Chapter 12The Enemy of My Enemy
The Enemy of My Enemy
Aslanov
Pain has become a constant companion, something woven into my bones, threading through my muscles like a slow-burning infection.
It no longer shocks me; it simply is a part of my existence, just like the cold floor beneath me and the flickering light overhead.
I don’t know how many days have passed. Time here is not measured in hours but in suffering, in the stretches of silence between interrogations, in the slow crawl of agony through my veins.
I have learned to listen.
There are sounds in this place beyond the usual footsteps of guards and the distant clang of metal doors. Sounds that don’t belong to them.
A faint tapping.
Soft, deliberate. Not the creaks of an aging building, not the random noises of a prison settling into itself. This is controlled, intentional. Three short taps. A pause. Then two more.
I stay still, barely breathing. I wait. The silence stretches, then comes again. Three taps. Pause. Two. A pattern. A question.
Someone is trying to communicate, I have an idea who.
I move slowly, my body protesting with every inch, my fingers ghosting over the rough concrete wall beside me. My skin is raw, my muscles tight, but I press my knuckles against the surface and answer. Two knocks. Pause. One.
A response follows almost immediately. Three knocks again. A question.
My mind sharpens. I recognize the method. I’ve seen it used before in prisons far worse than this, among men who understood that words could be dangerous, that even silence could betray them. But messages written in sound? That was different. That could slip past even the most watchful ears.
I tap again. Two. One. A pause.
Then, the final test. To be sure. Who are you?
The answer comes, slow and precise. Petrov.
Of course.
For years, Petrov and I had walked parallel paths, sometimes allies, sometimes rivals, always aware of each other’s reach. He was never a man I fully trusted, but I never made the mistake of underestimating him either.
If they put him here, it means he has something Nick wants. Just like me.
There’s a long pause before the next set of knocks. Alive?
A smirk ghosts over my lips despite the dull throb of pain in my ribs. I lift my hand and respond. Barely.
A beat. Then another message. Nick?
I knock once. Yes.
The silence stretches for several seconds. I picture Petrov sitting against his own cell wall, calculating, measuring his options. We are not friends. We have never been. But right now, we have a common enemy. And that might just be enough.
His next message is longer. The taps are careful, measured. Alliance?
I hesitate. Not because I am uncertain, I know the answer before I even lift my hand, but because this moment changes everything. It’s one thing to suffer alone, to endure, to plot in silence. It’s another to bring someone else into the equation.
But I am not an idiot. I know that alone, neither of us will last.
I press my knuckles against the wall, and I answer. Yes.
Another pause, then a new sequence of taps, quicker this time. Guard schedule.
I breathe out slowly. Smart. Straight to business. My fingers move carefully over the concrete as I respond, relaying what little I’ve observed. The frequency of footsteps, the changing shifts, the moments of dead time when security is at its weakest.
Petrov responds with his own knowledge, details I hadn’t caught, hints of a rotation pattern, the number of times food is brought in, when they check the cells. Small cracks in Nick’s system, but cracks nonetheless. Enough to build something on.
Petrov was never meant to be a king. Not in the way I was. He was meant to be a warlord, a man with enough power to control his streets but never enough to challenge the Bratva itself. That was the agreement—the balance I allowed to exist.
Years ago, when I was forced to take my place at the top, Petrov had already carved out a brutal reputation in the south. Ruthless, ambitious, dangerous. He had no loyalty to anyone but himself, no real code beyond survival and strength. And yet, he was useful.
Instead of crushing him outright, I gave him a leash. A short one.
The deal was simple: I let him reign over his own small kingdom, a sliver of Russia’s underworld, insignificant in the grand scheme but enough to keep him satisfied.
A few key cities, a network of traffickers, gunrunners, and enforcers that operated under the Bratva’s larger shadow.
He got to rule, to play the part of a king in his own domain, as long as he understood one thing; he answered to me .
For years, the arrangement worked.
Petrov was a businessman as much as he was a killer.
He had ambition, but he was smart enough to know where the lines were drawn.
He built his empire within the cracks of mine, expanding just enough to thrive but never enough to provoke.
He paid his dues. He kept the Bratva’s shipments moving through his territories without question.
He cleaned up his messes before they ever became my problem.
And when men like him got ideas, when they thought they could take a little more, stretch their reach just beyond what was allowed, I reminded them of the balance.
One night, I had met him in a quiet warehouse outside Yekaterinburg. No guards, no weapons between us. Just a conversation. A warning.
‘‘You’re good at what you do, Petrov,’’ I had told him. ‘‘But don’t mistake my patience for weakness. Step beyond your station, and I’ll bury you myself.’’
He had laughed, that sharp, wolfish grin of his flashing in the dim light. ‘‘I’d expect nothing less from you, Aslanov. You’re just like your father.’’
I hated that sentence. Hated the way it settled into my bones, the way it felt like a ghost rising from the past to haunt me.
Petrov meant it as a compliment, or maybe a provocation, something to test my reaction, to see if I would bristle, if I would lash out. But I gave him nothing. No flicker of emotion, no sign that his words had reached deeper than the surface.
Because I didn’t want to be like my father.
He was a legend in the underworld, a man who built an empire from nothing and ruled it with bloodstained hands.
Brutal, ruthless, cunning, everything a leader needed to be.
But he was also cruel in ways that went beyond necessity.
He had no loyalty, no restraint. He broke men for sport, crushed families for the smallest perceived slight.
His hunger for power was insatiable, his paranoia endless.
He broke me, my mother and my sister.
Petrov had served under him, long before I took the throne.
Their agreement had been forged in blood and mutual convenience, an uneasy truce between two predators.
My father let Petrov exist because he was useful, and Petrov, for all his pride, had accepted the arrangement because he knew my father.
He knew that if he ever reached too far, if he ever became more trouble than he was worth, he wouldn’t be given a second chance.
I had always wondered how many times Petrov had thought about eliminating him. How many times he had weighed the risks, measured the odds.
But my father had died before that could ever happen.
And I let him choke on his own blood.
Now, here we are.
Two men, stripped of their power, reduced to knocking on walls like caged animals.
I tap another message. Why are you here?
The response takes longer this time.
Petrov is thinking. Weighing his words.
Finally, the answer comes. Same as you, he wants my part of Russia too.
Petrov wasn’t taken because he was weak. He was taken because he refused Nick something. Which means, for all his brutality, he still has some lines he won’t cross.
That makes him valuable.
I lean my head against the wall, my fingers pressing into the cold concrete.
Piece by piece, tap by tap, we shape the beginnings of a plan.