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Nix nods slowly, her face filled with understanding.
“Me too,” she says.
Though I want no connection with her, though we have nothing in common . . .
I see the same loneliness in her eyes.
8
Ivan Petrov
Krasnoyarsk
Thirty-two Years Ago
When the big Ukrainian is thrown in amongst the high-security inmates, I know someone will fight him the first day. A man that big always attracts trouble. He has to be taken down, like a hunting trophy. The bosses inside will want to force his fealty.
I’ve only been at Stark for a year, but I know how things work in the prison camp. This is what I’m learning, rather than the pitiful “educational programs” we’re supposed to undergo for rehabilitation. I already know my calculus and my essay-writing—unlike most of the men here, I actually finished school.
This is a new sort of education, provided by my fellow inmates. Go in with a bachelor’s in petty drug trafficking, come out with a master’s in organized crime.
My father isPakhan,but he’s a terrible teacher. Soft-hearted. Too eager for the approval of his own men. His territory has dwindled and dwindled, until even his uncles can no longer keep him in power.
He couldn’t keep his own son out of prison.
I’ll be a different kind of boss. With what I’ve learned here, and my brother Dominik at my side, I’m going to crush St. Petersburg under my heel. Not only will I recover every street, every neighborhood we once controlled, but I’m going to punish those families who thought they could swallow us whole, bite by bite. I will make them give back everything they took, and I’ll put every one of them under my control.
As soon as I get the fuck out of here.
Luckily, there’s only a few more months on my sentence. I was shoved in Stark during one of St. Petersburg’s cyclical crackdowns on drug trafficking. It was a harsh punishment for a first-time offense, but I can’t exactly blame them, knowing how many offenses I’ve committed without being caught.
This time I was betrayed.
Two dozen state police swarmed into my warehouse at the perfect moment to find my most recent shipment of powder—one of the only times I take personal possession of product.
I’m not an idiot. It’s no coincidence.
I suspect my father’s lieutenant.
I caught Rurik Oblast skimming money from his weekly collections. I punished him harshly, against my father’s wishes. I suppose this was Rurik’s revenge.
He took a year of my life. I’ll take all the years remaining from his. One of many action-items on my list as soon as I’m out of here.
For now, I watch the redheaded giant face off against Sobaka, a hulking enforcer who works for one of the incarcerated Moscow bosses.
You don’t end up in prison if you’re a well-connected Bratva. Being sent here means you’re out of favor with the high table, or one of your rivals has succeeded in hamstringing you. It means you’re weak, that even the cops and the judges don’t fear you.
The bosses inside fight for position even more violently than on the outside. They take no chances, and they show no mercy to unaffiliated prisoners like our Ukrainian friend.
He has no Malina brothers in here.
The only warning of the impending fight is a low whistle from one of Yuri Molotok’s men. The older prisoners scatter, and the guards monitoring our “daily exercise” of milling around a cementyard surrounded by chain-link fence suddenly become blind and deaf, turning their backs on us. They receive enough bribes from the bosses to mind their own business.
As long as no one escapes, the guards couldn’t care less what happens between these walls. Violent deaths are written down as “natural causes.”
When the guards get bored, they use fresh inmates as their own personal punching bags. Only last week, they forced the incoming prisoners to run down a corridor with their hands tied behind their back, while the guards kicked, pummeled, and pushed them from all sides, blastingDu Hastat deafening volume, and bellowing with laughter every time one of the guards landed a particularly good hit. One of those prisoners died three hours later of a ruptured spleen.
So I don’t expect any sympathy for the Ukrainian. More likely the guards will take bets on what looks to be a particularly entertaining match-up between the redheaded giant and Molotok’s most vicious enforcer.
