Shadow Empire

Chapter 212: Advance Greeting and Acquiring a Piece of Land and Phone

After hanging up the phone, Wolfley returned to the gambling table with a cigarette in his mouth and sat down. He picked up the cards stuck on the table, glanced at the others, bit the cigarette holder with his teeth, tilted his head and squinted his eyes, "Who's turn to speak now?"

Wolfley is Fleming's cousin. His father and Bandy are brothers. Although Bandy Koda is currently in charge of the entire Kodak family, Wolfley's father can also be considered half the patriarch.

The two brothers have a very good relationship. They are considered to be the last group of people who have experienced the turmoil in Jingang City. Not only are they brothers, but they have also experienced life and death together, so they trust each other very much.

In addition, they also hope that their children can continue to manage the family together like them.

The gang affairs were left to Wolfley, who had no talent for school but had some talent for gambling.

Fleming had a good learning ability, so he was arranged to go to college, and he was in charge of all matters related to the gaming company.

Bandy hopes that the two brothers can shine together and ensure the continuation of the Kodak family.

He doesn't have any big ambitions; he would be satisfied as long as he can maintain stability for a hundred years.

As for whether it can succeed, he feels there is great hope.

Wolfley is thirty-four years old. He has dark brown hair that is parted on the side and is so waxed that it never changes even after a comb has passed through it.

He was wearing a dark shirt with an off-white vest on the outside, and the gold pocket watch chain dangling from his chest swayed back and forth with his movements.

There were some gentlemen who looked prestigious sitting around the table. This was a private gambling game, and the Kodak family would be responsible for a series of tasks including organizing the game.

Some people don’t like playing at the gaming table in a casino, or they don’t trust the dealers. They always feel that the dealers have some tricks and it is difficult to win money from them.

So they would rather play with other players, at least other players will not be so professional!

As long as they have this idea, the Kodak family will help them to make the deal.

They provide all services from setting up the game to the end of the game. The games will be arranged in the Kodak family's casino, villa in the Bay Area, sun room in the beach area or any villa by the sea.

They can arrange beautiful croupiers and provide all the games and chips.

The cost is two hundred to two thousand dollars for venue and other expenses, and a three percent service fee taken from the winner of each game.

When three percent is less than one dollar, it will be calculated as one dollar.

It may sound like a lot, but to truly rich people, they don't think it's unreasonable.

After all, the service fee is collected from the winners, not from the losers.

For the winners, they may have won dozens or hundreds of dollars, and they would be happy to give a few dollars as service fee.

This was a private game, and Wolfley loved to play cards, for which he had some amazing talent.

The person sitting opposite him smiled and said, "It's your turn to speak."

Wolfley glanced at the faces of these people, picked up two chips with a face value of 500 and threw them on the table, "One thousand dollars." He seemed to think of something and took two more chips with a face value of 500 and threw them on, "Add another thousand."

"Wolfley, are you making such a big deal right from the start?"

Wolfley smiled and said, "I have something to do and need to leave for a while, so I might as well take a gamble."

He looked at the cards in his hand and said, "And my cards are not small. Although there is still one card left, I believe in myself."

After thinking for a while, the others gave up calling.

It’s not that they can’t afford it, but that they don’t want to raise the bar too high.

If you pile up several thousand dollars not long after the game starts, the game will get out of control after two or three hours.

Seeing that everyone else chose to give up, Wolfley smiled and asked the dealer to put away his chips. He won the money on the table, about two hundred yuan.

"I'll be back later, you guys play first..."

After he left, the others asked to see Wolfley's hand, and the dealer granted their request.

Seeing that Wolfley had the smallest card among them but won two hundred dollars from them, these people were all in a state of confusion.

After looking at this card, it’s better not to look at it.

Wolfley drove back to the office and called over his cousin who was responsible for doing the dirty work in the family.

Whether it is the Kodak family, the Pasreto family, or the other three families.

Most of the middle and senior level cadres in their organizational structure are family members with blood ties, because they know very well that most people in criminal organizations are unreliable.

But compared to people who are not related by blood, people with blood ties are more trustworthy, because betraying strangers will not be criticized too much, but betraying relatives will be morally criticized even if the person does the right thing.

"Eric, that bastard son of a bitch, hurt Fleming. He owns a nightclub and several bars in the Empire District. You take your men to take care of them."

Wolfley's cousin thought about it and said, "No problem, but I heard that the Lance family in the Empire District is very popular recently. Is there any relationship between them and Eric?"

Hearing his cousin say this, Wolfley's brows furrowed suddenly. This was the second time he heard about the details of the Lance family.

He had heard about it before, but it was just a casual conversation among guests and he was not interested in it.

