Chapter one
It was kill or be killed—so I killed. I was born and raised in violence. What I’d just done didn’t even raise my heart rate. Knocking the guy’s teeth out with a crowbar and dumping him in the river was no sweat. For me, the worst part was the lack of sleep.
I needed a cup of coffee if I was going to make it through this day.
The streets around Central Park South were showing signs of life, with a few early risers clutching to-go cups and muttering curses. I’d been walking since before sunrise, cutting through the back alleys and side streets, every step heavy with the weight of too many debts owed, too many bodies buried. My phone buzzed again in my pocket—another message I wouldn’t read. Not yet. Not until I had caffeine in my veins. Not until the shaking in my hands was from something other than exhaustion. I hadn’t closed my eyes in days.
Late October in Manhattan came with a cold, biting wind that chilled you to the bone. It tore between the skyscrapers likea blade through flesh, slicing down the alleys and promising a season of brutality. Storm clouds lurked over the high-rises, sitting low enough to swallow their tops—as if the city’s sins had summoned the weather to hide them. Though the sun had already risen, the clouds and towers barricaded the light from reaching the streets below, conspiring to keep the city blind to the violence brewing.
I ducked beneath a stretch of scaffolding that turned the sidewalk into a tunnel. From my inner jacket pocket, I pulled out a pack of smokes and tapped it twice against my palm. One slid free. I caught it with my lips and lit it, appreciative of the reliable, sharp metallic snap and disciplined flame of my lighter. This was no clicky plastic bullshit; it was a sterling silver S.T. Dupont I’d won when I was sixteen, hustling a card shark from the Solntsevskaya Bratva in a rigged poker game. He should’ve slit my throat for it. Instead, he’d handed it over with a smirk. I’d beaten him at his own game. I’d been smarter, faster, and cooler under pressure. A reminder: the house only wins if you play by the rules.
The cherry flared red as it caught. Smoke curled up, mingling with the damp morning air. I took a slow drag, letting the smoke scorch my lungs, then blew a steady stream out through my nose. The cigarette hung from the corner of my mouth as I crossed the street. I didn’t worry about the poison. Men like me didn’t die from cigarettes. When my time came, it’d be bullets or blades—something loud and messy, befitting the life I was chained to.
Six hours earlier, in a Queens warehouse, I’d shattered a Mara Salvatrucha soldier’s face for thinking he could steal a shipment meant for one of my partners in the newly formed consortium of family businesses we affectionately called the Sin Syndicate. I’d owed Luca Genovese a favor for helping me out with a situation here in the city a couple of months back. Since then, we’dfound ourselves with several common interests. So he’d pulled me into his grand scheme to realign the Northeast’s underworld and clean out the trash. MS-13 had crawled out of the gutters of El Salvador and latched onto the Mexican mafia like parasites. Now they marched through our city like warlords, branding themselves kings. But the Mara Salvatrucha weren’t royalty—they were trespassers. This wasourkingdom to rule.
After ending the punk swiftly, I’d left him and his burner phone rotting at the bottom of the East River, the message loud and clear. And now, I watched the morning crawl over a city I barely recognized anymore.
The city used to have rules, lines that weren’t crossed even by the men who ran it. The old families handled business in the shadows, not in bloodbaths on public streets. But these new animals? They raped children, sold teenage girls like livestock, and started turf wars for sport. They pumped kids full of drugs, got them hooked, and then handed them guns and sent them out onto the streets to deal. Initiates earned their loyalty through torture and dismemberment. These lowlifes didn’t build empires—they left bodies in their wake and ash where order once stood.
Though I was a man of the Russian mafia, I wasn’tthatkind of monster. Sure, I’d done bad things. I’d buried men alive. But I didn’t burn the world just to watch the suffering.
I was the reluctant heir of the Volkovi Notchi bratva. I’d been planning my exit strategy for years, but that had all blown up after my father, Viktor Volkov, botched the West Coast operation and got himself run out of Tacoma after kidnapping some mouthy redheaded nurse. What should’ve been a clean exit had turned into a war between old families, with my sister’s arranged marriage catching fire in the process.
