Chapter 3

Viktor

Back at my headquarters, I’m carefully monitoring the movement of a few shipments of cocaine and heroin when my advisor, Stepan, informs me that one of my new hires has come to speak with me. This had better be worth my time.

“I told him you didn’t have time for it, but he seems very persistent,” Stepan says, lighting a cigarette and scoffing when I motion for him to put it out.

“You know not to smoke inside. You’re not an animal. And it’s fine, you can send him in,” I reply.

“Are you sure? He’s one of the new hires. It’s probably something he’s more than capable of solving himself,” Stepan replies, confused.

“If he doesn’t know how to solve it, the problem will just get worse until it inevitably reaches me anyway. So no, I don’t want him to solve it himself. Not this time,” I respond, my voice thin with agitation. Stepan knows better than to question my line of reasoning. I’ve been in this game for a long time.

Stepan shrugs, proceeding down the hallway to open the door and let in the questioning new hire.

When he returns, he’s followed by Nikolai, a physically imposing but otherwise harmless associate of mine.

“Do you want me to stay, sir?” Stepan asks eagerly.

“No, we’ll be fine. Thank you,” I reply, watching his pride dissolve a bit.

Stepan begrudgingly leaves, and I’m left with Nikolai, who looks more and more nervous by the minute.

“So, is there something you need help with? You haven’t been with us for very long yet, Nikolai,” I say, gesturing for him to sit down across from me.

“I really didn’t want to bother you, but there’s a peculiar issue developing at your Bolton Street location, sir,” he replies, doing his best to stifle his anxiety.

“What kind of issue? Isn’t that location just a storefront?” I ask, getting up to pour myself a drink. “Those petty gangsters better not be putting graffiti all over my buildings.”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” he assures me. “The tenants of the shops are organizing against you because they think the rent is too high. Their leader is this twenty-five-year-old who owns a bakery, and she seems a bit unhinged, or at least unreasonable.”

I take a drink of my vodka and rub my temples in frustration. “You came all this way to tell me that some old ladies and a teenager are bullying you?” I ask, shooting him a critical glare.

He stiffens. “No, no, I’m just worried that if we don’t at least address them, they’ll leave en masse, and I didn’t want to be responsible for that,” he explains. “We’d have to refill the entire strip.”

“You said their leader is twenty-five? I find that hard to believe. A twentyfive-year-old would be beside herself with gratitude just to have a storefront in my building. She’s just being ungrateful,” I reply, and I pour a drink for Nikolai as well.

“Honestly, sir, I wouldn’t have come here to bother you if I didn’t think this would turn into a huge issue. What if they go public with their statements?

If we don’t respond, they could slander you and your company, and that would expose what you’re actually doing,” he responds, taking the glass and making a face as he drinks. He places it down and doesn’t pick it back up again.

More for me.

I don’t like that he’s coming here, telling me this bullshit, but he’s right. Now that he’s brought it to my attention, I know I need to address this before these women decide to stage some kind of revolt against me. Owning properties is just a cover for laundering drug money that comes through my organization, and we’ve recently expanded into black market arms, making our margin of error smaller for getting the money clean. If an entire building of shop owners decides to walk out in protest, it’s going to be on the news, and the last thing I need is more eyes on me.

I have to smooth this thing over before it turns into a complete mess. I take another large sip of my drink and sigh. “Okay, okay. I’ll go speak with the crazy baker girl. What’s her shop called?” I ask.

“I think it’s called Bun in the Oven,” he replies sheepishly, embarrassed to even say the name.

Ugh, god. I might puke from the cuteness.

“Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Nikolai. You did the right thing,” I reply.

After a few more sips in silence, I escort him out the door.

As I return to my office, I think to myself that I might have gotten a little heavy-handed with up-charging rent. I was feeling particularly good about the business when I’d decided to begin hiking up the rent prices, and it made my underground enterprise much harder to track, but I’ve gotten sloppy. I need to fix this quickly and get back to business.

When Stepan returns, his expression still spells out his discontent with my refusal to let him stay in the room while I handled business. He’s a longtime family friend, and he’s been a part of the Bratva for as long as my father was before he was killed in a shooting in Moscow. The brotherhood runs deep, and Stepan is a part of that brotherhood. His pseudo-authority just gets under my skin sometimes, and I need to remind him from time to time who’s in charge.

“What was that all about?” he asks with a tinge of annoyance in his voice.

“A bunch of civilian ladies who rent from me downtown are staging a coup because I raised their rent again,” I respond casually, sipping from my vodka and feeling the warmth of its intoxication slowly spreading through my body.

“That’s ridiculous. Couldn’t Nikolai have handled that shit himself?” Stepan asks, taking Nikolai’s vodka from the coffee table and finishing it all in one swig.

“He doesn’t think so, and honestly, I’m more curious than anything to find out why,” I reply. “Apparently, there’s a crazy girl with a bakery that scared him. The whole thing would be kind of entertaining if I didn’t have to deal with it myself.”

“Do you need me to handle it? I mean, since he couldn’t,” Stepan asks shamelessly.

“How about you do what I ask you to do and leave the rest to me? Do we have a deal?” I reply, growing more and more irritated by his sycophant behavior.

He shrugs and leaves the room again without a word, but I pay no mind to him.

Instead, I continue making calls to monitor all of my men on the ground who are in charge of moving our product from point A to point B. I’ve never been let down by any of them, but this new mode of operations has me on edge. There’s so much more to gain now than ever before, but twice as much to lose if we fuck up.

I think about Nikolai’s grievances and try to remember who he could possibly be referencing as the feisty little baker. She can’t be that big of a problem, but I can’t bring her name or face to mind. I’ve been around the block a time or two, but I don’t believe I’ve ever met this particular woman.

I figure it’s time to change that.

The next day, I decide to make my way down to Bolton Street to pay a visit to this curious specimen. Her shop stands out against the excessively sleek grey and white of the storefront with its pink neon sign and glass chalk flowers drawn all over the front window.

It looks exactly the way I would imagine a ten-year-old girl would design a shop, but it doesn’t seem to be hindering her sales at all. When I enter, every table is full of people eating muffins and drinking coffee even though it’s still relatively early in the day.

She must have made a name for herself; I’ll give her credit for that.

At the register is a petite, bright-eyed woman with curly blonde hair and a spatter of freckles across her face. She’s extremely attractive, though she’s exceptionally young for me to be leering at her the way I am, much less running a business all by herself. I almost feel guilty having to confront her like this, scaring her in her own place of business when she’s just trying to make an honest dollar.

Which is the exact opposite of what I’m doing by gouging her rent.

When her customers see me, the whole place goes quiet for a moment until the conversation picks up again. Clearly, nobody thinks I belong in a place like this, and when I look around to investigate, I can see why.

All of the customers here are within the owner’s age range, and they’re almost all pretty, fresh-faced young professionals or students. Some of them are typing away at an essay by the window or chatting with their study group in the cluster of couches near the front of the store.

I don’t see any six-foot-six Russian men wearing all black or sporting a deep scar across their face, so I definitely stand out among the typical crowd here. I suddenly feel extremely seen.

I walk up to the register, and my peculiarity is not lost on the owner. “Um, hi, can I help you?” she asks, putting on her best customer service smile and fighting tooth and nail to maintain it.

“You’re Millie Harp?” I ask.

She nods cautiously, still smiling but with wary eyes. “Can I help you with something?”

“I’m Viktor Sodorov,” I say, trying not to sound as threatening as I usually do. “I own this building. I hear you have some grievances you’d like to express to me.”

Her resolve suddenly strengthens, and she stands up straight and looks me in the eyes. “That is correct.”