“One wounded. Not serious.”
“Names?”
He gives them. Most are men who once laughed when I was a boy standing outside the main house in the rain.
I feel nothing.
“Find the three who ran,” I say.
“Already doing it.”
By two, Kirill’s phone network starts failing. Not all at once. That would be obvious. First one relay man stops answering. Then a driver. Then a bookkeeper. Then the woman who handles payments to two police captains decides she’s too frightened to leave her apartment.
By three, half the men in my father’s organization know they are being hunted.
By four, they know it’s not a warning.
One of Kirill’s accountants comes willingly before dawn. He arrives at my side entrance with a flash drive in his shoe and vomit on his coat. He gives us payroll, hidden accounts, anything of use to us that can cripple my father.
I let him live.
Not because I’m merciful. Because fear travels faster when someone survives to describe what he saw.
At sunrise, the city looks the same to anyone who doesn’t know where to look.
His warehouses are either empty, burned, or surrounded. His loyalists are trapped between answering his calls and keeping their families untouched.
Viktor tries again at eight. He finds me in the study, staring at the ring in my hand.
“You need to sleep.”
I don’t answer.
“You need to eat.”
“No.”
“You need to think past tonight.”
That gets my attention.
I look up. “There is no past tonight.”
His face tightens. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
I stand.
He doesn’t move back.
“You think I’m reckless.”
“I think you’re grieving.”
The word should do something. It doesn’t.
“They found a body in the canal last night,” Viktor says. “Do you want to go down and identify it?”
“No,” I say, loud enough to make him flinch. “I’ve made my peace with it.”