Chapter 39

The leader of the black suns is a man called Rharo Dine and he lives a weird sheltered life on the planet Ord Mantell. I suspect that he has many different names to protect himself from assassin attacks. I know a few of them but I highly doubt I know them all. Rharo Dine lives a quiet life as a bartender who is hired by the owner, he comes to work, does his hours and goes home. For all good purposes, he pays his taxes and lives an unremarkable life, he even pays a local thug gang a small protection fee to stop stealing his stuff and harassing him. I wouldn't even look twice at the man but the daily life of this man wasn't how I found him, I followed the cash of the black suns.

While Rharo Dine had very few paper trails leading to him and his bank accounts were as clean as freshly dropped snow, that didn't mean the other Vigos were as good at hiding their ill-gotten cash. After all, I cleaned their ill-gotten cash through various businesses and funnelled it through my programs that allowed me to find where they had bank accounts. With their bank accounts' whereabouts, I was able to find where they withdrew and spent their cash and how they paid the leader's cut. I didn't search for the man but followed the money.

I wonder if I should even tell Rharo Dine about how and why I killed one of his Vigos, he might not know or even care but their organisation also has top-notch information-gathering abilities that aren't connected to mine and I'm not infallible enough to cover all my bases.

Killing him isn't the best option. Someone would take his place and may come for revenge. I could get rid of the top people and allow a trickle-down effect of less competent people who wouldn't know what was going on to take over but that might ruin my future plans with the empire.

And that is why I was now sitting at a bar taking long sips of cool house beer while Rharo Dine cleaned and severed. I watched him with every tilt of my glass upwards and silently inspected him. Rharo Dine's act was almost perfect, every action he took suggested that he had been a bartender for years. The way he effortlessly knew every inch of the bar and stacked glasses into their exact place with practice ease would fool anyone, me included. And yet I had followed the money and was now reading his surface thoughts.

The thoughts of a hard-line criminal were one of problem-solving through hard violence and even harder cash but when you reached the top, that kind of violence was done by subordinates. Rharo Dine's mind was full of numbers and alliances. He was thinking about weakening a Vigo power so he was easier to manage. The black sun's leader had to keep a balance and that's where I was shocked to find that the leader of the black suns had set up one of his Vigos to pressure a businessman. Rharo Dine was thinking about me.

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The black sun's leader had seen the actions of the Vigo Rena Beenz and didn't like where the man's ambition led him. Through subtle actions and masterful placements, he had moved his Vigo to commit suicide against a much more vicious opponent. Rharo Dine had suppressed the information on me so Vigo Rena Beenz would overextend and make a stupid action.

The black sun's leader had planned for his Vigo destruction by sending him to me. In his mind the Vigo was dead either at my hands or what would happen when the other Vigos found out that they had to pay for their money to be laundered. It was a masterful piece of criminal politics that weakened him in the short term with the loss of one of his Vigos but strengthened himself in the long run. Even Palpatine would nod his head at such a good plot.

Of course, he knew that Vigo Rena Beenz had been killed by me, that was one of the outcomes he had planned for, in his mind, plan after plan rolled out to take advantage of his Vigo death. There was a moment of hesitation from Rharo Dine as he wiped a table down when he was thinking about taking advantage of me but a flash of understanding came to his eyes as he weighed the losses and gains of a battle against my tiny slice of the galaxy and his operations. It amazed me how quickly his mind worked, he had no special ability with the force but his mind visually planned for battles that would never become reality, situations that might never come true.

It was a good thing that Rharo Dine lived at a separate time than Empire Palpatine because if these two ever fought each other the galaxy would suffer let alone thinking about if they teamed up together.

I planned to pursue the leader of the black sun using both profits from washing and investing his cash and pain from the length I would go but now I see that wasn't enough. A man who was willing to hurt his organisation and extension himself was a man who would go to extreme and subtle lengths to get what he wanted.

It wasn't enough to profit from me, Rharo Dine needed to feel secure and as long as I existed he wouldn't feel safe.

Sometimes to ensure your way of life you needed to fain weakness and take a step back. Just like Rharo Dine did causing a slight weakness in his organization. It was an interesting lesson.

I was going to go to war with my droids, ships and borrowed phantoms but that would lead to nothing but losses. Killing the man in front of me would gain me little profit in the short run and most likely hurt the timeline I knew was coming.

A different plan was needed. I had to show weakness so I could keep my strength, And there was only one type of weakness that Rharo Dine would accept.

I left Rharo Dine to clean and pour while I had to plan.