Now my father was dead. My mother had sold her soul to our enemies back in St. Petersburg. And I was stuck holding the keys to a bratva I’d never wanted to rule.
But I did it anyway. For Anastasia.
The only thing keeping me from letting this city burn was the girl who called me brother. She was the one person I’d go to my grave to protect. And then there was Luca Genovese. The bastard hadn’t shed a drop of blood for me—he’d done something worse. He’d helped me put a bullet in the man who would’ve destroyed my sister, and he’d let his own wife die for siding with our enemies. My loyalty to him was the kind that couldn’t be bought.
Together, we were trying to clean up the mess my father had left behind and drive out the new sewer rats threatening what was ours. Over the past few months, we’d been working to unite his organizations on the East Coast with mine on the West Coast and in Russia, drawing lines in blood and making sacrifices to push back against Central American scum like Ciro Delgado, who ran the Mara Salvatrucha like a cartel and treated Manhattan like it was his to control.
Luca wanted to rebuild the old world. I wanted to burn the whole thing down before it collapsed on top of us. But I wasn’t in a position to make that happen, not when it was my sister and her unborn child who could pay the price for it.
But first, I needed a goddamn cup of coffee.
I flicked the cigarette onto the ground and crushed it beneath the toe of my boot. A street vendor down the block was unrolling fresh stacks ofThe Times. I handed him a folded five-spot and grabbed a copy without breaking stride.
A few steps later, I hooked a right onto a quiet side street and stepped into the warm hum of Cipher Coffee, the scent of roasted beans hitting me before the door even shut behind me.
Cipher wasn’t some tourist trap or sidewalk cafe that doled out burned espresso to hungover finance bros. It was the kind of place real New Yorkers protected like a secret—far enough from Broadway’s chaos to be uncrowded but close enough to smell its ambition. It was a dimly lit sanctuary with leather booths,flickering wall sconces, and the scent of caramelized beans hanging thick in the air. The regulars were a mix of old-money elites, young theater prodigies, and locals who craved silence with their caffeine.
Although Luca owned the place, Cipher was Carmine’s domain. He was the one who opened the doors before sunrise, kept the espresso brewed to perfection, and knew which regulars needed a quiet corner and which ones wanted to be seen. He was one of the old-school guys, a loyal Genovese foot soldier through and through. He curated the staff, controlled the flow, and protected the regulars who needed more than caffeine to survive the day. He ran the place the same way the Genovese ran the city. No questions. No trouble. No tolerance for outsiders sticking their noses where they didn’t belong.
Anytime I came in, he didn’t greet me with small talk or fake warmth. He simply nodded, made sure the back booth was clear, and took care of whatever I needed. That was how this world worked. You knew who mattered. And you made damn sure not to disappoint them. Carmine played his part well, and for a man with no rank above his name, he understood the rules better than most of the so-called bosses.
Normally when I came into Cipher, I slipped into the back-corner booth and let him fawn over me while I skimmed encrypted emails.
But not today.
Today, I was in a hurry. I just wanted a quick cup of hot coffee and five minutes to readThe Times.
As I made my way to a seat, every head in the place turned. But not because they knew who I was. It was just instinct. When a predator walks into the room, the prey looks up, even if they don’t understand why.
I didn’t bother going to my usual booth. Instead, I stopped at a center table and shoved a chair back with my boot. Droppinginto the seat, I letThe Times unfold in front of my face. The front-page headline was: “Mayor Hayes Pushes City Contract to Unnamed Security Firm.” I didn’t need the byline to know which devil had signed that deal. Ciro Delgado was buying his way above the surface. He was no longer just a rat in the sewer. That butcher in a tailored suit, funded by his narco-backed El Salvadoran dictator, had crawled his way into bed with the city politicians with a handshake and a fat check.
Luca wasn’t going to take this lightly. The Genovese name had carried this city for decades. And now? It was being spit on—by a narco punk from the south and a mayor with no spine. I folded the paper slightly, my lips tight.
This city needed a purge.
