francis out of the way, and sent him to Chicago and if he could get dirt on Julius' operations and get in with them, so much the better. All is fair in love and war. A knock was heard on the door. "Oh phoo." Francis said as he headed up to the door of the small apartment and opened the door. "What do you want?" He asked.
"Telegram." The courier said.
"Thank you." Francis said as he took it from the courier and shoved a few coins in his hand. "Francis. Stop. Money is wired and accessible to you. Stop. Buy the building. Stop. Do what you did in New Orleans. Stop." Francis read, Why do they have to put stop there... He thought as he read on. "Keep this safe and destroy if you feel it is not safe. Stop. SDC" With this, Francis headed to the local bank that he set up an account to send money from New Orleans. Once the building was purchased and the business set up, he was going to let his boss know what was going on.
Meanwhile, Arthur stared down the owner of the building, with Ivan and Natalya standing behind him, Ivan smacking a pipe in the palm of his hand; Natalya twirling a knife on her fingertip, looking around nonchalantly but at the same time enough of a manner to cause one to be afraid of her. "So, you see here Mr. Denay, the offer is sound. You will have cash today and because I have some connections in the city hall departments when it comes to transfers of real estate, the building becomes my problem. You are free of any problems you may be caused by the old Chinaman living there. I will handle it."
Mr. Denay already had Ivan nearly break his knuckles with the pipe he had brought. Recalling what had happened, when he said he wanted to see what offers he could get for the place before he sold it, he sighed. Arthur had come in, and seemed pleasant enough, wanting to simply discuss the plans he had for the building. When he said he was entraining offers from other people and hadn't decided what to do yet, that was when Arthur had said simply, "pity" and called in Ivan and Natalya. He then motioned for Ivan to show him a warning and used his pipe on the man's knuckles. "Do not break them, he will need them to sign over the paperwork to the building to us." Arthur smirked. "But we need to show him that we are serious and the ones who will be buying it."
"Fine. Fine." Mr. Denay said. "You win and take care of that Chinaman and his pickpocket grandson. I was always afraid he'd do some sort of Asian mystic crap on me if I called him out on it."
"It will be no trouble for me. If you weren't such a fool, then Leon would not have tried to pickpocket you. Charging too much rent, in a town like this, why they would resort to having to keep with ill company with you treating them like you do." Arthur said.
"Yeah, can we just get this taken care of?" Mr. Denay said.
"Yes," Arthur said. "Here's the money, now sign the deed over to me and I will take care of the rest. In fact, you will need not speak of this, and that would be a boating accident that your hand was injured in. The lake can be rough this time of year." Arthur said.
"Yeah yeah, shut up," Mr. Denay said signing the deed. "Get out of here and leave me alone."
"It was a pleasure. Ivan, Natalya, I think our jobs here are done." Arthur smirked as they both got up and followed him out.
"Good riddance." Mr. Denay said as he rubbed his bruised knuckles sulking. Walking around the room, he sighed as he sat back down. Looking at the phone, he thought of calling Francis. He was about to broker a deal with him, but he said he needed to get the money sent up from New Orleans first as he didn't want to write a check, he wanted to pay in cash, something that Mr. Denay had no objection to. However, he wasn't sure how to tell Francis what happened. Francis seemed like an interested businessman but with what was going on in Chicago these days, with the bootleggers and the crime that no one seemed to be doing anything against, you could not trust anyone. Arthur seemed just as respectable a businessman as when he met Francis, but he had come in with two bodyguards as he could call it and had roughed him over. He picked up the receiver but placed it back down. At this he heard a knock on the door. Jumping up he asked, "Who is it?"
"Monsure Denay, it is I Francis Bonnefoy, I have the money. Can we make the arrangements now?" Francis asked.
"Nope, you're too late." He said through the door.
"Excuse-Moi?" He asked. "What happened?"
"You don't want to know." Mr. Denay said.
"Oh yes I do, now open up!" Francis said pounding on the door. Sighing, Mr. Denay had opened the door and quickly ushered Francis in and pushed him to a chair. "How rude!" Francis huffed. "Like you selling the building out from under me. How could you be so greedy that you could not wait?"
"Well next time, get your money faster. Money talks as they say." Mr. Denay said as he rubbed his hands subconsciously, causing Francis to look up.
"What happened to your hand?" he asked curiously.
"Boating accident." Mr. Denay said. "Got the money, got a wild hair to go to the lake and then yeah, you know how boats are. How long ago did you get off one?"
"Are you sure that's how you hurt yourself?" Francis asked staring Mr. Denay down. "You can be honest with me. I will keep your secrets. At this Mr. Denay went to the window and looked around to make sure that Arthur, Ivan and Natalya had indeed been long gone and anyone who might have anything to do with them were gone. "You are certainly acting different from when I had first met you."
