Mind Reader - α

Chapter 8 - Gangs

Once home, I thought about what had just happened. First, mind reading was even more potent than I expected. I only needed to make someone think about a specific topic and their mind would automatically reveal related information. That guy probably believed he didn't say anything important to the end while I received everything I needed from him. His not knowing any better was the cherry on top.

Next was the information I received. Since there was no need to stay paralyzed in fear of getting caught for what I did, I chose to assume I was safe and continued moving forward. I needed to do some personal research on top of what I had gotten. The situation in this town seemed quite messy, with gangs fighting one another and whatnot.

I booted my computer and searched for the important names I received as offerings. It didn't take too long to find everything I needed. This town had two gangs fighting for power. The first one and more recently established was the Cattivo gang. Even though they had less history, they were dominating the current power struggle. I had to search forums and rumors to find out more about them.

They were feared quite a lot. They were a bunch of people ready to do anything to achieve their goals. Gambling, prostitution, drugs, extortion, money laundering, human trafficking, and so on. If it made money, you name it and they were involved in it.

The other group was the Giusta gang. They were more like traditional types of mafias. Interestingly enough, they had a sort of code of honor. They didn't involve themselves in the worst crimes and only did things like gambling, lending money with high-interest rates, or running a black market for goods. Because of this, they had a hard time recruiting new members and were slowly losing against Cattivo. For young gangsters, their old-fashioned code of conduct and way of doing "business" simply wasn't attractive.

From the point of view of trash like them, it made sense. On one side, you could go wild, have lots of women, enjoy drugs, and make as much money as you wanted. On the other side, you had to respect strict rules and not be involved in the worst crimes. It was easy to see which side people like the guy from before would choose.

There was one piece of information about the Giusta gang that I found interesting. The daughter of the gang leader was a senior at my high school. It seemed that she was relatively normal except for the fact that she was always seen together with the daughter of another gang member, who was the same age as her. I wondered if she was trying to keep to herself because it was hard to make friends due to who her father was.

The last thing I checked was social media. I found the girl named Chelsea quite quickly. Just like most other teenagers, she was very active on social media and it was easy to find her. She was a first-year student at my school and her last name was Kemp. It was easy to see something affected her recently because she hadn't posted anything for some time now.

I had a good overview of the situation now. The cleaning I did just before was good and all but it wouldn't help the girls' situation. I had to do it to get information so it couldn't be helped. I just hoped there wouldn't be any consequences for them.

The main issue was that their families were taken hostage. And that those families didn't even know that was the case. As long as they kept quiet, nothing would change. At the same time, going to the police or revealing things publicly would be a death sentence.

As for me, I was just a single high school student without any real power. There was no way I could protect two families by myself. I thought hard and long about the situation but there just wasn't any way out of this. I was powerless to help them in the current circumstances.

Even if I went to those families and revealed the truth, they would still need to urgently move out of town and avoid any surveillance they had on them. And that is assuming they would believe me in the first place. My convincing power in urgent situations was close to zero due to my face. The most likely outcome would be that they would take me for the very criminal I would try to warn them against. Of course, they could ask their daughters for the truth but I was also unsure if they would side with me. After all, they stayed quiet for so long. They could have revealed everything already if they wanted to.

After a lot more thinking, I was left to believe I needed some help. The problem was that I knew no one here. I resided in this town for less than ten days, most of those spent either moving in or staying inside my new apartment.

Who would help me in such a situation anyway? Well, nobody. Strangers didn't move for strangers.

No, that wasn't completely true. There was one group of people that could help. The Giusta gang.

It's said that one should fight fire with fire, right? This might be the most realistic solution to this problem. It was painful to have to rely on these sorts of people but there was no other choice. I had already resolved to help those girls and I wasn't one to stop midway.

My best bet would be the daughter of the gang leader that studied at my school. If it was before, my hope of getting her help would be very low. However, I was now a mind reader. Inter-personal socialization, which was my biggest weakness, had suddenly become one of my strongest points.

Everyone wanted something. As long as I knew what it was, it would be much easier to satisfy them and make them my allies.