Left jab. Right cross. Hook. The bag swings on its chain, leather creaking with each impact. My knuckles are wrapped, but I feel every strike, the shock traveling up my forearms, grounding me in the physical. Control starts here: in the body, in the breath, in the ability to push past comfort into the place where weakness lives and dies.
My father taught me that. One of the few useful things he ever taught me, between the beatings and the lectures about what it meant to be Sharov. Sentiment is weakness. Mercy is failure. The world respects only power, and power requires absolute control.
I believed him then. Still believe him now, even though I put a bullet in his head eight years ago when he became more liability than asset.
The memory doesn’t slow my strikes. If anything, they get harder.
Fifty minutes. That’s my routine. Fifty minutes of controlled violence, pushing my body until sweat runs and muscles burn, until the part of my brain that wants to think about problems is too exhausted to do anything but focus on the next punch.
When the timer goes off, I step back, breathing hard but even.
The shower is cold because hot water is comfort and comfort is weakness. I stand under the spray until my skin goes numb, then dress in the clothes already laid out: charcoal suit, white shirt, no tie yet. That comes later, after breakfast.
Upstairs, the kitchen is as silent as the gym. My housekeeper knows better than to arrive before six. I prefer the morning alone, the quiet that comes before the day demands decisions and blood.
Coffee, black. Two eggs, scrambled. Toast, dry. The same breakfast I’ve eaten for fifteen years, routine carved so deep it requires no thought. While I eat, I review overnight reports on my tablet.
The Estonian shipment cleared customs at 0300 hours. Good. Border movements flagged two potential issues—Romanian authorities asking questions about transit papers, and a Polish checkpoint that logged unusual activity near one of our warehouses. I make a note. Internal loyalty checks came back clean across all departments except one.
Mikhail Petrov, mid-level enforcer, made three phone calls to a number registered to a known FSB handler.
I send a message to Viktor:Handle Petrov. Quietly.
The response comes back within seconds:Understood.
By the time I finish breakfast, the sun is breaking over Moscow’s skyline. I watch from my window, this city that made me, that forged me in brutality and blood.
***
Bratva headquarters sits in the financial district, disguised as a legitimate investment firm. Six floors of offices handling real estate, shipping logistics, and international trade. All of it clean on paper. All of it generating profit that funds everything else.
I arrive at eight. Viktor is already waiting in my office, phone pressed to his ear. He nods when I enter, wrapping up his conversation.
“Petrov?” I ask, settling behind my desk.
“Handled. He won’t be found.”
“Good.” I pull up the day’s schedule. Meetings. Always meetings. “What else?”
“The Volkov family is pushing back on the territory agreement. They want to renegotiate terms.”
I lean back in my chair. “They claim or they have proof?”
“Claims only, but they’re making noise, talking to other families.”
The Volkovs. Old money, old grudges, old ways of thinking that don’t work anymore. They think lineage means something. That blood gives them rights.
It doesn’t.
“Set up a meeting,” I say. “Make it clear this is their one chance to fall in line voluntarily.”
Viktor nods. “What if they refuse?”
“Then we remind them what happens to families who overestimate their leverage.”
The morning bleeds into meetings. Accountants presenting quarterly reports. Lawyers discussing regulatory changes. Enforcers reporting on territory disputes.
At eleven, I review the Lawrence situation. The squeeze is working exactly as planned. Three logistics subsidiaries frozen under regulatory pressure. Warsaw property seized. Four major investors withdrawing support.
