3

Sergei

Quarterly figures.

Rows and rows of streaming numbers. Columns of figures that are beginning to blur after three solid hours.

Fuck my life.

I'm reviewing the company financials when Viktor crashes through my door like a man who's forgotten how doors work. No knock. He never knocks anymore. The mahogany slams against the wall, disturbing the careful silence I maintain in this office.

Viktor Kozlov stands there like shit on my expensive carpet. His usually perfect hair is fucked, his thousand-dollar suit wrinkled like he slept in it, and his eyes carry that wild look I've been seeing more often lately. Two years as partners, and I've watched him deteriorate from calculated businessman to unpredictable liability.

"We need to talk." He shuts the door behind him with deliberate force.

I don't look up from the spreadsheet. Numbers don't lie, unlike the man standing in my office. "Talk."

"Where's my cut from the Henderson delivery?"

My pen stops moving across the paper. The Henderson delivery? I set down the Mont Blanc and lean back in my leather chair, studying Viktor's face. His jaw is clenched tight, his hands balled into fists at his sides. This isn't a casual inquiry— this is an accusation waiting to explode.

"What Henderson delivery?"

"Don't play fucking stupid with me, Sergei. The one from three weeks ago. Healthy newborn, premium placement. Should be worth at least two hundred thousand to me, minimum."

I pull open the bottom drawer of my desk, retrieving the leather portfolio where I keep detailed records of every transaction we've handled in the past six months. Each delivery, each payment, each cut distributed to our network. I flip through the pages methodically, knowing exactly what I'll find.

Nothing.

Not a fucking thing.

"No record."

Viktor's face flushes deep red, the color of a man whose blood pressure is spiking toward dangerous territory.

"Bullshit. Complete fucking bullshit. I set up the placement myself. Wealthy couple in Connecticut, pre-screened through my contacts at the country club. They paid in full, upfront."

"Who'd they pay?" I frown.

"You, supposedly. Through the usual fucking channels."

I close the portfolio and place it back in the drawer, my movements deliberately calm and controlled. Viktor's attitude is filling my pristine office like a bad smell. The kind of tension that leads to mistakes, and in our business, mistakes lead to prison sentences... or graves.

"Henderson delivery— where are the medical records? Birth certificate? Melor's paperwork?"

Viktor runs both hands through his hair, further destroying what's left of his professional appearance. "I don't know. That's your fucking department, isn't it?"

"My department is operations. Yours is clients and payments. You set up placement, took payment— you should have records."

"I do have fucking records." Viktor pulls out his phone, scrolling frantically through what I assume are messages or financial files. His fingers are shaking slightly— a detail I file away for future reference. "The payment went through our usual Bitcoin wallet. Nine hundred and fifty thousand, exactly as we agreed."

"Show me."

He hesitates. That moment of hesitation tells me everything I need to know about the truthfulness of his claims.

"I don't have the phone with me," he says finally. "It's at home on my other fucking device."

Liar.

Fucking liar.

I've been in this business long enough to recognize deception in all its forms— the slight delay before answering, the unnecessary details, the convenient excuse. Viktor is either monumentally incompetent or he's trying to run a con on me. Given his recent behavior— the mood swings, the increasingly erratic decision-making, the personal issues bleeding into our professional relationship— I'm leaning heavily toward the latter.

"Viktor," I say quietly, my voice dropping to the tone that makes grown men reconsider their life choices, "are you accusing me of stealing?"

"I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm asking where my fucking money is."

"Same thing, mudak."

The room falls silent except for the soft hum of the city thirty floors below us. Boston sprawls outside my office windows— a maze of old money and new opportunities, historic brownstones and gleaming skyscrapers. From up here, everything looks manageable, controllable. People are just moving pieces on a chess board, and I've always been very fucking good at chess.

But Viktor Kozlov is becoming a liability I can't control, and uncontrolled liabilities have a way of destroying carefully constructed empires.

Our business arrangement works precisely because it's built on military-level precision and clearly defined roles. We deliver orphaned or disadvantaged babies to affluent people who desperately want children. Dr. Jesse Yevgeniy provides the medical connections and client credibility— he's the respectable face that desperate couples trust with their need for families. Melor handles the legal maze, turning black market transactions into seemingly legitimate adoption proceedings that will stand up to government scrutiny. Radimir manages our digital footprint, ensuring that payments remain untraceable and communications stay encrypted beyond the reach of federal investigators.

Viktor was supposed to handle the wealthy client base— the couples with more money than morals, the ones willing to pay premium prices for healthy infants with no questions asked. His job was to identify prospects, vet their financial capabilities, and facilitate the initial payments.

Each of us takes our agreed-upon cut. Each of us follows the established rules. And the first rule, the most sacred rule, is simple: no one skims without the others knowing.

"Listen carefully," I continue, leaning forward slightly in my chair. "If I owed you money, you would have it. I don't cheat partners. Cheating partners leads to dead partners. Bad for business. Very bad, mudak."

Viktor's expression darkens, his earlier panic shifting toward something more dangerous— anger mixed with desperation. "Maybe you should ask your precious fucking Dr. Yevgeniy about that philosophy."

The comment makes me frown. "What does that mean?"