The five major families have ruled Jingang City for many years. There are a total of twenty to thirty large gangs in the entire Jingang City. If you count the budding gangs like the block families, there may be hundreds or even thousands of them here!
As for unifying a district?

Wolfley didn't want to waste time getting to know the "countryside" of the Empire District. Before entering the city center, the Starlight District and the Bay Area, he had no interest in learning about the ups and downs of these small gangs.

But after hearing about this gang from his cousin again, he became more interested in learning more about it. "Are they powerful?"

My cousin didn't know how to answer this question. "They dealt with the Camilla Gang in a very short time, and now they have driven the Red Dog Gang out of their territory. They have completed the unification of the forces in the Empire District."

"Although they don't have many people, they are very united." This is his perception of the Lance family, or rather, this is how the entire Jingang City perceives this group of people.

Wolfley didn't care at all. When he started to get involved in and run the "family business", he knew how powerful the Kodak family was.

"Can't you handle them?"

The cousin scratched his head. “They are no match for us, but I heard they work for Paul.”

Paul is Mr. Pasletto's first name.

This made Wolfley take it a little more seriously. The most disturbing thing about the Pasretto family was the gunman from Sumuli.

Alcohol, tobacco and gunmen are the specialties there.

There has always been a saying in the Federation: Don't mess with the Sumurians at will. No matter where you are, they will always find you and shoot you.

This is also one of the reasons why the Pasreto family was able to gain a foothold in Jingang City. The successive gunmen who came to their rescue in the early days did cause trouble.

Wolfley could look down on Lance and his Lance family, but he could not underestimate the Pasretto family. He thought for a moment and said, "Continue to do as I say. I will communicate with Paul."

When my cousin heard this, he knew that he was going to take action. He nodded and said, "Just make sure you know what to do. I'll go get ready now."

Mobilizing gunmen and thugs, distributing guns and ammunition, and mobilizing vehicles all take time.

In fact, the actions of big gangs are not as people imagine. They make a decision on the spur of the moment and then rush forward in a chaotic manner without any organization or arrangement.

They need to plan and arrange before they can start the actual work.

In the afternoon, Lance and Hiram were looking at a piece of land in the port area. This piece of land used to be a small import and export trading company. It also had a warehouse covering an area of ​​about 600 square meters, where a cinema could be built.

Recently, as the box office of the first talkie continues to set new records, many people have taken notice of the film industry.

Previously, capital was not keen to invest in the film industry because the industry had low output and no one was willing to work in this industry except for those who really liked it.

Assuming a movie ticket costs five cents, even if one million people watched this movie, the box office would only be 50,000 yuan.

At this time, there are about 110 million people in the Federation. Assuming that one out of every ten people watched this movie, that means 10 million people watched this movie. Then the box office is only 500,000.

But in reality it is impossible for so many people to watch it, because there are no movie theaters at all in some backward areas in the West, and people in some poor areas don't even want to give a nickel to the movie theater.

But if we calculate based on a box office of 500,000, minus the portion they give to theaters, the production company can only get 200,000 or 300,000 at most, so let's take a middle value, 250,000.

Two hundred thousand yuan needs to be taxed, and the tax will take away probably a small half of it, leaving only a few hundred thousand yuan.

After deducting costs and the requirements of each link from the hundreds of thousands of yuan, only tens of thousands of yuan are left when it appears in the financial statements as net profit.

But in reality, not all movies can be so popular and have 10 million people watching them.

The reason why the film industry is not profitable is actually caused by the “five cents to watch a movie” policy.

Previously, some media outlets were claiming that the Federal film industry was developing rapidly. Their statement that "the Federal film industry produces one thousand films every year" shocked the world!
Make everyone feel that the Federation is a country with highly developed civilization and economy.

But in fact, 90% of the so-called "movies" during this period were those that were between ten and twenty minutes long.

From Lance's perspective, these can't even be called movies, they can only be called short films.

These silent films would play dialogue scenes for a while, and their actual content might only be eight or nine minutes.

Under such circumstances, some filmmakers shouted the slogan "Five cents to see a movie", causing the entire federal film industry to enter an era of involution.

Fortunately, this situation now seems to be broken. The first sound film not only brought about reforms in the film industry, but also normalized ticket prices.

Capital will never change its pathological pursuit of profits, so they will start investing in this field.

In fact, from the perspective of profiteering alone, the sale of bootleg liquor surpasses 99% of industries, but people cannot always focus on illegal businesses.

As society gradually begins to stabilize, some things will eventually fade away from the stage of history.

But cinemas do more than just that.

"Mr. Lance, this is roughly the situation here. If you want it, I only need fifteen thousand dollars and it will be yours."

