Dragusha Revenge ✓Completed✓

ALEKSIO

WE HEAD over to Konstantin's place, west of the city. We're wild with grief and vengeance. Dreading the news we have to tell. "You don't touch Mira," I say. "You understand?" He says nothing. "You understand?" "I understand what you're saying," he says. I give him a hard look. He gets it. Konstantin lives in a beautiful old red brick building on the edge of a park. He has his own place, and a nurse lives in a place next door, there to care for him. I support them both. My gang isn't huge like the Nikolla army, but we're smart and lucrative.

"Old man is more interested in ducks than in people. If he was in the city it would be the pigeons," Viktor observes as we pull up. "It's the same in Moscow, with the old people. It is suddenly the little things." But Konstantin still sees the big things, too. He's in his wheelchair in front of a fireplace when we arrive. He's made a nest of comfortable furniture and photos of old buildings, mostly from Albania, Greece, and Turkey, mostly that he shot himself.

"Boys!" he says. "My boys!" I bend down to kiss his cheek, and he pats mine, then turns to Viktor and clips his chin. "Who fucked up your face?" "It's nothing." The nurse puts out a plate of cookies and kafe turke, then leaves, back to her flat. Konstantin notices I'm limping. "You need that looked at." "Konstantin," I say. One word. The old man's face falls. He knows me that well. I think about Mira in the car, the way she reached out to me. I find myself wishing she were here beside me.

In the past few hours, she's begun to feel more like an ally than a hostage. Viktor takes a sugar cookie and chews it angrily. I tell Konstantin about Kiro. For a brief moment we thought we'd get our baby brother back. Telling Konstantin makes it worse. Makes it more real. His wrinkled hands tremble as he examines the newspaper article we took from Lila and Ronson. He clutches the photograph of Kiro. "I still feel him in my heart, though," I say. "They never found the body, but..." "Things are typically as they seem," Konstantin says curtly. I know he's right.

"He was such a happy baby," Konstantin says. "Beautiful, happy, good. A gift. Strangers would stop on the street to admire him. He was loved." Viktor takes another cookie. He was too young to remember Kiro, but I know he tries. Like grabbing onto clouds. "Viktor," Konstantin says, looking at him sadly, as though he can read his thoughts. Viktor shrugs. I can't stop thinking about Nikolla. Wishing I could kill him. "You were loved," Konstantin says to the photo.

I have to do something-anything-so I go out to the car to get a bottle of vodka and bring it back. Viktor looks over with his usual darkness as he takes his glass. Just us now. Two brothers instead of three. We make a toast to Kiro, the three of us. "We want to get dead fucking serious here, Konstantin," I say. "You always said to be smart. Kiro is gone, but we can still go after them the right way. The way you wanted. We weaken them.

We take our empire back. I know we don't have the element of surprise, but..." I almost say we have nothing to lose. It feels like that, a little. "You always said I was rash. I get it. Going after Kiro that way?" "You wanted your brother," Konstantin says. "In the end, you were right not to wait. We would've had to wait forever." "I'm ready to do some real damage. And I don't give a shit about the old bat's prophecy, because we are together-Viktor and me." "And Kiro is with us here." Viktor slams a fist into his chest. "The brothers are together." I wonder whether he really believes it, or whether he's just saying that for Konstantin.

I grab my glass, drain it, pour some more. "Keith," I spit. "No wonder he ran away at the age of eight." "You are the sleeping king, Aleksio. And you, Viktor, the prince." Old Konstantin straightens in his chair and speaks slowly. "Best you didn't kill Aldo Nikolla. Bloody Lazarus would rise up, and he is violent and unpredictable-too hard to fight. We do this the right way. It's time." Konstantin commands Viktor to go to his desk and bring out his laptop. He has something important to show us. I push up his TV table that fits over the armrests of his wheelchair.

Konstantin turns on the computer and shows us spreadsheets, flow charts, graphs. "I have made something for you boys. Years ago I began the long game, filling in names and places." He goes on to detail what he has been doing. As he speaks, I realize that he has been slowly putting the puzzle of businesses together using a network of private investigators and administrative assistants. He has been working in the dark, working in the quiet, to prepare the way for us to weaken the Nikolla empire and take it back. An old criminal at his jigsaw puzzle.

We choke off their cash, their protection, then we strike..." "Jesus," I say, amazed. "You had this all this time, and you didn't tell me?" "I was saving it for after we found Kiro," Konstantin says. I hit the keys, flipping through. The spreadsheet is madness. It's everything we need. His plan is to infiltrate their flesh trade, their most profitable business, especially their underground brothel, Valhalla. "The nerve center of their billion-dollar operation," Konstantin says. "The jugular. No one understands this as I do."

He has more-blueprints to the money laundering, the chop shops, people in and out of the clan who can be bribed or blackmailed. "I helped stack that empire," he growls. "I know how to make it fall. Then the true sons step up." Konstantin wants Viktor to infiltrate the brothel. Viktor grumbles like a kid who got the bad Cracker Jack prize. Infiltrating a brothel isn't bloody enough for Viktor. Konstantin shakes his head. "It needs somebody who can speak Russian but pass as an American. A lot of the pipeline is Russian.

Viktor avoids my eyes as he grabs the paper with the URLs Konstantin has written. "Writing websites on a piece of paper like an old man." "I am an old man." While other old men do crossword puzzles, Konstantin has been up to this. Viktor is darkly focused on his flesh-trade flowchart, looking at the names. A lot of Russians. The names of the victims are mostly Russian, too. I see why Konstantin put him there. "I would like to kill them," he says. "All of these on the chart."

"But you won't," Konstantin says. "Because you know others will replace them. We will destroy the structure itself. Like termites. Your father would never have run such a place as Valhalla." Viktor frowns. "I will be a termite for a little while. Then we will kill the shit out of them." "Good boy." We discuss how to get the American side of the Russian mafiya involved. He closes the laptop. He reaches out to grip my arm, tightening and loosening as if in extreme emotion. "You two brothers together take your vengeance.

Konstantin lets go of me and beckons Viktor over. He adjusts Viktor's tie. "Some of Aldo Nikolla's people may come over to you. Some you will be able to trust, some not. Use your gut. As you weaken Aldo, there will come a tipping point where you can finally pull everything to yourself." He looks up, so full of emotion. "Your father built his empire to pass on to you, his sons. He would be proud