Chapter 5 - Fire In Brighton Beach
Dawn was breaking over the Atlantic, painting the gray waters off Brighton Beach in murky shades of copper and ash. The salty ocean air smelled of diesel exhaust and stale tobacco. Outside the rear entrance of The Red Star, an opulent nightclub catering to high-ranking Bratva bosses, four armed guards stood beneath a flickering neon sign.
They never even had time to raise their Kalashnikovs.
Two suppressed rounds cracked from the shadows of an alley across the street. The guards dropped instantly, their bodies dragged behind a dumpster before their blood could pool on the sidewalk. Marco breached the heavy iron security door with a hydraulic ram, and my squad flooded into the subterranean corridors of the club.
The bass from the upstairs dance floor was still vibrating the concrete ceiling, but down in the private counting rooms, panic erupted. Russian guards reached for their holstered weapons, only to be met with relentless, surgical violence. My men cleared room after room with military precision. I walked down the center of the hallway, my trench coat fluttering, firing double-taps at anyone who raised an arm.
I wasn't here to negotiate. I wasn't here to talk business. I was a man racing against the clock for his wife’s heartbeat.
We kicked open the reinforced steel doors of the VIP sanctuary. Sitting behind a desk made of green marble was Lev Volkov, surrounded by three bodyguards and two terrified women. Lev had the same snake-like eyes as his deceased brother Viktor, though his hair was streaked with gray and his face bloated from expensive vodka.
Before his bodyguards could unholster their weapons, Marco’s squad fired. The three men collapsed against the mirrored walls, glass shattering in a chaotic shower across the Persian rugs. The women screamed and scrambled into the corner.
Lev froze, his hands raised in the air, his face completely drained of color as he looked at me.
“Dante Moretti...” Lev stammered in thick, broken English. “What madness is this? The Chicago treaty was signed! We gave up our midwest territories!”
I walked up to the marble desk, placed both hands on the cool stone, and leaned forward until Lev could smell the gunsmoke on my collar.
“You gave up territory, Lev. But you left behind a debt that has been accumulating interest for three years.”
Lev swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward the security monitors that showed his entire club neutralized. “I don't know what you’re talking about! We haven't touched a shipment of yours since Viktor died!”
“Nightshade and cobra venom,” I whispered. The words struck Lev like physical blows. His eyes widened in sheer horror. “The wedding chalice. Viktor planned to paralyze my heart at the altar. My wife drank it instead. She has been dying in silence for thirty-six months.”
Lev began shaking violently. “That... that wasn't my plan! That was Viktor’s obsession! He worked with a rogue chemist from the Novosibirsk biochemical institute! I told him it was suicide to cross the Moretti family!”
I reached across the desk, grabbed Lev by his designer silk tie, and dragged his face down against the marble so hard his nose broke with a sickening crack.
“Where is the neutralizing agent, Lev?” I asked, pressing the cold barrel of my .45 against his temple. “You have ten seconds before I blow your ear through your skull. One. Two.”
“The safe!” Lev screamed, blood pouring down his mouth onto the desk. “Behind the portrait of Peter the Great! It’s in a temperature-controlled cryogenic lockbox! Viktor kept three ampoules of the synthetic peptide compound in case he accidentally contaminated himself during handling! I swear on my mother’s soul, it’s all in there!”
“Open it,” I growled, hauling him to his feet by the scruff of his neck.
Lev scrambled toward the ornate oil painting on the wall, his bloody fingers trembling so hard he missed the digital keypad combination twice.
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“If you mess that code up a third time,” Marco whispered coldly from behind him, “we start removing your fingers one by one.”
With a desperate cry, Lev punched in the six-digit sequence and pressed his thumb against the scanner. A heavy hydraulic hiss echoed through the room as the steel door swung open, revealing stacks of bearer bonds, gold bars, and a stainless-steel refrigerated case humming with a soft blue light.
