32. Yaromir #2
“Six inside the main compound. Two armored. One gray SUV missing from the usual count.”
I look at him.
Viktor nods. “Could be the one from the canal. Could be unrelated.”
Nothing is unrelated tonight.
Alexei comes to the table. “Police?”
“Handled,” Viktor says. “Two friendly captains have been told there may be a private family dispute in the north district. They will be slow for the next three hours.”
“Three hours is not enough,” I say.
“It’s enough if we don’t make a mess in the street.”
I look at the map again. Kirill’s house sits on a hill in the old north district, surrounded by stone walls, cameras, private guards, and men who still believe his name means protection. Once, it did. Tonight, that belief will cost them.
I mark the river warehouses. “These three go tonight. Same time.”
Alexei steps closer. “His storage?”
“His cash, weapons, and port inventory. Burn what can be burned. Take what can be taken. Leave nothing he can use tomorrow.”
Viktor points at the western yard. “This one has civilians during the day.”
“Then not during the day.”
He nods once and writes it down.
I mark two transport offices. “Phones and records. I want his drivers unable to move without asking men who now answer to me.”
Another mark. The boxing club near the old market. “His old guard gathers here.”
Alexei’s mouth tightens. “That place will be full.”
“Good.”
A kingdom is not only men with guns. It’s keys, passwords, drivers, payroll, habits. Men like Kirill survive because people wake up every morning and continue obeying yesterday’s fear.
Kirill’s south warehouse catches fire without warning.
Not wild, not careless. The east side goes first, where he keeps shipments waiting for export under false papers.
My men take the records before the flames reach them.
By the time firefighters arrive, the useful part is gone and the expensive part is burning.
Ten minutes later, his river storage is raided.
No fire there. Too close to neighboring buildings. Instead, the locks are cut, the guards are disarmed, and every truck inside is driven out under my colors. The men who surrender are left alive. The ones who reach for guns are not.
At one in the morning, the boxing club falls.
Alexei handles that one. He calls me afterward, breathing hard, voice flat. “Seven dead. Four wounded. Three ran.”
“Ours?”
“One wounded. Not serious.”
“Names?”
He gives them. Most are men who once laughed when I was a boy standing outside the main house in the rain.
I feel nothing.
“Find the three who ran,” I say.
“Already doing it.”
By two, Kirill’s phone network starts failing. Not all at once. That would be obvious. First one relay man stops answering. Then a driver. Then a bookkeeper. Then the woman who handles payments to two police captains decides she’s too frightened to leave her apartment.
By three, half the men in my father’s organization know they are being hunted.
By four, they know it’s not a warning.
One of Kirill’s accountants comes willingly before dawn. He arrives at my side entrance with a flash drive in his shoe and vomit on his coat. He gives us payroll, hidden accounts, anything of use to us that can cripple my father.
I let him live.
Not because I’m merciful. Because fear travels faster when someone survives to describe what he saw.
At sunrise, the city looks the same to anyone who doesn’t know where to look.
His warehouses are either empty, burned, or surrounded. His loyalists are trapped between answering his calls and keeping their families untouched.
Viktor tries again at eight. He finds me in the study, staring at the ring in my hand.
“You need to sleep.”
I don’t answer.
“You need to eat.”
“No.”
“You need to think past tonight.”
That gets my attention.
I look up. “There is no past tonight.”
His face tightens. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
I stand.
He doesn’t move back.
“You think I’m reckless.”
“I think you’re grieving.”
The word should do something. It doesn’t.
“They found a body in the canal last night,” Viktor says. “Do you want to go down and identify it?”
“No,” I say, loud enough to make him flinch. “I’ve made my peace with it.”
“Yaromir please,” Viktor says.
“The Volkov line ends tonight,” I say. “And if necessary, so do I.”
At sunset, I stop hitting the edges. There’s nothing useful left to cut.
The men gather in the north district after dark.
No headlights in the last mile. No loud engines. No careless movement. Cars are left behind a row of dead trees and abandoned estate walls. The old Volkov house sits beyond the black iron gates, lit from the inside like a museum of every lie my father ever told.
I know that house too well. The main gate. The long drive. The east garage. The terrace where Galina hosts summer dinners. The upper balcony outside Dmitri’s old room. The west wing where my father keeps his office and the portraits of legitimate men.
There are guards on the roof. Two at the front gate. Four near the garage. Movement behind the second-floor windows.
Kirill has pulled everyone inward. He thinks the house is a fortress.
I stand behind the tree line with Alexei and twenty-six men. There are more farther out, holding roads and exits, but this group is mine. The ones going in.
I check my gun.
Then I reach into my pocket and touch Anya’s ring.
Still there. Cold. Small. The only part of her I have.
Alexei comes up beside me. “You want Dmitri alive?”
“For a little while.”
“And Kirill?”
I look at the house. “I want him to see me come through the door.”
Alexei nods.
A radio crackles softly.
One of the men says, “West team in position.”
Another: “South wall clear.”
I wait for Viktor’s voice. It doesn’t come.
I turn. “Where is Viktor?”
Alexei looks around. “He was with the south team.”
“No. He was supposed to check in.”
I call him. No answer.
I call again. Nothing.
A thin line of unease cuts through the cold in me. Viktor doesn’t miss check-ins. Not unless he’s dead, taken, or choosing silence for a reason.
“Find him,” I tell Alexei.
“With who?”
The question is fair. Every man is already placed. Every second we wait gives Kirill more time to move Dmitri, more time to prepare, more time to turn the house into a killing field.
I look back at the windows. A shape moves behind the curtain on the upper floor.
No more waiting.
“No,” I say. “We go.”
Alexei’s mouth tightens, but he doesn’t argue. He knows better.
Or maybe he knows there’s nothing left in me capable of stopping.
I give the signal.
The first shots come from our side, not theirs. Two guards at the gate drop before they reach their radios. The chain is cut. The gate swings open with a long metallic groan that sounds too loud in the cold night.
Then the roof opens fire. Stone chips explode near my feet.
My men answer immediately.
The quiet plan ends there. We rush the drive. Bullets cut through the hedges. Glass breaks above us. A man beside me goes down, hit in the shoulder, and another drags him behind a stone planter without slowing the rest of us.
I keep moving.
The house grows larger, bright windows flashing with muzzle fire, men shouting inside, doors locked against the son they never let in.
At the front steps, a guard comes out with a rifle. I shoot him once, and he falls backward into the doorway.
Alexei reaches the doors first with two men and a ram. One hit. The wood shudders. Two hits. The latch cracks. On the third, the doors burst inward.
Gunfire answers from inside.
I step over the fallen guard, raise my weapon, and enter my father’s house with every man behind me firing.