Chapter Four - Aleksandr
The gym is silent except for the rhythmic strike of my fists against the heavy bag.
Four thirty in the morning. The city outside still dark, Moscow sleeping off its excesses while I’m already awake, already working. Discipline doesn’t sleep. Neither do I, most nights.
Left jab. Right cross. Hook. The bag swings on its chain, leather creaking with each impact.
My knuckles are wrapped, but I feel every strike, the shock traveling up my forearms, grounding me in the physical.
Control starts here: in the body, in the breath, in the ability to push past comfort into the place where weakness lives and dies.
My father taught me that. One of the few useful things he ever taught me, between the beatings and the lectures about what it meant to be Sharov. Sentiment is weakness. Mercy is failure. The world respects only power, and power requires absolute control.
I believed him then. Still believe him now, even though I put a bullet in his head eight years ago when he became more liability than asset.
The memory doesn’t slow my strikes. If anything, they get harder.
Fifty minutes. That’s my routine. Fifty minutes of controlled violence, pushing my body until sweat runs and muscles burn, until the part of my brain that wants to think about problems is too exhausted to do anything but focus on the next punch.
When the timer goes off, I step back, breathing hard but even.
The shower is cold because hot water is comfort and comfort is weakness. I stand under the spray until my skin goes numb, then dress in the clothes already laid out: charcoal suit, white shirt, no tie yet. That comes later, after breakfast.
Upstairs, the kitchen is as silent as the gym. My housekeeper knows better than to arrive before six. I prefer the morning alone, the quiet that comes before the day demands decisions and blood.
Coffee, black. Two eggs, scrambled. Toast, dry. The same breakfast I’ve eaten for fifteen years, routine carved so deep it requires no thought. While I eat, I review overnight reports on my tablet.
The Estonian shipment cleared customs at 0300 hours.
Good. Border movements flagged two potential issues—Romanian authorities asking questions about transit papers, and a Polish checkpoint that logged unusual activity near one of our warehouses.
I make a note. Internal loyalty checks came back clean across all departments except one.
Mikhail Petrov, mid-level enforcer, made three phone calls to a number registered to a known FSB handler.
I send a message to Viktor: Handle Petrov. Quietly.
The response comes back within seconds: Understood.
By the time I finish breakfast, the sun is breaking over Moscow’s skyline. I watch from my window, this city that made me, that forged me in brutality and blood.
***
Bratva headquarters sits in the financial district, disguised as a legitimate investment firm. Six floors of offices handling real estate, shipping logistics, and international trade. All of it clean on paper. All of it generating profit that funds everything else.
I arrive at eight. Viktor is already waiting in my office, phone pressed to his ear. He nods when I enter, wrapping up his conversation.
“Petrov?” I ask, settling behind my desk.
“Handled. He won’t be found.”
“Good.” I pull up the day’s schedule. Meetings. Always meetings. “What else?”
“The Volkov family is pushing back on the territory agreement. They want to renegotiate terms.”
I lean back in my chair. “They claim or they have proof?”
“Claims only, but they’re making noise, talking to other families.”
The Volkovs. Old money, old grudges, old ways of thinking that don’t work anymore. They think lineage means something. That blood gives them rights.
It doesn’t.
“Set up a meeting,” I say. “Make it clear this is their one chance to fall in line voluntarily.”
Viktor nods. “What if they refuse?”
“Then we remind them what happens to families who overestimate their leverage.”
The morning bleeds into meetings. Accountants presenting quarterly reports. Lawyers discussing regulatory changes. Enforcers reporting on territory disputes.
At eleven, I review the Lawrence situation. The squeeze is working exactly as planned. Three logistics subsidiaries frozen under regulatory pressure. Warsaw property seized. Four major investors withdrawing support.
I sign off on the next phase—disrupting their shipping contracts in Estonia, applying pressure through compromised officials. The decision is unemotional, efficient. Purely business.
Walter Lawrence betrayed the Bratva. Cooperated with authorities. Helped take down men I knew, men who died because of his testimony. This isn’t revenge. It’s inevitability. His empire will collapse and I’ll absorb what’s valuable, destroy what isn’t.
Elena Lawrence is irrelevant to the larger operation. Collateral damage, nothing more.
I close the file and move to the next meeting.
***
The charity gala starts at six. I arrive at seven, fashionably late. The venue is a restored palace, all marble and champagne fountains. Politicians and businessmen, oligarchs and their mistresses, everyone performing legitimacy while making deals in shadowed corners.
I hate these events. But they’re necessary. Power requires visibility, alliances built on handshakes and donations.
