Blood & Snow (Silent Nights, Sinful Nights #1)

Chapter 1

XANDER

Iscrape dried blood from underneath my fingernails while the elevator rises toward the forty-first floor.

The metal cage climbs past floors that host legitimate businesses which exist to clean money we earn from dead men.

Three washings haven't removed all traces of this morning's work, and the Pakhan notices everything.

The doors open into the official office space of my employer, but it looks like any other executive suite.

Leonid Markov's secretary types at her computer without acknowledging my presence.

She has survived fifteen years in this office by perfecting selective blindness, and she's very good at it.

"He's waiting for you," she says without looking up. "And he's not happy."

Her fingers peck away at the keyboard as I turn toward the gold placard on the door to my right where Leonid's name is emblazoned in black lettering.

I knock twice and wait, as is typical.

Sometimes, he's in a charitable mood.

Other times, he's cutting off fingers or tongues and I have to wait.

Today, he calls for me to enter because he told me to be here and I'm never late.

When I enter, he's smoking a cigarette and there is a stack of unorganized photos on his desk in front of him.

Smoke rises toward the tiled ceiling where it'll leave orange stains, and I tug the lapels of my leather jacket as I approach him.

He's an intimidating man, but weak.

If I were to face him in a fist fight, I'd win, but the force that stands behind him would immediately crash in like a tidal wave and consume me.

No one messes with Markov.

"Sit down, Xander."

He nods at the leather armchair opposite his desk, and I settle into it and wait while he takes a long drag from his cigarette.

My eyes wander, though, peeking at the photographs that show burned trucks at Sheremetyevo Airport.

Empty cargo holds where forty kilograms of heroin should've been.

Customs officers I've been paying for three years suddenly developed moral objections to our business arrangements, and it's something I have to fix right away.

Who knows what "motivated" them.

"Tell me what I'm looking at," Markov says, but I know he knows already.

Word travels in this town, especially when it concerns our more discreet businesses.

I study the images.

Our driver was shot execution-style, single bullet to the base of the skull.

His blood and bits of his brain are splattered all over the inside of the windshield, along with half his face.

No one will even recognize him.

And the trucks were torched after being stripped clean, but not before someone spray-painted Sokolov Brotherhood tags across the sides.

It's a sight that makes my blood boil, so I imagine what Markov is thinking as he reviews the failure.

I'll never let it stand, but if it's gotten to the level of the Pakhan already, it means I'm in hot water.

"Arkady Sokolov is making a play for our territory," I tell him. "He's been planning this campaign for months."

"Our people," Markov says. "Your responsibility."

He slides another photograph across the desk.

Yaroslav Sokolov stands outside his father's restaurant in Zamoskvorechye with his arms crossed, smiling at whoever took the picture.

Twenty-eight years old and stupid enough to believe his father's reputation makes him untouchable. I'd wipe him off the map faster than he could blink.

"This boy thinks he can challenge forty years of Bratva control in Moscow," Markov continues. "Seven shipments stolen in two months. Seven failures that point directly to your operations."

Markov is not a stupid man, but he is drawing conclusions that aren't even reasonable.

He thinks I've allowed the Brotherhood to operate against us for eight weeks and that I've been doing nothing.

His accusation is that either I'm losing control of my territory or I'm working with Sokolov to steal from the organization that made me.

Both possibilities end with my execution.

"What do you want me to do about it?" I ask.

"End them." Markov gathers the photographs and slides them into a manila folder.

"Every member of the Sokolov Brotherhood. Every business that pays them tribute. Every contact who feeds them information. I want the entire organization erased from Moscow."

"That's a substantial operation," I tell him. "It will take time to plan properly."

My mind is already running through scenarios of how I could accomplish this and how long it would take.

"You have until midnight on New Year's Eve."

Just over two months to dismantle an organization that has been entrenching itself in Southern Moscow for years.?

Arkady Sokolov owns restaurants, construction companies, trucking firms.

His son commands fifty soldiers who grew up in the neighborhoods they now control.

Destroying them won't be a matter of eliminating key figures.

It will require systematic annihilation of their entire network.

"That could take months, Boss. New Year's isn't that far out."

I'm not making excuses, but I'm only one man.

Accomplishing that task means spilling enough blood to fill a swimming pool in a really short time.

"Then you should get to work quickly."

He takes the folder and slides it into his desk drawer and glares at me.

"And if I refuse?" I ask, though we both know the answer.

No one tells the Pakhan no and lives to see what happens.

Markov opens his desk drawer and removes a pistol.

