Chapter Twenty-Six
Dmitri
The war room inside the estate felt colder than usual, even accounting for how rarely warmth found its way into that particular space. But I also considered the cold was possibly from inside me, from the certainty of ending all this.
All five of us sat gathered around the long table, maps of Vale’s remaining operations spread across its surface, each location marked with careful annotations detailing surveillance updates, security weaknesses, and confirmed patterns of activity that Roman and Nikolai’s teams had spent the last week assembling.
I’d walked into that room more times than I could count over the years, for negotiations, for succession discussions, for every serious decision this family had ever needed to make collectively.
Nothing about its cold, functional design had changed since our father first built it, dark wood and hard lighting designed specifically to strip away comfort from conversations that required absolute clarity rather than warmth.
Nikolai stood at the head of the table, calm and focused beside Mikhail’s seat.
Mikhail sat listening with his usual quiet intensity, the head of the family examining everything before committing to any position.
Viktor remained silent beside him, arms crossed, alert in a way that told me he was already running through tactical possibilities even before anyone had formally proposed one.
Alexei sat across from me, quiet and calculating as always, his attention moving methodically across the maps like he was solving several separate equations at once.
I sat slightly forward in my chair, already three steps ahead of whatever Nikolai was about to lay out, my own instincts telling me exactly where this conversation was heading before he’d said a word.
“Vale has gone quiet since the reception attack and the assault on the penthouse,” Nikolai began. “No new movement on his known accounts. No fresh communications through any channel we’re monitoring. His usual patterns have essentially stopped.”
“That’s not peace,” I said.
“No. It’s preparation.” Nikolai nodded slightly, acknowledging the point before continuing.
“We’ve confirmed he still controls five operational pubs across the city, functioning as both gambling fronts and communication hubs for whatever remains of his network.
These are the last visible nodes of his influence in Las Vegas. ”
He pulled up a fresh overlay on the tablet connected to the room’s main display, five locations highlighted across the city’s map, spread wide enough that reaching all of them quickly would require careful coordination.
“If those locations fall simultaneously,” Alexei started, “Vale loses both structure and coordination in a single move. No time to consolidate, no opportunity to shift resources between locations once the first alarm sounds. Total collapse, rather than a slow bleed he could theoretically survive and rebuild from.”
Mikhail was the first to speak the strategy aloud, his voice carrying the measured authority that came from decades of making these kinds of decisions.
“A synchronized strike,” he said. “All five pubs. Same night. Same hour. Total collapse of his remaining network in one coordinated action.”
I didn’t hesitate. I could already see the outcome forming clearly in my mind, the inevitability of it settling into place the moment Mikhail said it out loud.
“This isn’t retaliation anymore,” I said. “This is erasure. A complete dismantling of everything Vale’s built inside this city, all at once, before he has any chance to adapt or scatter.”
“Agreed,” Viktor said, the first word he’d offered since the meeting started.
“Though I want it clear that erasure means erasure. No half measures this time. We’ve been careful, controlled, deliberate in every response so far, and he’s used that restraint against us at every turn.
This time, nothing survives that we don’t specifically choose to leave standing. ”
Mikhail studied the map a while longer before speaking again, “The financial exposure needs careful handling regardless. Five locations falling simultaneously will draw attention, federal and otherwise. We need a story ready before the first shot is fired, not scrambled together afterward.”
“I’ll have that prepared,” Nikolai said. “Insurance claims, structural incidents, whatever version of events serves us best once the dust settles at each location. That’s manageable.”
The discussion turned precise after that—assignments were divided methodically, each of us taking responsibility for one location, security teams allocated according to each pub’s specific layout and expected resistance.
“I want the final location,” I said, once the first four assignments had been settled. “The one closest to Vale’s known personal movement patterns over the last month.”
Nikolai studied me for a long moment before responding. “You think he’ll be there personally.”
“I think if he shows up anywhere, it’ll be there.”
“That’s also the location with the highest probability of him bringing his most trusted men,” Viktor pointed out. “If you’re wrong about him being there, you’re still walking into his best-defended position.”
“I’m aware of the risk.”
“I know you are. I’m simply making certain everyone else in this room understands it too, before we finalize assignments,” he explained. “This isn’t me questioning your capability, Dmitri. It’s me making certain emotion isn’t driving this particular assignment.”
“It’s not emotion. It’s strategy. If Vale is anywhere tonight, that’s where he’ll be, and I want to be the one standing there when it happens.”
Mikhail watched our exchange carefully, weighing something behind his composed expression before finally speaking. “Take additional security beyond your usual detail. I won’t have you walking into his strongest position under-resourced, whatever your reasoning for wanting it specifically.”
“Understood, brother.”
“And Dmitri.” Mikhail held my gaze a moment longer. “If he’s not there, you don’t chase him further. You secure the location, confirm the network’s collapsed, and you come home. It isn’t the night to go hunting him personally through the city if the intelligence turns out wrong.”
“I understand.”
“I want to hear you actually agree, not simply acknowledge that you heard me.”
“I agree, Mikhail.” I met his eyes steadily, understanding exactly why he needed to hear it plainly rather than simply implied. “If he’s not there, I secure the location and come home. I’m not interested in turning it into something reckless.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied, and turned his attention back to Nikolai, who finalized the assignments across the display.
The precision of it struck me as almost beautiful in its cold efficiency, five separate fronts collapsing at once, leaving Vale with no time to consolidate, no warning significant enough to matter, no path back to whatever influence he’d spent years quietly accumulating in this city.
There was no celebration in the room once the plan was finalized.
No satisfaction, no triumphant energy the way certain operations sometimes carried once a difficult decision finally resolved into action.
Rather, it was just the settled inevitability of five men who understood exactly what tonight’s decision required and had already made peace with the cost of delivering it.
Once the plan was finalized, the meeting ended without ceremony, each of us gathering our own materials, already shifting mentally toward the logistics of preparing our individual teams for what came next.
As I left the room, I understood something clearly that hadn’t fully crystallized until that exact moment.
This wasn’t simply about ending a rival anymore.
It was about ensuring nothing like Vale’s operation could ever rise again inside territory my family had spent generations building.
A clean, total dismantling, thorough enough that no successor could simply step into the vacuum and start the entire cycle over again with different names attached to the same ambitions.
It was a total, absolute end.