It’s time to become a magician.
It’s time to take everything that Alexei Yenin owns, and make it disappear.
He expects me to attack him outright. He thinks I’m so blinded by bloodlust that I’ll do anything to find him and kill him.
Instead, I’m going to launch an attack on three targets simultaneously. None of them are Yenin.
During my conversation with Yelena, I realized how little my family had actually understood Yenin’s operations. We thought of him as small-time, because his drug and arms trade were constrained to the west corner of the city—the surrounding territory controlled by other factions.
However, his operation is much bigger than I thought.
He makes his money in three main ways: illegal gambling, porn production, and a wind farm west of the city.
The gambling we knew about, because my family runs the biggest poker ring in the city. We knew that Yenin was running a sports betting operation on the side, but we underestimated the scale.
Yelena told me that Yenin doesn’t make his money off the bets themselves. He makes his profit by loaning out additional money for betting at a two hundred percent interest-rate. Then he ruthlessly collects from the hapless gamblers who inevitably lose it all.
Even though he lends the money locally, his operation takes place almost entirely online. He has a team of Russian programmers who work out of a warehouse in Bensenville, while his enforcers handle the collections.
Already, I’m missing Nero—he’d know exactly what to do to royally fuck up Yenin’s network. He could probably hack into it remotely. But Nero is barely conscious, and definitely not able to work. So I’ll have to figure it out myself.
The porn production was likewise a surprise. We knew that Yenin imported girls from the poorer regions of the Ukraine and Romania, but we thought it was only to stock his depressing little brothel. It was Yelena who told me that the girls are actually used to make fetish videos, which he likewise sells online through OnlyFans and Pornhub.
Finally, there’s the wind farm. This is, apparently, a brand-new venture. Yelena explained it to me, based off snippets she’d overheard, and things her brother had told her.
“It’s a new industry,” she said, “So it’s poorly regulated. You’ve got high prices, complicated financing. And then there’s the government subsidies. Adrian told me he’s skimmed off ten million this year alone, taking green energy grants and pocketing the funds. He’s supposed to have eight windmills out there, but only two of them actually work.”
I plan to wipe out all three of his cash sources, all at once. Mikolaj and I have timed the attack down to the minute.
Mikolaj and his men will take down the sports betting ring.
“Make sure you wipe the system, before you destroy the servers,” I told him. “We don’t want him back and up and running with just the cost of a few new computers.”
“Don’t worry,” Miko said, carelessly. “I’m bringing a kid from Wroclaw. He was stealing weapons schematics from the Department of Defense by the time he was fifteen. So I’m sure he can handle whatever Yenin is running.”
I sent Antonio and Carlo Marino to Yenin’s brothel to clear out the girls and torch his makeshift film studio.
“Bring Bosco Bianchi,” I told them. “But don’t let him near the girls.”
“What do you want us to do with them?” Antonio said.
“Let them go. Or tell them they can go to Bareback on 48th Street if they want a new job—Lorenzo is always hiring.”
“Do we have to bring Bosco at all?” Antonio frowned.
“Yes,” I said. “He’s better than nothing.”
“We’ll make him go in first,” Carlo grunted, “So he doesn’t shoot one of us in the back by accident.”
I’ll be taking Stefano, Zio, and Tappo to the wind farm.
Before we head out west of the city, I take my three enforcers over to the last phase of construction on the South Shore development. We pick up two unmarked white construction vans, and a whole shit ton of nitroglycerin.
The nice thing about having demolition licenses is legal access to a wide variety of explosives.
Now, I’m no construction expert—Dante’s the one who oversaw most of our crews, not to mention liaising with the various unions and sub-contractors. But if there was one thing I was always interested in, it was blowing shit up.
We had to demolish all the existing steelworks structures before we could start the fresh build on the South Shore. I was there for all of it—setting charges, synchronizing the timing, and detonating.
Bringing down a building isn’t just about setting a bomb. You have to work with the existing structure, so you can bring it all down as cleanly and effectively as possible.
There’s four main ways you can bring down a structure—telescoping, implosion, progressive collapse, and the technique I’ll be using for the wind turbines: toppling. I want to bring those fuckers all the way down, and I don’t want to do it quietly.
As we drive out to the field full of its eight turbines, I tell Stefano to stop and pull over. Only a single-lane road heads in this direction, with fenced-off fields on both sides. The turbines share space with a pasture full of docile brown cows peacefully grazing on the cropped grass. A cattle grid across the road deters the cows from wandering out where they don’t belong.
The cattle grid is a simple structure: a depression in the road covered by a transverse grid of metal bars. I pop it up easily, revealing the empty space beneath. Zio helps me pack the area with gelatine explosives, connected to a remote detonator.
“You gonna blow up some cows?” Zio asks me, his shaggy hair hanging down over his eyes. Zio’s only twenty, and he has the perpetually sleepy look and rumpled clothing of an all-day stoner. But he’s a lot sharper than he looks.
“Something like that,” I say.
We set the heavy metal grate back in place, then continue on down toward the turbines.
Splitting up, we set our charges around the base of each structure. I check each one myself, noting that the blades of only two turbines are spinning in the light breeze. The others are dead, just like Yelena said. All eight look battered and dented, and not well maintained. These are three million-dollar machines—or at least, they were when they were new. I’m sure Yenin bought them for a steal when he set up his bullshit energy operation.
Though I’ve seen turbines from a distance many times, I’ve never been this close to one before. They’re much bigger than I expected—almost three hundred feet tall, and fifteen feet across at the base. I’m glad I brought plenty of nitroglycerin.
“We all set?” Tappo asks me, nervously.