"Well, some guy came in. Real smooth talker, proper like and demanded I sign over the building. I said that it was spoken for, just waiting for a few things to come through then it would be yours. He said he had cash now and that I should take it. I told him no and he had this big guy and some scary chick nearby close in on me. The big guy did this to me and then the chick held a knife to my neck. I had no other choice. Maybe if you and your groups were serious, you'd have prevented this from happening!"
"I am so so sorry about what happened to you, and I will do everything I can to help make your healing easier. I will let my people know what happened and that we will make sure that who did this to you will pay." Francis said.
"I didn't tell you who they were." Mr. Denay said matter of factly.
"Oh, trust me. We have some suspicions and that's good enough." Francis said with a determined huff as he headed out the door. "Heal up soon. Au Revoir." He said as he shut the door and headed to the local Western Union shop to send a telegram.
"All ready to send, what do you need?" The clerk asked.
"Hmmmmm..." Francis began not wanting to expose who he was working with directly. "To Sam Costello in New Orleans Louisiana SDC, building is sold STOP Julius got to contact first STOP Awaiting further orders STOP Francis STOP"
"Okay." The clerk said as he typed out the message. As Francis sighed, he looked at the clerk who was sending the message and looked around annoyed. He was making a way in a new city to try and hide from the rising situations in Louisiana under his boss's direction. He had given the clerk a false last name but he knew that Sam was the one who was going to take care of him while he was away as long as he was sending some of that money back to Louisiana. This is going to cost me... He thought as he heard the beeps of the morse code being sent along. But if Julius is going to think he cannot be taken down, he has another thing coming... Francis looked around the store while the clerk was finishing up the telegram. While looking at a tin of tea from Britian, a thought ran though his mind. What if it was that Arthur man who you ran into before? Business is very cutthroat yes. But would he be that type of person to do something like that? Francis shook this notion from his mind. "Sir!" The clerk motioned to Francis. "It is sent and here's your copy of the telegram. That will be $1.15."
"Things are getting more expensive every day." Francis sighed as he dug into his bag and pulled out some money. "It only took me a quarter to send a message to my boss back in New Orleans."
"Well, that was local." The clerk sighed. "This one has over 925 miles of cable to go across. You should see the cost of sending this from New York to San Francisco."
"Fine." Francis said and he paid and left the store.
Alfred stood while Enzo was fitting him with the tuxedo made for the wedding. It was only two weeks away and he had offered to just go back to the farm and get his dress uniform he had even with all the medals he had but Julius took offense. How dare his granddaughter marry a man dressed such a way. Whenever he suggested that he take Lovina to the farm for a few days before the wedding, he dismissed this too. "We need you here. There's that rival gang who we must get all the information on before you and Lovina spend time in Miami."
"What?" Alfred asked.
"Oh, I have a splendid honeymoon booked for the two of you in Miami, at the beach house I have. Once the ceremony is over you two will be whisked to the train station in a private car and you two will spend a month in Miami while I build a house near my estate so you can keep working with us." Alfred began to object when Enzo poked him in the thigh.
"Stand still or you won't be able to make Lovina a mother." Enzo scolded as Alfred gulped slightly inside. They don't know he thought. Lovina assured me only Helena knows she's pregnant. She's not showing for a few months more at least so if we come back and announce it there after the honeymoon
"Well now, we can't have that. I think Alfred would make a great father and great member of the Vargas family. Help to keep us strong. He's a dedicated man." Julius said as he winced inside.
"But I want to keep in touch with the farm. Make sure the Jones family farm is good." Alfred said. "I mean there's some bad memories attached to it sure, but I want my son to be able to use it too when he becomes a man. I mean whenever I have one that is. It's not like this whole marriage is to keep Lovina's honor...heee hee hee..."
Julius narrowed his eyes, as if this was the confession, he needed to prove his theory, but Enzo smiled and got up. "Give me a few minutes to hem up these pants and this young man would be worthy of Lovina's hand."
As Enzo hemmed the pants of the tuxedo, Julius smiled at Alfred. "So, there's another speakeasy on the North side tonight you said?"
"Yes," Alfred said. "At the ice cream shop."
"Good. Once we are done here, we will go home, you will get changed and then we will get you to look like you just walked up to the ice cream shop and let us know more that you can get on that gang so we can stop them before they harm our family, your family. Think of Lovina." Julius smiled.
"Sure." Alfred sighed defeated. I just want to keep Lovina happy and keep her honor. If this is what I have to do, this is what I have to do.
So how was that? Good? Bad? Short? Long? Let me know in a review. I know it took a while for me to update but I did. The SDC that is Francis's boss is based on Silver Dollar Carollo as part of the New Orleans crime syndicate in the 1920s. Legend has it that when Capone out of New Orleans when he attempted to get some imported alcohol from the Gulf of Mexico. Anyway, remember to read, well you just did and to review. Ciao for now,
Otherrealmwriter
Aka
Realm.