The manager of the trading company had a helpless look on his face. It was obvious that this place should have been very busy, with many desks and filing cabinets.

Lance sat across from him, looking at the warehouse outside, a little curious, "Why can't the business continue?"

"This question is a bit presumptuous. You don't have to answer it."

The manager seemed nonchalant. “We lost a lot of money in the financial market and have no more funds to keep the company running, so you see.”

There are no employees here anymore, and there is only some garbage left in the warehouse. Everything has become empty.

After talking about this topic, he seemed to have a lot to say.

"We made a little money at the beginning, Mr. Lance. I wonder if you have any research on stocks?" Seeing Lance nodded, he continued, "Then you should understand the feeling of becoming rich overnight."

"We initially invested 5,000 yuan, and in less than a week it turned into more than 30,000 yuan..."

Lance could already guess what was going to happen next. The short-term huge profits brought by the financial market made their eyes red, and then they invested more money into it.

The most important thing for a trading company is the flow of funds. The core profit model of a trading company is to use funds rationally and allow the funds to continuously roll over and generate profits.

But the huge profits brought by the financial sector were too crazy, so they invested more funds in the financial market instead of continuing to operate their trading business.

With rounds of harvest, their money eventually became a thing of the past, so much so that they needed to sell their properties here in exchange for some funds.

Lance could even imagine that after giving them the 15,000 yuan, they would invest it in the stock market and try to make back all the lost money.

But in the end, they are likely to become penniless, which is also the final outcome for many people who blindly enter the financial market.

The freer the financial market, the closer it is to the tables of capital tycoons; no one can escape the fate of becoming food.

After listening to his story, Lance expressed some sympathy, "I hope this fifteen thousand dollars can help you."

"You agreed to our offer?" He found it a little unbelievable. He thought Lance should bargain again, but Lance had no intention of bargaining at all and said this sentence, which basically made up his mind.

Lance nodded. "If you support cash payment, I can pay you now."

"But if you want a check, then we'll have to negotiate on that price."

The manager knew what Lance meant. These gangs were not short of money and had a lot of cash on hand, but they did not have much money in the bank that they could use.

But he doesn't care about black money or not, more money is the most important thing!
"Mr. Lance, we accept cash payments!"

As long as he can get a little more money, he doesn't care whether the tax bureau investigates him.

They can then reinvest this money into the stock market to make more money.

If possible.

The manager had no objection to accepting cash, so the matter was settled. The only thing left was for the lawyers to discuss.

As soon as I walked out of this company, Morris came up to me.

"Is something wrong?"

Morris nodded. "Alberto called me just now and asked you to call him back as soon as possible, so I came here."

After listening to this, Lance entered a roadside telephone booth and dialed Alberto's number.

"Lance?"

"Yes, what's the emergency?"

"I heard about what happened between Eric and Fleming. The Kodak family is planning to take action against the nightclub and bar. Paul asked me to tell you."

"Don't get involved!"

Lance took a deep breath, "I see. I'll have the people withdrawn."

The two chatted about the two friends Alberto brought back, and the embarrassing things they did during the federal inspection, as if it was a very funny thing!

After chatting for seven or eight minutes, the two ended the call. After walking out of the phone booth, Lance lit a cigarette. He stood on the side of the road looking at the busy city intersection, then turned and got into the car.

The gentle atmosphere of the city fills every street. Perhaps this kind of life and rhythm is very comfortable for ordinary people, but for ambitious people, it is too comfortable.

Back at the club, Lance called Eric, but the call went unanswered.

It wasn't until after ten o'clock in the evening that Eric called back.

Although he had to get stitches on his head, he was still praised by the mayor and was feeling very proud of himself.

He didn't want to see Shayna these days. On the one hand, he looked a little embarrassed. On the other hand, because Shayna had suffered such a big loss, he suddenly had an indescribable feeling.

It was like I didn’t want to pursue Shayna anymore, and suddenly it felt boring.

It's like your favorite magazine. Every time you see it, you can't help but glue it, but sometimes you suddenly feel that this magazine is just so-so, nothing special, and you don't want to use it anymore.

This is how Eric felt at the moment, a little dull.

On the contrary, what he experienced that night made him feel excited and his blood boil. He suddenly became a little obsessed with this feeling.

In the past two days, Lawyer Orson introduced him to some new friends who came from other cities. They also had the same special aura as Lance and other gang members.

These people surrounded him, making him feel a little dizzy for a moment!
"I heard you've been looking for me?" He was not polite to Lance. When he knew that his uncle was going to challenge the local traditional forces, he would not be polite to any local!

I just bragged in the group this afternoon. I ate a little. I'm going to have dinner. I'll update later.
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(End of this chapter)