Empire of Shadows

“You have to solve these problems as soon as possible!”

“The governor himself called me, and this is not what you promised me.”

“You have three days. If you can’t solve it in three days, do I need to tell you what will happen?”

On the phone, the director who had expressed great admiration and approval for the manager and his decision just two days ago had completely turned hostile. His tone was full of threat.

The manager held the phone with both hands, trying his best to explain, “We need time to recruit people, and we have already recruited some…”

“I don’t want to hear this, that’s your business. I don’t even need you to tell me when work can resume.”

“You only have seventy-two hours!”

The phone was slammed down with a click. The manager slowly put down the receiver, his face grim as he sat in his chair.

These damn bastards!

His angry curses could be heard by the people outside the office. Everyone’s face had a slightly different expression.Some were very worried. These were the manager’s staunch supporters, his confidants.

If the manager was in trouble, they would definitely be in trouble too.

Some appeared calm. These belonged to the neutral faction. They did as much work as they were paid for and did not participate in the company’s internal political struggles.

And some people clearly showed a hint of a smile. It was obviously a very bad thing for the company, but their eyes held a glint of opportunity.

A small office, ten people, at least twelve different mindsets.

“All of you, get in here!”

The manager’s roar made everyone outside re-enter the office. The manager’s face was as black as the bottom of a soup pot that had been used for twenty years.

“I know some of you are waiting to see me make a fool of myself, thinking that after I’m kicked out, some of you will have a chance.”

“But I’m telling you, you’re dreaming!”

“We are a team. Whether you admit it or not, we are a team.”

“Right now, the board of directors is not dissatisfied with me alone, but with me and you, my team!”

“I don’t care how you explain it. In short, if I’m kicked out, unless some of you can climb into a director’s bed, you won’t have a good end either!”

“The best result is to be transferred from here to outside with those lackeys to be tortured by the wind, rain, and sun.”

“A worse one, like me, is to pack up your personal belongings and get out of the port!”

“So whether it’s for me, or for yourselves, we must unite at this time and overcome the difficulties together!”

He paused, giving these people time to accept and process.

After waiting for about twenty seconds, he continued, “I don’t care what methods you use, immediately help me do a few things.”

“I will not assign specific tasks to specific individuals. I don’t know if you can do it. You choose what you can do.”

“First, find people from the surrounding labor agencies to work as soon as possible. Illegal immigrants are fine. I can offer them a salary of twenty-two.”

“For legal immigrants or locals, it’s thirty-five fifty plus a two-dollar subsidy.”

“For every person you bring in to work, as long as they can stabilize in their position, I’ll give you two dollars!”

“Second, I don’t care what methods you use, go and persuade those influential worker representatives to stand on our side!”

“Vaughn is a fucking son of a bitch. I’ve given up on him!”

“If they are willing to take money, promise them money.”

“If they want something else, as long as it’s not a pay raise for everyone, then it can be discussed.”

At this moment, an employee suddenly asked, “Why don’t we just meet their demands?”

“I heard they’re only asking for a dollar and a half!”

The manager irritably grabbed his pen and threw it at the man, who agilely dodged it.

He dodged the pen’s attack, but he couldn’t dodge the manager’s loud voice.

“A dollar and a half?”

“An extra twenty-thousand-plus in expenses each month, nearly three hundred thousand in extra expenses a year, and you call that ‘a dollar and a half’?”

“And you say ‘only’!”

“If you can do it, do it. If you can’t, you can go and pack your things right now!”

The man’s face turned red and then white. In the end, he just stood there and did nothing.

He didn’t pack his things, nor did he say any harsh words.

They were all adults. He knew the price of acting on impulse. He wasn’t one of the workers outside the door. He had his own family and his own bills. He couldn’t lose this job.

After the manager’s outburst, he had no mood to continue speaking. “Anyway, that’s it. I don’t care who you find, and I don’t care how you handle those worker representatives. Of course, it’s also fine if you can persuade the workers to return to their posts!”

“In short, I hope to see the dock’s work order restored within seventy-two hours!”

“Now, get out and work!”

Everyone left the manager’s office, but a few people stayed behind. These were the manager’s confidants, his true inner circle.

The manager didn’t have a good face for them either. He was about to be fired himself. Except for the board of directors, he didn’t need to show a good face to anyone right now.

“Do you have anything else?” he asked.

One of them said, “I have a suggestion.”

The manager sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette. “Speak.”

A simple word, “speak,” was enough to reflect his inner emotions.

“We can put a little more pressure on them…”

The manager looked at him, his eyes somewhat grim. “I don’t want to have to ask you sentence by sentence. Do you not fucking understand the situation right now or what?”

