Underbosses, loyalty & kickbacks
Kickback runs from 0.8% to 2% of an underboss's total earn and is paid every 24 in-game hours. Give districts evenly — a three-way split unlocks every agenda mission — and never strip rackets without a replacement, or loyalty collapses and the underboss turns on you.
Cassandra, Burke and Vito are the three people Lincoln trusts with his war — and the three people most likely to try to kill him if the paperwork of the turf war goes wrong. Their earn powers your best perks; their loyalty decides your kickback and whether the endgame fights include people you once called partners.
Who they are and what they sell you
Each underboss arrives with one basic service and unlocks two more as their earn grows. Earn rises when you assign them rackets and run their trafficking missions; the thresholds start at $30,000 and stretch to $420,000 of total earn per underboss.
| Underboss | Free service | Unlocks later | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cassandra (Haitian Mob) | Arms Dealer — Jackie DuVernay | Gunsmith, Operator | Weapons delivered anywhere, weapon mods and upgrades, and phone-line cuts that stop reinforcements |
| Thomas Burke (Irish Mob) | Vehicle Delivery — Hank McGahee | Police Dispatcher, IRA Bomber | A car on demand, cop zones called off, and explosives stocked at the Arms Dealer |
| Vito Scaletta (Italian Gang) | Consigliere — Betty Johnson | Hit Squad, Mob Doctor | Kickback collected for you, enemy positions shown, a team of shooters on call, extra health bars |
Both trigger points are practical: the Operator perk (Cassandra's third) is what keeps sentries from calling reinforcements, and Vito's Consigliere line upgrades into an inside man that rivals a wiretap. If you want a smooth mid-game, get each underboss into their second unlock before the map is half-captured.
Loyalty: the only score that matters
Loyalty is not a hidden stat — it is visible in how much kickback you receive, and it moves predictably:
- Rises when you assign rackets and districts, and when you complete that underboss's agenda and trafficking missions.
- Falls when you take a racket away at a sitdown, or never give a particular underboss anything while their rivals feast.
- Collapses into a betrayal mission if pushed far enough — and once a betrayal starts, nothing wins them back. Kill them (the game forces your hand) and their second-in-command takes over the faction at a brutal 0.4% kickback, with no further rackets assignable to what is left.
Kickback ranges from 0.8% (barely tolerated) to 2% (fully loyal) of the underboss's total earn, paid every 24 in-game hours. At the French Ward's $70,000 racks, that is a meaningful cheque each day — which is why the loyalty squeeze hurts twice: you lose the perk tier and the percentage at once, and cash spent on that perk's upgrades dies with it.
The district split that keeps the peace
Nine districts, three underbosses, one clean answer: 3/3/3. Each underboss needs three districts to complete their full agenda mission chain — a run of story missions covering their background — and the achievements page tracks those chains individually (.45 in My Hand, IRA Don't Ask, I Need a Favor). A three-way split also keeps all three factions' earns climbing toward the high-end perk unlocks instead of starving two of them to gorge one.
The messy alternatives have their uses. A 4/3/2 split also works if you compensate the short-changed underboss with deliveries and favors. Someone left at zero districts all game will come for you.
Favors: how the game pays you to decide
Underbosses sweeten racket assignments with favors, offered in a fixed six-stage sequence across your campaign: silenced weapons in the first set (Silenced M1N8, Silenced Masterson, Silenced Deacon .22), vehicle upgrades second (suspension, bodykit, drivetrain), heavier weapons third (Deutsche M11B, Scoped Phoenix, Clipper .44), armor fourth, special weapons last. Touching one racket in three different districts exposes all three offers at once — the fastest way to arm Lincoln for free.
Trafficking and the second-in-command
Each faction's trafficking missions — "Are We Cool" for the Haitian Mob, "The Righteously Fucked" for the Irish, "Seems Simple Enough" for the Italians — are given by their lieutenants once you own rackets in their portfolio. They raise raid values, fund the perk ladder, and they are the only repeatable way to pump a specific underboss's earn late in the game. Rotate them: whoever is closest to their next threshold gets tonight's delivery.
