Hollywood Taxes: A Tycoon in TV Land

Chapter 24 – Toretto's Trouble

Four motorcycles remained, each with two riders. Eight men in total now stood in front of Ron. However, they had already expended all their ammunition during the earlier barrage on his car. As Ron emerged from the smoke, calm and composed, the men fumbled frantically to reload their weapons.

Too late.

To Ron, they were nothing more than live targets at this point.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Six shots rang out in rapid succession. Ron executed three perfect double taps—each consisting of two bullets per target. Three of the bikers dropped to the ground instantly, each with a bullet in the chest and another in the forehead—no chance of survival.

Double Tap—a tactical shooting technique used by elite police and military units worldwide. The first shot targets the largest part of the body to ensure a hit. The second is a precision strike—aimed at the head or heart to guarantee a kill.

"@#￥%..." One of the bikers shouted something in a language Ron didn't understand. Still, the accent gave it away.

Korean? Ron sneered inwardly. Figures… a bunch of dead Koreans.

As one of the bikers finally finished reloading and leveled his gun again, Ron had already closed the distance. He lunged in low, grabbing the man's weapon-wielding arm and ducking into his chest. The biker hesitated, unwilling to fire for fear of hitting his teammate. But in a panic, the man pulled the trigger anyway.

The shots sprayed wildly—under Ron's control—and hit every one of his own companions.

Click-click.

The Uzi's magazine ran empty.

Ron didn't hesitate. With a powerful shoulder slam, he sent the last man toppling to the ground. Without even looking, he fired two quick shots into the biker's body.

From the moment Ron rolled out of his car to the last body hitting the pavement, the whole skirmish lasted less than a minute.

"Please! Have mercy! Don't kill me…"

One of the bikers who'd been hit in the crossfire wasn't dead yet. He clutched a bleeding leg and crawled backward, begging through tears.

"With skills this pathetic, you dare call yourself a hitman?" Ron muttered with disdain. He walked over, placing a boot on the man's mangled leg. The biker screamed in agony.

"Now talk. Who sent you to kill me? If I like your answer, I might let you live."

The biker shrieked again, pain contorting his face.

As Ron waited for an answer, his mind rapidly ran through the possibilities—

Had Andy's situation been exposed? Was the warden's organization retaliating to recover the ledger? Or perhaps the drug syndicate had sensed his investigation and was sending him a warning?

There were simply too many people who wanted him dead.

But this crew? Honestly, they were the worst hit squad Ron had ever encountered.

The initial ambush was amateurish at best. One of the first two motorcycles got rammed and sent flying—its riders crashed into a wall, heads exploding like overripe watermelons. Then Ron's car crushed another, three more were gunned down by Ron himself, and the rest were killed by friendly fire.

It was so pathetic, Ron figured even a bunch of armchair keyboard warriors back home could've devised a better ambush.

"It was Johnny!" the injured biker finally blurted. "Johnny recognized your car! He said you were one of Toretto's guys. He wanted to kill you to send a message. It was all his idea! Please—don't kill me!"

"Johnny?" Ron raised an eyebrow. "Who the hell is Johnny?"

He couldn't recall pissing off anyone by that name. Or maybe he just lost count.

"The guy you rammed… into the pole," the biker said, pointing at the mangled body slumped by the electrical pole. Ron glanced over—yep, the guy just twitched.

"What a pain... Why waste a doctor's time?" Ron muttered. He raised his gun and fired.

Bang.

A neat hole appeared in Johnny's head. No more twitching. No more wasted resources.

To the biker still alive, the act was straight out of hell. He went completely silent, eyes wide in horror.

Ron smiled in satisfaction. That was the kind of fear that got people talking.

"So let me get this straight… This isn't about drugs, or the ledger, or some syndicate vendetta? You guys wanted to kill me just to send a message to Toretto?" Ron's expression twisted in disbelief. "If you have beef with him, go after him! Why drag me into it?!"

"We… we blew up Toretto's car just earlier," the biker stammered. "But Johnny said that wasn't enough. He wanted to kill someone close to him—someone from his crew…"

At this point, even the biker realized how stupid that sounded. Someone with Ron's combat prowess clearly wasn't just some random crew member.

Ron, however, didn't argue the "crew member" detail. He was far more interested in the rest.

