Chapter 21: The Menu

Recognizing Argo’s voice, Moro figured that progress had been made on the intelligence front. As for Argo’s slightly eccentric opening line, he couldn't be bothered to respond. His silence left the call in an awkward lull. Argo scratched her greasy hair and decided to break the silence by getting straight to the point.

"Big spender, you’re in a very tight spot right now."

"I’ve noticed."

Hearing Argo’s warning, Moro looked down at the corpse at his feet. The journey from Yorknew City to the outskirts took about an hour. That Argo was able to gather key intelligence in such a short time was proof of her competence. Thinking of this, Moro’s gaze shifted, quickly scanning the road ahead. Continuing along this path would lead into a wilderness area. The private shooting range he had paid for was located in that very wasteland. However, it seemed that the range was likely no longer safe, making a trip there pointless. His daily training would require a new strategy.

Argo was initially puzzled as to how Moro had "noticed," but she quickly caught on. "Were you attacked?"

"Yes. You almost lost out on an easy two billion."

"That would have been a real... well, that’s not quite right. If you had died so easily, the money in my hands wouldn’t just be burning a hole in my pocket; I’d also be at risk of being implicated." Argo earnestly refuted Moro’s point. She had just taken on such a massive job, and if the client were to drop dead right after stepping out the door, how would she ever be able to do business again?

"Enough. Let’s get to business." Moro wanted to see how much Argo had uncovered.

At his words, Argo immediately switched into work mode. "The people tracking you are the Gambino family and a man named Clyde. Big spender, you know about the Ten Dons, right?"

"I do." Moro’s eyes flickered slightly.

Argo continued, "Gambino is the surname of one of the Ten Dons."

Moro was somewhat surprised, but he quickly regained his composure. The Ten Dons—the ten supreme leaders of the global underworld, who controlled the criminal factions across ten regions of the six continents and served as the organizers of the annual Yorknew City auction. If it were a business venture of one of the Ten Dons, their ability to "issue" death certificates at will, and the fact that Morena had business dealings with them, made a lot more sense.

Moro recalled that three years later, at the time of the Yorknew City auction, Chrollo would hire Illumi to assassinate the Ten Dons. To take them down, Illumi had even gone as far as to call upon the patriarch of the Zoldyck family. And to locate the Ten Dons’ secret gathering place within the time limit, he had to enlist the help of Kalluto, who possessed tracking abilities. Viewed from this perspective, while there was a "race against time" element involved, the fact that Illumi had to bring in the old monster Maha was proof enough that the Ten Dons were not easily dealt with.

Moro suddenly wondered if Kalluto had already awakened his Nen ability for tracking. With his ability, finding Feitan wouldn’t be difficult. And then there were Silva and Zeno Zoldyck—did they accept kidnapping contracts besides assassinations?

Speaking of finding people... Palm’s image flashed through Moro’s mind. The "Lovely Ghostwriter" ability was also an incredibly useful tracking tool. The problem was, he didn’t know the situation with Palm at this point in time, and her master, Knuckle, was extremely guarded when it came to Palm using her abilities. Not to mention how he would explain knowing about her "Lovely Ghostwriter" ability, he likely couldn’t convince Knuckle just by throwing money at him.

"However, according to the information I’ve gathered, this matter isn't being led by Gambino himself, but by his son, Nolan Gambino." Argo’s voice pulled Moro back to reality.

The son of a Ten Don? Moro was slightly taken aback, and then he heard Argo continue: "Nolan is using his father’s influence to run a business called 'The Menu' in regions protected by the Ten Dons' name. On the surface, they set up hospitals in various territories, but behind the scenes, they are engaged in human trafficking. That so-called 'Menu' involves breaking a 'person' down into various tradable commodities. Buyers can select what they need from the menu, such as organs, blood, or other human-derived items. Some buyers even purchase entire people to use for... experiments. And in this type of trade, the most important thing is matching criteria."

Argo hesitated for a moment, slowing her speech. "Big spender... if you don’t have a conflict with Nolan, then the fact that his subordinates are tracking you—and have even moved against you—is probably because you have been 'matched'."

"Is that so..." Moro replied noncommittally.

Initially, he had likely been added to the menu because a buyer needed something he possessed. But tonight’s attack... that was surely more than a simple trade demand; it was because his act of killing the transport driver had been discovered. Argo didn’t know this, so she assumed he was being targeted because some part of him matched a buyer's request.

The problem, however, was this: Gelu had helped settle those "livestock" at the time. Even if Nolan investigated the matter later, he would see that Gelu hadn’t targeted the transport vehicle specifically, but rather stumbled upon it by chance. Anyone with a brain wouldn’t seek revenge against a member of the Zodiacs over a truckload of captives. After all, someone who could build a niche business like "The Menu" into such a large-scale operation must know how to read the room and wouldn’t lose sight of the big picture for a trivial matter. Unless the potential value of that truckload was worth the risk of obsessing over it.

If that were the case... Nolan must have determined the weight of the relationship between Gelu and the incident, which was why he felt safe enough to continue tracking the escaped captives. Moro concluded that it was likely Gelu’s accidental intervention that had prevented Nolan from tracing it back to him immediately. In that case, once Nolan’s men found the other captives, the fact that he had killed the two drivers would be impossible to hide.

"Argo."

"Yes?"

"Check one more thing for me." To confirm his theory, Moro needed to know the current status of the other captives. He entrusted the task to Argo.

Ten minutes later, Argo sent a video. Moro tapped to open it. Instantly, a series of agonizing, blood-curdling screams echoed across the plains through the phone’s speaker. It was footage of someone being tortured. Moro only watched for a moment before silently closing the video. The person being tortured in the footage was one of the captives who had been in the same transport truck as him.

Moro’s expression remained blank, but as he glanced sideways at the back of Vaughn’s head—now just a corpse—his eyes turned chillingly cold.