Pretending to Be an Untouchable Crime Boss-Chapter 390: Curse.
It was more surreal than anything else as the warning sirens were screaming while the ground was still shaking. It felt as if the whole nation was under attack, as if a war had suddenly broken out. But rather than an air raid or anything like that, it was another kind of warning that shocked them even more than before.
It is one thing to expect a sudden earthquake. Maybe it is a bit exciting the first time. But this was anything but exciting right now as the house itself had collapsed on one side, and now the siren was repeating one word they never expected to hear.
A tsunami warning.
It was absurd. No, not even absurd. There were no words to truly describe the whole thing, because they were prepared for everything. At the height of their drug empire, they expected an attack from a rival mafia or even the government. But this was not an attack. It was not the mafia, nor the government.
It was nature itself destroying them.
"James!" Suddenly Mike’s voice came as he ran from the side, his clothes all dirty, looking like he had just crawled out of the rubble. He had two medical bags in his hands and immediately ran to James to check him, pushing his gaze to the wound on his head. "It’s good, just a cut." He continued as he pulled out some disinfectant and poured it over his head, then wrapped the whole thing in gauze and there was not a single word from James nor anybody else.
They were just shocked.
"Are we safe?" Bella asked as she looked at Hector, though he did not even answer as he was trying to make a call.
"We are." Mike answered her as he was checking others too who had injured themselves. "This is one of the highest points, and we are far away from the city and the docks, so we only need to be careful about the earthquake."
"Was there even any amber alert?!" Hector asked as he looked at his phone, and even the signal was gone. "I didn’t receive a single message about this shit!"
"There wasn’t!" Ramzer spoke as he suddenly appeared from the back, looking all dirty like he had been in the middle of the chaos. "There wasn’t anything, but I got a video from our boys in the city, and it’s bad. Half of it was destroyed and the dock area flooded!"
As soon as Ramirez said it, everybody understood. They did not even need to think about it. The thought came to all of them at the same time.
They were fucked.
Because if the family house, this mansion that was not even a simple mansion but a reinforced fortress built to survive attacks and explosions, had collapsed or at least half of it had fallen apart, then what about everything else they owned across the city?
What about the warehouses, the hangars, the dock storage buildings, and all the places they had taken from other families like Silas and Augustus?
There was no doubt in their minds about what had happened to those places.
Most of them, if not all of them, were made of wood and sheet metal and nothing more. Some were old buildings they had taken over, others were built quickly just to store goods and move them fast and now an earthquake had hit with full force following it by a tsunami.
If this mansion could not stand untouched, then those places never had a chance.
And with those buildings, everything inside them was probably gone too.
The cocaine stored in the warehouses, packed and ready to move. The money they had counted on, the numbers Mike had mentioned before now meant nothing. In just a few minutes, what looked like an untouchable empire could have been reduced to dust.
Not only the drugs, but the drones, the printing machines, the packaging equipment, all the tools they used to run their trade, could be destroyed. Even the weapon warehouses, filled with rifles, ammunition, and supplies meant for war, were probably damaged or completely buried under rubble.
What they had built over years with blood, fear, and careful planning might have been wiped out in a single moment by the earth itself. And as everybody thought about it more and more it was almost like a curse itself.
The curse that didn’t allow even one mafia to stay in the city and remain on top, the curse that had destroyed every empire before them, had returned, and now, for James and the Bellini family but not gunshots, not bombs, not betrayal, but an earthquake to claim everything they had built, every piece of their empire.
It felt as if the city itself had decided that no mafia, no matter how clever or powerful, could ever truly stay on top, and now the curse had arrived in full force and well it was ending too.
Yeah, it was as sudden as it came, almost impossibly quick, and then just as quickly, it started calming down, while the sirens kept screaming their warnings, shouting for people to reach higher ground, and then, just like that, it was over.
And well it was clear to everybody that it wasn’t a curse that targeted them alone.
No, the whole city was ruined on a scale that no one could have ever imagined. Entire blocks had collapsed and been destroyed, streets literally rising and cracking as the ground shifted beneath them, electricity failing everywhere, water flooding and chaos consuming every corner of the city in a way that no one had ever witnessed before.
They built up all of it and now it all got destroyed in less than ten minutes not even thinking about the lives that were lost... yeah the lives...
"Ferucci and Finn..." Mike whispered as he realized that they were still in the city, still in that private hospital, and in that moment, everyone understood that it was not just about the drugs and weapons anymore, but, more importantly, about their people, their family.
--- PLEASE READ AUTHOR’S THOUGHT