"It means maybe your faith in the good doctor is misplaced. Maybe he's been making some private fucking arrangements that don't include the rest of us."

The possibility has occurred to me recently, though I've been dismissing it as paranoia. Jesse Yevgeniy is everything I'm not— charming, respectable, genuinely caring about the families he claims to help. He's the perfect front for our operation precisely because he believes his own justifications. In his mind, we're providing a valuable service, connecting loving families with orphaned children who need homes.

But if Jesse has been playing games behind our backs, making side deals while maintaining his innocent facade...

"You have proof?"

"I have suspicions. And missing money tends to support suspicions, doesn't it?"

Viktor leans forward, placing both hands flat on my desk in an aggressive posture meant to intimidate. It's a calculated move designed to establish dominance, but he's forgotten who he's talking to.

I've killed men for less disrespectful gestures.

"Here's what I think happened," Viktor continues, his voice gaining confidence as he builds his bullshit story. "I think Dr. Do-Good has been skimming fucking deliveries for months now. Maybe telling himself it's for the greater good, maybe just getting greedy like the rest of us. And I think you've been too blinded by his sterling reputation to notice the obvious fucking signs."

I stand slowly, my chair rolling backward on its expensive casters. Viktor straightens but doesn't back away from my desk— a mistake that reveals either incredible courage or terminal stupidity.

"You call me naive." My voice is still low. Dangerous. Everything about me is very fucking dangerous right now.

"I'm calling you trusting. Sometimes they're the same fucking thing in our line of work."

The insult hangs between us like a loaded weapon. In my world, questioning someone's judgment is questioning their competence. Questioning their competence is questioning their right to lead. And questioning my right to lead is a mistake Viktor can only afford to make once.

"You burst into my office. Accuse me of theft. Suggest I'm too stupid to manage my operation." I walk around the desk to close the distance between us. "That takes courage or stupidity. Which one, pizda?"

Viktor's bravado wavers slightly, but he doesn't back down. "I just want what's rightfully fucking mine."

"What's yours is what we agree is yours. What we don't agree doesn't exist."

"Fuck that corporate doublespeak, Sergei. I'm not your fucking employee. I'm your partner, and partners don't get fucked over by other partners."

"Partners don't make accusations without evidence. Partners don't disrespect each other. Partners don't forget their place."

"Their place?" Viktor laughs, the sound filled with bitterness and mounting frustration. "What fucking place? We're all criminals here, remember? None of us is better than the others when it comes right down to it."

Wrong answer.

Completely fucking wrong.

I step closer, close enough that Viktor has to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. Close enough that I can smell the expensive cologne he wears and he can see the scars on my face from fights he's never had to participate in.

"Some criminals are smart. Some are careful. Some understand reputation and respect are the only currencies that matter." I pause, letting the words sink in. "Some are just thugs with expensive suits."

Viktor's face cycles through white and red like a traffic light. "Are you fucking threatening me?"

"I explain reality. If I owed you money, you would have it. You accuse the wrong man. That's a mistake you can make only once."

For a moment, I think he might actually swing at me. His hands are clenched into fists, his breathing has gone shallow and rapid. The muscles in his shoulders are coiled tight with suppressed violence. But even Viktor isn't stupid enough to start a physical fight with me in my own office, surrounded by my security and thirty-one floors above the street.

Instead, he straightens his wrinkled suit jacket and heads for the door with as much dignity as he can salvage. Which isn't much, now that he's blown his load on bullshit and bluster.

"This conversation isn't fucking over, Sergei."

"Yes. It is." I fold my arms over my chest.

The door slams behind him with enough force to rattle the windows and disturb the carefully arranged items on my bookshelf. I listen to his footsteps disappearing down the hallway toward the elevator, then return my attention to the quarterly figures that suddenly seem far less important than they did twenty minutes ago.

Viktor's accusation about Jesse nags at me like a splinter working its way deeper under the skin. I've always prided myself on reading people accurately, on seeing through deception and identifying threats before they become critical. But what if I've been wrong about the good doctor? What if his genuine concern for families has been covering something more self-serving?

Blyad.

What the fuck is going on?

I pull out my secure phone and scroll through the encrypted messages from our last several transactions. Jesse has been handling more of the medical coordination lately, working directly with hospitals and private clinics to identify potential opportunities. If he wanted to run side deals without our knowledge, he'd have both the access and the credibility to pull it off successfully.

The more I think about it, the more Viktor's theory begins to make sense. Jesse's increased involvement in day-to-day operations. His reluctance to include us in certain client meetings. The way he's been deflecting questions about specific transactions by citing patient confidentiality.

Trust is a currency more volatile than cash, and I learned that lesson the hard way years before I ever met Viktor or Jesse. In this business, betrayal doesn't just cost money— it costs lives, families, futures.

If Dr. Jesse Yevgeniy is playing me for a fool, if he's been running private operations while maintaining his innocent facade, then he's about to learn why that's a seriously stupid mistake in judgment.

I close the portfolio and lock it back in my desk drawer. The numbers will have to wait until tomorrow. I have a pregnant wife waiting at home and a reputation to maintain in public, but my mind is already working through possibilities, calculating odds and contingencies.

Viktor may be an idiot, yes.

But if he's right about Jesse... well, the good doctor and I need to have a conversation.