Chapter 4

Every word from that speaker slammed into the hall like a heavy hammer.

"Wait! Mister Viktor, that's impossible!" The blood vanished from Sienna's face at a speed visible to the naked eye. Seeing Dominic glare at her, she lunged at the phone, babbling in a panic. "Our channels never made a mistake! Is there some misunderstanding with customs?"

"No misunderstanding."

The Russian on the other end was dead cold, stripped of all emotion. "Your so-called innovative route ran straight into the joint sting trap of EU financial inspections. All sixty million in raw diamonds have been seized. Interpol just hauled three of my captains away in cuffs."

"Twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes. Have sixty million US dollars in untraceable cash ready on the table. Short a single cent, and I will personally come to New York to collect the corpses."

The line cut clean. A loud dial tone buzzed in the dead room.

Suffocating silence fell over the floor.

Everyone knew the man in St. Petersburg was a man of his word, and his firepower was unmatched.

Several crew leaders kissing Dominic's ring moments ago took two quick steps back, putting hard distance between them. Someone killed the jazz music. The entire hall turned into a quiet tomb.

Dominic's knuckles turned chalk-white around his phone. His face twisted with rage.

He whipped around, his bloodshot eyes locking onto Sienna. He slammed his half-smoked cigar hard against the marble floor.

"What the fuck did you do?! Didn't you swear the receipts were split clean and the other dock already signed off on them?!"

Sienna shuddered all over from the scream.

She forced her chin up, talking back with a stiff neck. "I only did it to make more money for the family! The original laundering chain went through four transit ports, and the loss was far too high! I compressed the route to two layers, ran direct offshore digital hedging, and retained two million in reserve funds in our personal trust along the way! What's wrong with that? This is the most advanced algorithm!"

"You embezzled the reserve funds?! And you skipped three tiers of offshore hedging?!"

Dominic's face twisted in horror.

He didn't know the coding logic of laundering, but he knew what that meant.

The Russians' diamond shipments stayed safe for six years entirely because of the dynamic routing system I built. The reserve fund was a fixed safety cushion. The second you skimmed a cent from that pool, international anti-money laundering alarms fired across Europe.

Sienna not only touched the shadow marker that was strictly off-limits, but she arrogantly tossed the bait right into the jaws of customs.

"Sixty million... in paper cash!" Dominic grabbed Sienna's wrist and dragged her right to his face. "The liquid reserves of our entire family can't pull together thirty million! Do you know what kind of people rule St. Petersburg? Those are rabid beasts who kill without batting an eye!"

Sienna shrank from the murder in his eyes, but she still held her head high.

"Why panic, Dominic? It's just a botched investment! A loss is a loss, at worst we forfeit the diamonds!"

She smoothed out the slipped strap of her dress, her tone airy, as if talking about dropping a tube of lipstick.

"It's just sixty million. If he wants it, give it to him. Are we unable to pay? Besides, they're far away in Russia, and this is New York! We have over a hundred gunmen in Brooklyn. Are we really going to be afraid of a few Eastern European thugs with accents?"

Hearing this outrageous nonsense, Dominic's eyes turned to ice.

Looking at the woman he handpicked and crowned, he stared at her for the first time like she was completely out of her mind.

"Shut up! You stupid fool!" Dominic drew his Glock and jammed the barrel hard beneath her jaw. "That is the Bratva! With a wave of their hand, they can get every family on the East Coast to tear us apart! You think this is street thugs fighting over turf?!"

The old-school elders around the hall turned cold as iron.

One of the old bosses running arms smuggling picked his gun up from the table, swept a cold glance over Dominic, and walked toward the emergency exit with his bodyguards without looking back once.

The fracture was torn wide open. The house was coming down.

Dominic watched the elder walk out, then looked at Sienna, who showed zero remorse. His chest heaved violently. He finally understood what kind of nuclear bomb he detonated with his own hands.

Berated in public, Sienna's face flashed hot red, her ego stung raw.

Instead of shutting up, she stomped her heel hard, pointed at the underbosses whispering in the hall, and screeched:

"This is just one ruined business deal! We have plenty of men and weapons in New York! Are we really afraid of a few Russians?!"