I move through the crowd with practiced ease, exchanging pleasantries that mean nothing. A deputy minister comments on the weather. An oil executive mentions golf. A banker’s wife laughs too loud at something that isn’t funny.
I’m in the middle of a conversation with a real estate developer when I see her.
Dark hair pulled back. Black dress. Moving through the crowd with that same controlled grace I remember from the auction.
My chest tightens.
Elena Lawrence is here in Moscow.
I excuse myself mid-sentence. My focus narrows to her figure, tracking her movement through the crowd. She’s alone, no security visible. She turns down a hallway leading toward the private rooms, and I follow without thinking about why.
The corridor is quieter, away from the main event. My footsteps are silent on the carpet. When I’m close enough, I reach out.
My hand closes around her wrist. She spins, eyes wide with surprise—
Wrong eyes. Wrong face.
She’s not Elena Lawrence. Just some woman with similar hair and similar build and absolutely nothing else in common.
“Forgive me,” I say, releasing her immediately. “I thought you were someone else.”
She laughs, nervous and flattered. “That’s okay. I’m—”
I’m already walking away, irritation burning through my chest. Disappointment, which is worse.
I thought… what did I think? That Elena Lawrence would be here, in Moscow, at an event full of Russian elites? That I’d get another chance to watch her lose something?
Ridiculous.
I return to the gala and force myself to focus. More handshakes. More meaningless conversation. A donation to whatever charity this is—children’s hospital or cancer research.
My mind keeps drifting back to the auction. To the way Elena raised her paddle with such certainty. To the moment she realized she couldn’t win, the devastation she tried to hide behind composure.
To the defiance that refused to die even in defeat.
Details I shouldn’t remember. Details that are irrelevant to anything that matters.
I leave the gala at nine, earlier than expected. Viktor raises an eyebrow when I text him to bring the car around, but he doesn’t ask questions.
Back at headquarters, the building is quieter. Night shift only, skeleton crew handling overnight operations. I take the elevator to my office and stand at the window, looking out at Moscow’s lights spreading across the darkness.
My phone buzzes. Another update on the Lawrence situation.
The squeeze is working. Within weeks, Walter Lawrence will be desperate enough to sell at whatever price I offer. Within months, the Lawrence name will be nothing but a memory.
Efficient. Clean. Purely business.
Elena Lawrence is irrelevant to the larger operation. She’ll be collateral damage, nothing more.
I should feel satisfaction. The plan is working. Victory is inevitable.
Instead, I’m thinking about her face when the gavel fell. The way her hands shook when she stood to leave. The pride that wouldn’t let her run even though she wanted to.
I pull up the file my intelligence team compiled. Elena Lawrence, twenty-two, youngest daughter of Walter Lawrence. Educated at Cambridge, degree in international business. Minimal public presence, no significant role in family operations.
The bastard daughter, according to the notes. Born from an affair, barely acknowledged by the legitimate family. Unwanted. Trying to prove herself worthy of a name that never truly claimed her.
That knowledge should mean nothing.
Except I remember the desperation behind her bidding. The way she pushed past any reasonable ceiling because losing that ring meant more than money. It meant failing to prove she belonged.
I close the file and open the next report. Another strategic move against Lawrence holdings in Estonia. I approve it with a single signature.
My mind drifts again, uninvited, to Elena Lawrence.
I wonder if she knows yet. If she’s figured out who’s behind her family’s collapse. If she’s connected the auction to everything that came after.
I wonder if she’s angry. If that defiance has turned into rage, into the kind of fury that makes people do stupid things.
The thought bothers me more than it should.
She’s nothing. Enemy blood. Collateral damage in a war her father started. I’ll destroy her family, and she’ll disappear back into obscurity. That’s how this ends.
So why does the victory feel hollow before it’s even complete?
I shake my head, dismissing the thought. Distraction. I have territories to manage, rivals to crush, an empire to expand. Elena Lawrence is just another loose end that will resolve itself.
When I finally leave the office at two in the morning, her face returns.
Brown eyes full of fury. Chin lifted in defiance. Hands shaking with emotion she refused to show.
The ring sits in my safe, still in its auction case. I haven’t looked at it since bringing it home. I took it because she wanted it. Because watching her lose was more satisfying than the object itself.
Now I can’t stop thinking about what else I could take from her.
The thought should disgust me. Should trigger the control I’ve spent years perfecting.
Instead, it excites me. Which is dangerous. Which means I need to end this fixation before it becomes a problem.
I’ll destroy the Lawrence family as planned. Quickly, efficiently. Elena Lawrence will disappear into whatever life comes after.
I’ll forget about her eyes, her defiance, the way she refused to break.
The plan is solid. Logical. The only rational choice.