It's a Soviet-era sidearm, the same model he used to execute rivals during the chaos of the nineteen-nineties.

He places the weapon on the desk between us as a symbol, but I know what he's insinuating.

"You won't refuse," he says.

The gun sits there reminding us both what happens to men who disappoint the Pakhan. Markov built his empire on the understanding that fear, properly applied, becomes loyalty.

Every man in his organization knows the price of failure because he's seen the bodies of those who came before.

"I'll need resources," I tell him.

"Whatever you require. Men, weapons, intelligence on their operations. But understand this isn't a negotiation between equals."

His fingers drum against the desk.

"You failed to protect our interests. Now you correct that failure or you join the men who caused it."

He opens another folder, which he produces from another drawer in his desk, and spreads financial records across it.

Bank statements, property deeds, business licenses.

The Brotherhood's legitimate holdings are mapped out in black ink.

"Arkady launders money through twelve businesses and has contacts throughout the Moscow police," Markov explains.

"His son runs protection rackets in six neighborhoods and thinks political connections make him bulletproof. Find their weaknesses. Exploit them. Make them disappear so completely that other families forget they ever existed." Then his eyes meet mine. "And don't get caught."

I scan the documents.

The Brotherhood operates more openly than most criminal organizations, using legitimate businesses to generate clean income while running traditional extortion and drug distribution in the background.

Arkady believes his reputation and political connections provide adequate protection.

He's dead wrong.

That assumption will prove fatal.

"What about cleanup?" I ask. "An operation this size will generate substantial evidence. Bodies, witnesses, crime scenes."

"Your concern to manage," Markov replies.

"Just make clean kills, untraceable deaths, crime scenes that tell no stories to investigating officers. You shouldn’t have a problem. The Brotherhood challenged our authority openly. When they disappear, no one will ask uncomfortable questions about their fate."

I close the folder and prepare to stand.

Two months to prove that eight years of loyal service weren't just elaborate deception masking my incompetence or treachery.

Two months to show the other families what happens when someone mistakes our restraint for weakness.

"One more issue requires your attention," Markov adds before I can rise from the chair.

"Your current cleaner has been expressing concerns about the work. Asking questions about exposure, making suggestions about methods, talking about finding legitimate employment."

My stomach tightens.

The man has been handling my cleanup operations for two years.

He does professional work, with complete discretion, and there are never any complications or loose ends.

But he's getting antsy, and it's a concern.

"Concerns become complications," Markov continues.

"Complications become threats. Find a replacement before you begin operations against the Brotherhood. Someone desperate enough to take the work, competent enough to handle it properly, and expendable enough that when this is over, they can be the final body that needs to be cleaned."

The war against Sokolov will generate more corpses than I've produced in the past six months combined.

I need someone new, someone hungry, someone with no connections to complicate their disposal when the operation concludes.

"And make their deaths educational," Markov replies.

"They believed they could steal from us without consequences. Show them what happens when amateurs challenge professionals who have been killing for longer than they've been breathing."

The meeting concludes without handshakes or pleasantries.

I take the elevator down and by the time I reach street level, my mind has begun making a structured plan of how to do this.

I'm going to need help or I'm going to end up joining Sokolov and his men.

Snow falls across Red Square when I emerge onto the street.

October in Moscow always feels apocalyptic as the city disappears under layers of ice and darkness while the sun barely climbs above the horizon before setting again.

They're perfect conditions for conducting a war that must remain invisible to civilian authorities.

But underneath the strategic planning runs a more immediate concern about finding someone to sanitize the crime scenes I'm about to create.

Because we can't get caught.

Even one tiny drop of blood would link a single murder back to me, and they'll all be tied together after that.

Moskovsky Komsomolets publishes classified advertisements every morning.

Desperate people scan those pages looking for employment that doesn't require background checks or extensive qualifications—hotel cleaning services, office maintenance positions, residential housekeeping jobs.

All are potential covers for less legitimate work arrangements.

I'll place an advertisement tomorrow morning.

Something appropriately vague about cleaning services requiring flexible hours and offering immediate cash payments.

Then I'll wait to see who responds, who's hungry enough to walk into a crime scene and begin scrubbing without asking too many questions about the previous occupant's fate.

I have two months to prove my worth, which means I have mere hours to find someone to replace my current cleaner, and their test to see how well they perform will be to sanitize the man I'm on my way to eliminate now.

And if his replacement can handle that task, I'll keep them for a few days before I find a new one.

I scrape the last traces of blood from under my fingernails and begin planning a war that will fill Moscow's gutters with Brotherhood corpses before the new year arrives.