“This isn’t some kindergarten heuristic game. If I fucking lose this job, you all will have to get lost too, understand?”

The man’s face turned a little pale from his words, and he no longer squeezed out his words like toothpaste, but said everything in one go.

“Those worker representatives are not so easy to deal with. If they could be bought off, they wouldn’t be worker representatives.”

“We need to change our thinking, find people to threaten them directly. If they don’t come back to work at the docks, find people to harm them, or harm their families.”

“I know this idea is a bit despicable, but…”

The manager suddenly retorted, “Where is it despicable?”

“They’re not even planning to let us live, why should we still consider them?”

“So, where is it despicable?”

The men all stared at the manager with wide eyes, as if they were meeting him for the first time.

The manager took a harsh drag from his cigarette. “I don’t know any gangsters, and I estimate that small-time gangsters can’t solve this matter. Do you have any ideas?”

“After this is over, I will propose to the company to add a position of vice manager or manager consultant. If you can help me get through this, you will be that person!”

Making empty promises was too easy for the manager. He dared to add a new job position without even needing the board’s approval. It was just a little extra money each month, not much. No one in finance would care.

The man’s previously pale face instantly flushed red. “I know, there’s a very formidable gang in the Port District recently, the Wolf Gang!”

“They’ve unified the gangs in the Port District. They’re a very powerful organization. If we can ask them to help us, I think there’s a high probability we can handle this matter.”

The manager pursed his lips. “It should cost a lot to hire them, right?”

The man said, “You can talk to them. Maybe they don’t want money.”

The manager leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment. If the other party wanted a lot of money, he could still haggle or have the head office pay.

But if the other party didn’t want money, it would be harder to handle.

As a manager, he knew very well that the freer something is, the higher the price you actually have to pay.

There is no such thing as unconditional love in this world. If he can give you something for a dollar for free, he will inevitably take more than a dollar’s worth of profit from you. He won’t give it to you for nothing.

But now there was no time to think so much. He only had seventy-two hours left. By Monday morning, if he still couldn’t handle this strike, he would be finished.

“Do you know any of their people?”

“Help me get in touch. I need to talk to them!”

The manager made a decision in a very short time. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make.

His confidant nodded repeatedly. “My… my son is one of them.”

Listening to the long chain of connections, the manager only felt a headache. “Whoever it is, get it done now. I’m waiting for your news!”

Soon, this young man, who had gone through many twists and turns, arrived outside the Professor’s office. The Professor was in charge of all matters, big and small, in the gang.

In many ways, the Professor was more like the leader of the Wolf Gang than Wolf was.

“The manager of the dock services company?” The Professor didn’t even react at first when he heard this title.

They were the Wolf Gang, a gang. The things they dealt with were all criminal activities. When did this kind of “legitimate person” have contact with him?

But he quickly understood. “What does he want from me?”

The gang member briefly explained, and the Professor roughly understood.

He thought for a moment, had the person wait outside, and then he dialed a number. “The dock management company wants me to go and deal with those striking workers. Should I agree?”

The voice on the other end of the line was clearly young. It was Owen.

Now that Owen was performing the duties and powers of the city government, when he received this call, Owen only thought for a few seconds before giving him a positive feedback. “Agree to them.”

“The docks are very important. The impact of the strike has not yet fully spread. If they can’t handle these people, it may impact our plans.”

In the years he had followed the Mayor, what Owen had seen and heard gave him more political experience than his peers.

He knew very well that the Mayor’s plan to settle things with one blow had a flaw, and that was that the militia could solve all problems at once.

If someone linked the strike to the militia, it might cause some setbacks in this matter.

When he said “handle,” he wasn’t talking about handling the gangs, but completely crushing Councilman Williams’s final resistance.

Things like gangs could be quickly built up with a little support. How many were lost was not important to those in power. They could cultivate a new batch with a wave of their hand.

What he cared about was the impact of the strike itself.

After getting the answer, the Professor hung up the phone. He called the man back in. “Tell your whatever-the-hell manager that if he wants to talk, he should come here and talk to me!”

The news quickly returned to the manager of the dock management company. He, along with the person who had proposed this idea, came to the Wolf Gang’s headquarters.

In the office, he met the Professor and relaxed.

The Professor’s appearance was very deceptive.

Actually, that’s not entirely right, because this was how he originally looked. It could only be said that people were unlikely to understand and accept that a middle-aged man with the temperament of a teacher was a gang leader.

So after his brief shock, he accepted this fact, which also made him feel much more relaxed.

At least this person wasn’t a fool with a scar on his face who cursed every few words and thought with his fists.