"So… what exactly happened between you guys and Toretto?" he asked, eyes gleaming with interest. "Feel like sharing the story?"

He raised his Glock and gently tapped it against the man's temple.

"I promise, if you don't want to talk, I won't force you… I'll just give you a little gift instead. See? I'm a very polite guy."

Sweat poured from the biker's forehead.

Trembling, he spilled everything he knew in a panic:

"Toretto owed Johnny some money. He promised to pay it back with a shipment of 'goods.' But it's been over two weeks since the last delivery. Still no sign of the final batch…"

So, in the end, it was Toretto's mess after all. Ron rubbed his temples in frustration as memories from his past life came flooding back—he remembered this part of the plot.

Back then, it happened after a street race. Toretto and O'Conner had been abducted by some Asian gangsters and taken to a place with a statue of Confucius. Watching the movie, Ron had thought it was Chinatown and assumed the gang members were Chinese.

But now it seemed that Toretto had actually been doing business with Korean gangs all along?

That would mean the Asian guy who had a house full of stolen DV cameras—the one O'Conner later reported to the FBI—wasn't just some innocent bystander. He was involved in illegal dealings with Toretto.

Only, there was a division of labor: Toretto's crew handled the dirty work, while the Korean gang—more accurately, the Korean-American gang—was responsible for fencing the stolen goods.

As for why the Korean gang later got let off the hook while the authorities went after Toretto's crew with everything they had… well, what can he say? It's a capitalist country. Anything's possible. Even the FBI has to earn a living somehow.

With just a few words from the biker gang member and a bit of deductive thinking, Ron had pieced the whole situation together. The earlier explosion also made sense now—it was clearly connected to Toretto. And there's no way he was dead; the gang would want to keep him alive. They still needed him to work.

Ron couldn't help but sigh. What kind of insane plan had that shiny-bald head of Toretto's come up with this time?

"Where's your base?" Ron asked.

"In a warehouse right by the Confucius Temple in Koreatown. All the unsold goods are stored there!"

Ron nodded.

"So, let me get this straight: their gang runs a black market operation, selling stolen merchandise, and they put the warehouse right next to the Confucius Temple. Now here's the real question—do you guys pay taxes on any of that?"

"Taxes?" The gang member looked utterly confused—since when does a black market pay taxes? But he still shook his head firmly.

That's when Ron smiled.

Looks like I've got work to do tonight.

The biker on the ground trembled uncontrollably but didn't dare make any sudden moves, terrified of setting Ron off. The man's reflexes and lethality had left a deep psychological scar.

"Can I go now? Please… just let me go…" he begged.

Ron grinned.

"One last question. Answer it correctly, and you're free to go. Ready?"

The biker nodded rapidly, like a chicken pecking at rice.

"As you can probably tell, I have great admiration for Eastern culture. I especially revere the teachings of Confucius. But as an American, there's one thing I've always been confused about: Which country is Confucius actually from?"

Ron looked at him with the kindest smile.

For a moment, the fear vanished from the biker's face, replaced by a sudden fervor:

"Confucius? Of course, he was Korean! In fact, the entire East Asian civilization originated from Korea—"

BANG!

The muzzle flash lit up the night. A bullet pierced the biker's temple before he could finish his sentence. He dropped to the ground with a heavy thud.

"Wrong answer. Confucius was Chinese. And I hate liars."

Ron spun his Glock once around his finger before holstering it, then pulled out his phone and dialed the bald FBI agent.

"Hey, FBI—come mop up the mess."

Jack, the agent, immediately sensed trouble.

"Ron? Where are you? What happened?"

"Nothing big. Just got ambushed by a bunch of blind Korean thugs. Happened at the intersection of XXX Street. Be a pal and clean up the bodies for me, would you?"

As he spoke, Ron casually dragged a long case out of his car's trunk.

"Oh, and while you're at it, there might be a few more bodies popping up in Koreatown later. Mind handling those too? Thanks."

"Wait, wait—" Jack sat bolt upright in bed, his drowsiness vanishing in an instant.

"What are you planning to do?! I'm warning you, this is Los Angeles! The second-largest city in the U.S.! You can't just go off the rails!"

"Off the rails?" Ron opened the case and gave a satisfied smile at the equipment inside.

"I'm just doing my job. And for an IRS special agent… there's nothing more serious than collecting taxes."