RETIRED WAR GOD'S EVERYDAY LIFE

3

Mason didn't answer right away. The atmosphere inside Mrs. Beatrice's flower shop felt so silent, dominated only by the old woman's labored breathing beside him and the patter of raindrops hitting the front window. On the telephone receiver, the hiss of the military radio frequency sounded like a whisper of death from the past that he was trying to bury deep down.

"Mason? Are you still there?" the woman's voice cut through the silence again. Her tone was cold, calculated, and very familiar. Major Brenda Vance from the Pentagon's Military Intelligence Division.

Mason took a deep breath through his nose, lowering the tension in his vocal cords. "You have the wrong number, Ma'am. This is a flower shop on Milwaukee Avenue."

"Don't play dumb with me, Ghost," Brenda hissed. "There are only two people on this planet who possess that secret-channel encryption protocol. Two of them are rotting in the soil of Syria, and the third is pretending to be a civilian in Chicago. We detected a military-grade micro-tracker signal active in your area ten seconds ago."

Mason glanced behind his trousers. The System's micro-tracker—technology that somehow had a frequency signature almost identical to Task Force Obsidian tactical equipment. Damn it. This system really intended to give him a heart attack.

"I'm just a coffee guy, Ma'am," Mason replied flatly, his voice calm without a single flaw. "If you want to order a latte or cappuccino, please come tomorrow at seven in the morning. The cafe closes at eight at night."

Mason hung up the phone unilaterally. Without wasting time, he removed the battery from his custom phone, pulled out the SIM card, and crushed it into small fragments using the pressure of his thumb and index finger. He put the plastic and silicon fragments into his pocket.

"Mason? Son, are you okay?" Mrs. Beatrice's voice broke his focus. The old woman looked at Mason anxiously from behind her flower shop's cash register, holding a cup of warm tea she had just poured. "Your face suddenly turned so pale. Who called?"

The muscles in Mason's face relaxed instantly. His friendly smile returned like a flawless mask. "Nobody, Mrs. Beatrice. Just an insurance salesman who dialed the wrong number. How is your hand? Still hurt?"

"No, Son. Thank you so much," Mrs. Beatrice shook her head slowly, her eyes welling with tears. "But I'm afraid... Frankie and the Moretti Gang never let their prey go just like that. They are monsters. There used to be a bakery owner down the street who fought back... the next week his shop was burned to the ground and he was chased out of Chicago."

Mason patted Mrs. Beatrice's shoulder gently. "This city has rules, Mrs. Beatrice. But they aren't the only ones who can play by those rules. Get some rest. I'll take care of the rest."

Mason returned to his cafe through the side door. Toby was standing trembling behind the bar, holding a broomstick like he was holding a war spear. When he saw Mason enter, the teenager breathed a sigh of relief until his shoulders dropped drastically.

"Mr. Mason! Oh God, Mr. Mason is still alive!" Toby exclaimed in a half-whisper. "Earlier... earlier I saw from the window! Frankie was crying in the street! What did you do to him?! Did you use magic or something?!"

Mason walked casually behind the bar counter, picked up a dry cleaning cloth, and began drying the newly washed porcelain cups. "Basic anatomy, Toby. Press the right spot, and even the fiercest person in the world will drop to their knees begging for mercy. Put the broom down, we still have half an hour before closing."

"B-but Mr. Mason... that's the Moretti Gang!" Toby stepped closer, leaning his body over the bar counter with a serious face. "You know who Don Sal Moretti is, right? He controls all the gambling, drugs, and protection money in the South Side all the way to Wicker Park! Even the police are too lazy to deal with them!"

"The police are lazy to deal with them when it's no use to them, Toby," Mason answered quietly. "Now help me tidy up the chairs."

While Toby was busy moving the wooden table, Mason took the opportunity to check the System interface still floating in the corner of his eye.

[Side Quest Reward Notification:] [Assets Acquired: Mrs. Beatrice Flower Shop Land Ownership Certificate (Redeemed from First Chicago Bank).] [Asset Status: Registered under the payment ownership name: Apex Holding LLC (Mason Hayes - Sole Owner).] [Tranquility Point Bonus: +200 Points. Current Total Points: 700 Points.]

Mason smiled faintly. With this, the bank could no longer auction off Mrs. Beatrice's land, and the Moretti Gang couldn't use corrupt legal channels to seize the place. But that only solved the problem on paper. On the streets, people like Frankie Bruno didn't understand legal papers—they only understood muscle and fear.

Mason reached into his pocket, pulling out a dark-screened black tablet hidden beneath the espresso machine. The tablet lit up immediately upon scanning Mason's fingerprint, displaying a Chicago street navigation map with a blinking red dot moving slowly toward the old industrial area on the outskirts of Goose Island.

It was the signal from the micro-tracker he had attached to Frankie earlier.

"Where are you going, Frankie?" Mason muttered very softly.

Through the tablet screen, Mason connected the tracker network to the System's built-in simple hacking system. Within seconds, audio recordings from around Frankie began to be heard in the hidden earpiece fitted in Mason's left ear.

"...I don't care, Frankie!" a heavy-accented man's voice shouted from the speaker. It was the voice of Don Sal "The Hammer" Moretti. "You were humiliated by a coffee guy?! In front of the people of Wicker Park?!"

"Boss, b-but my hand... he used some kind of secret attack trick!" Frankie's voice whimpered, sounding very pathetic. "He broke my hand without hitting! He even gave a thousand dollars in cash to pay two months' rent!"

"Cash?!" Don Moretti hissed in fury. "You think we need a thousand bucks of loose change from a damn coffee guy?! We need control! If the locals see someone can fight you and still open a shop tomorrow morning, our protection business all over the North district could collapse!"

"T-then what should we do, Boss? Steal his cafe? Burn the place down?"

"Don't burn it down yet," Don Moretti gave an order with a murderously cold tone. "Send Gaston and two of his thugs tonight. Break both of that coffee guy's legs, trash his cafe, and make sure people know what happens when you try to mess with the Moretti Gang. Make him crawl out of Wicker Park."

Mason listened to every sentence while continuing to wipe the surface of the espresso machine. There was no fear in his eyes. What was there was deep annoyance.

Gaston Pierre.

Mason knew that name. A former French Foreign Legion member dismissed for cruelty against prisoners of war, now a mid-tier hitman hired by Chicago's local mafias.