He’s eyeing the explosives with great mistrust. No one is a more fearless fighter than Tappo, but he prefers to work with his hands. He doesn’t trust the explosives, and almost jumped out of his skin every time Stefano drove over a pothole, thinking the nitro in the back of the van was going to obliterate us all.
“Yeah,” I say. “You stay here to set off the charges while the rest of us take cover.”
“Are you serious?” he cries, looking green.
“No, you idiot, I’ve got a detonator,” I tell him, holding up the remote.
“Oh, fuck off,” he grumbles, scrambling to get behind the vans, which we’ve parked a respectable distance away.
While the others take cover, I climb up on top of the van so I can get a better view. I’m pretty sure we’re far enough back that I won’t risk any shrapnel, and I want to enjoy the show.
The turbines stand in the field, pale and eerie from this distance, like a graveyard of propellers silhouetted against the sky. I press the detonator.
For a moment, nothing happens. Then explosions bloom along the base of all eight turbines, like brilliant flaming flowers unfurling in the air.
We drilled boreholes on the base, concentrating the explosives on the east side of the towers so the turbines would all topple in the same direction. The noise of tearing steel is like an outraged scream—then the thunder of 164 tons of metal tumbling down. Eight columns of smoke rise up into the sky.
Zio has climbed up next to me, wanting to see the aftermath clearly.
“Fucking hell,” he says, in his mellow voice. “Sort of beautiful, isn’t it?”
“It is to me,” I say.
“ ‘Cause of the fire, or ‘cause it’s really gonna piss off Yenin?”
“Both,” I grin.
“What do we do now?” Stefano pipes up from the ground.
“We wait,” I say.
Forty minutes later, a black Mercedes SUV comes roaring up the bumpy road. I watch it speeding along. I recognize the vehicle, but it’s too far away for me to make out who’s driving.
Honestly, I don’t really give a fuck.
Right as the SUV passes over the cattle grid, I press the button on the second detonator.
The explosion launches the car up in the air, flipping it nose over end. It rolls four times, before coming to a stop in a ditch.
“Let’s go see who that was,” I say to the men.
We pile back in the two vans, and drive over to the wreck.
I approach the crumpled Mercedes with gun in hand, even though I doubt anybody inside is in any shape to be shooting back. Sure enough, the driver is dead, his head twisted against the steering wheel and his blank eyes staring out at me. The passenger next to him is in similar shape, pressed up against the airbag that failed to keep his skull from connecting with the side window at high speed.
But I hear someone groaning in the back.
The door is deeply dented and almost impossible to open. It takes Stefano and I pulling together to wrench it open.
The man in the backseat is covered in cuts embedded with chunks of glass. His face is so bloody that it takes me a minute to recognize him. It’s Uncle Vale, Yenin’s brother. The asshole who shot Yelena.
I grab him by the arm and yank him out of the vehicle, ignoring the fact that said arm is broken in at least two places. He screams, rolling across the gravel, unable to stand.
I use my boot to shove him onto his back.
“Get his phone,” I say to Tappo.
Tappo searches his pockets, with no luck.
“It’s in here,” Zio says, plucking the phone out of the wreckage of the backseat.
The screen is cracked in a dozen places, but still operational.
“What’s the passcode?” I ask Vale.
“It’s burn in hell with your fucking cunt mother,” Vale snarls through bloodied teeth.
I raise my gun and shoot him in the right kneecap.
He howls like a wolf, writhing on the road.
“I’ve got eleven more bullets,” I tell him, calmly. “No need to die like a dog over something that won’t help your brother anyway.”
“You fucking guido piece of—”
I raise the gun again.
“1974!” he shouts.
I lower the gun and nod to Zio, who plugs in the code. The phone screen unlocks.
“Good choice,” I say.
I shoot him in the head, right between the eyes.
“No mercy, huh?” Stefano says, one dark eyebrow cocked.
“That was mercy,” I tell him.
My phone is buzzing in my pocket. I pull it out. Mikolaj’s number is on the screen.
“How did it go?” I ask him.
“Flawlessly, of course. We wiped their servers. Torched the warehouse. And transferred every penny he was keeping on the books over to my personal account. It was almost twelve million—I’ll wire your half.”
“Very generous,” I say.
“Simple fairness,” Mikolaj says, in his cool, clipped voice. “I’m sure you’ll do the same with whatever other spoils you recover.”
“I will,” I agree.
I can see Carlo Marino on the other line, so I switch over to his call. He sounds out of breath, and pained.
“Problems?” I ask him.
“A few,” he admits. “They had more men than we expected. Bosco blundered right into a room full of Bratva playing Durak.”
“Did they shoot him?”
“No. He ran across and dove out the window. Cut the ever-living shit out of himself and dislocated his shoulder, but otherwise he’s alright. Actually—it was a pretty good distraction. While they were trying to grab him, me and Antonio started shooting.”
“You sound like you got hit,” I say, hearing the strain in Carlo’s voice.
“Yeah,” he says, “But not by the Bratva. We went downstairs. Most of the girls had already run away, ‘cause they heard the shooting upstairs and got scared. But one of ‘em hit a guard over the head with a frypan and took his gun. She’s the one that shot me. Felt bad about it after, once she saw we weren’t trying to kill ‘em. Sorry doesn’t put the bullet back in the gun, though.”
“Where are you going now?”
“To see Dr. Bloom.”
“Good,” I nod.
“Bosco’s driving me one-armed, so we’ll see if I make it. I’ll send Antonio back your way.”
“Alright. Talk soon.”
I hang up the phone. Not too bad so far. But this is just the beginning. I’ve made my move. Now it’s Yenin’s turn. If I’ve threatened him sufficiently, it should be time for him to send out his power pieces.
Once they’ve been eliminated . . . the king will be unprotected.
