Ian

Tenryuu's laughter falters a little when I ask about her newfound celebrity status. "I just want to fly with my dragon and keep the team going, I wasn't expecting this." She gestures at the fancy hotel suite, her expression lost.

And what of her friendship – I'm careful not to say 'relationship' – with Rindburg's other rising star, idol Thessaly Pantelleria? Phoebe looks nervously at her manager before answering. "Can I not answer that? I really don't wanna make any trouble for my friends and I feel like anything I say will be used against me." Despite her obvious tension, she laughs again at that. "I feel like anything I say can and be- can and will be used in a court of public opinion."

I put the magazine down. It's a sign of desperation that I'm even reading this trash. Lachlan had told me to figure out Phoebe Tenryuu's mob connection but with Rindburg filling up with southern mafiosi, it was getting risky to poke around too close. Without a good lead to follow, I wasn't kicking that hornet's nest, but there were no good leads.

Tenryuu's team was definitely owned or funded by the Castelloro gang, that much was clear from the web of barely-legal property relationships around the farm they used as a base. But if Angelo Castelloro owned a dragon ranch somewhere, I'd found no evidence of that. He had to have bought or leased the dragon from the Nosa Costra, that had to be why so many of their men had suddenly come north.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Proving that was going to be a right ball-ache, though. I drained my glass of whiskey and put it back on the desk, alcohol making me clumsy enough that it slammed pretty hard. The evening had already been too long.

The magazine sat reproachfully on top of my messy, half-hearted notes. In the bottom corner of the page was a little boxout titled 'Pantelleria on Tenryuu'; they'd found time to question the idol about her side of the picture. The quote read:

"I think she's so cool, it's amazing what she's achieved. I feel so lucky to have met her, I hope we'll be able to do all sorts of stuff together, you know, in the future."

Were they dating? It was hard to imagine a Rindburg idol breaking out like Pantelleria had without some sort of mob connection, any maybe that was how Phoebe had first come into contact with the Castelloro gang.

And there was all that business with Mynah Darling, too. This was a Saxe-Merovian magazine, so there was no quote from Mynah, but the tabloids had been full of speculation for a month. Months, maybe, at this point. Probably Darling was run by some other mob, wherever she originated from.

Nosa Costra had to have fingers in every record label in southern Occidens. If Pantelleria could be Tenryuu's connection to the Castelloros, then maybe Darling brought the Nosa Costra link with her. The basics of that would be relatively easy to check out, at least.

I scrawled a note to that effect across the top of the magazine page. Maybe that was enough for the night. I stood, reeled once, and decided not to have one last drink. Time for that when there wasn't work to do in the morning.

Okay, afternoon.