“They say you want to cooperate with us?” The Professor proactively poured a glass of liquor for the other party.

The manager licked his lips when he saw the liquor. He hadn’t had a drink for a while, not because he couldn’t buy it, but because the price was too high, and he couldn’t bear to drink it.

He picked up the glass and took a small sip. The familiar taste entered his mouth, went down his throat, and into his stomach, making his whole body feel comfortable.

He let out a long sigh, feeling a bit wistful. But then he suddenly remembered that he was communicating with the Professor about the matters at the docks and quickly sat up straight again. “Yes, someone incited the workers to go on strike. They are trying to use the strike to threaten us into giving them a pay raise. This is very foolish and unreasonable.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to give them a raise, it’s just that I don’t think the reason for a raise should be a threat centered on a strike…”

The Professor raised his hand. “I don’t care about that. What I care about is, what can you give me?”

The manager thought for a moment, turning his wrist over. “Money?”

The Professor shook his head. “One bar can bring us at least a few thousand in pure profit a night, and we have seven or eight such bars.”

“You can’t move us with money.”

Hearing the Professor say that the bars were so profitable, the manager was a little tempted. He couldn’t help but exclaim, “That much?”

“Then doesn’t the Workers’ Club earn tens of thousands every day?”

The Professor’s eyes lit up. “Tell me about the Workers’ Club.”

The manager then explained. When the Professor heard that the Workers’ Club had been run by Lance before, he couldn’t help but chuckle.

He never expected that he had hidden a super bar here.

The Professor made a decision. “The liquor business of this Workers’ Club is mine. And we need some secure warehouses and to establish a long-term cooperation.”

The docks were very important to Golden Port. He knew this well. If he could control the docks, it meant they had another protective talisman.

After considering for a moment, the manager agreed directly, but he also explained the situation. “The Workers’ Club is run by the workers’ union and has nothing to do with us.”

“But I can make the decision to give you a warehouse to run a bar. You can also use the name of the Workers’ Club.”

In his view, who was orthodox didn’t matter.

The Professor stood up, and he quickly stood up as well, then extended his hand. “Happy to cooperate!”

“Happy to cooperate!”

The two sat down again, and the Professor poured him a little more liquor. “If you like to drink, after we solve all the problems, I can give you two boxes a month.”

The manager’s throat began to move, but he couldn’t say no, nor could he refuse. He could only say “Thank you.”

The Professor waved his hand, indicating that these were small matters. “How do you want me to help you?”

The man sitting next to the manager finally had a chance to speak. “This is what I was thinking, sir.”

“You can take your men to the homes of the workers who are leading the trouble, and use your identity… sorry, I didn’t…”

The Professor raised his hand, gesturing for him to continue. “No need to apologize, we are a gang. This is our job and our style.”

The man was relieved. “Intimidate them, threaten them, with their families and their own lives.”

“As long as these influential people quit the strike first, our work will be much easier.”

“If you run into any tough nuts, then you can step in.”

“After this stage is over, we might still need you to show your faces on the docks. Although doing so might not be good, this time they were the ones who started the trouble.”

As the Professor calculated, he asked, “So, my job is actually to deal with some ordinary people who have no ability to resist?”

“It seems like an easy job!”

The manager’s confidant quickly agreed. “Yes, not difficult at all.”

Although the Professor held some contempt for these two, this was work. “Then who should I start with?”

He had sent those small gangs out to die. The core of the Wolf Gang was still there. These things could be given to them to do.

This way, the others wouldn’t have any objections. After all, they were also working, also striving for the development and growth of the gang.

The manager’s confidant immediately took out a prepared list and handed it over. “These are the people. The addresses behind are where they currently live.”

“Mr. Boss, you’d better be quick. The sooner the strike is quelled, the more benefits it will bring to both of us, to all of us.”

Looking at the list in his hand, the Professor nodded slightly. “In a day or two, you will see results.”

He took out a manila envelope from the drawer, put the liquor bottle in it. “I have other things to do here, so I won’t keep you.”

“Just go back and wait for my good news.”

“This bottle of liquor is a new variety. You can help us taste it.”

The manager smiled and took the manila envelope. “Then I’ll leave the matter of the strike to you.”

Coming out of the Wolf Gang’s headquarters, the manager no longer had his previous serious expression. He glanced at his subordinate beside him and handed him the manila envelope. “You know quite a variety of people. A vice manager needs someone like you.”

“Someone who knows people from all walks of life. I will recommend you to the board of directors.”

“Take this bottle of liquor back and try it. Remember to tell that gentleman inside what it tastes like…”

(End of chapter)

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