“Everyone like everyone.”
Dmitry strode out of the room quickly and went into the back bedroom. He quickly emerged back out and leaned against the hallway entrance.
“You sick fuck,” Dmitry gasped.
“No witnesses,” Ivan said, walking to door. “We better go. The police will be here soon.”
Dmitry rushed Ivan against the door and pinned him up. Picking him up off the ground, he punched him in stomach.
“There were kids in there!” Dmitry exclaimed. “Kids!”
“I didn’t know until I shot the room up.” Ivan’s eyes were ice cold. He doubled over and spat. “Damn, they were my age. Would you have preferred for them to shoot me?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Dmitry asked, looking down at his brother.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ivan snatched away. “We have to go.” He stood up and shook off the punch. “It’s done.”
Dmitry took a deep breath and pushed his brother out of the door. “Go down the stairs,” he ordered, holding back vomit.
As promised less than an hour later, Kirill met Dmitry and Ivan at a restaurant on the outskirts of town, not far from the airport. He handed them two plane tickets and a duffle bag of money. They then met up with Dmitry’s crew, where he collected the rest of his money. In time to catch the last red eye, the two had changed clothes and were on a plane for London.
Dmitry didn’t talk to Ivan once. Instead, he sat quietly thinking about the bloody images he had seen back at Sacha’s. He looked over at his brother, resting comfortably on the first-class plane ride and suddenly felt the urge to choke him.
Dmitry had done murder before. But he found that he did not have a taste for it. He tried to make it quick and painless for both he and the unfortunate souls that he had encountered. He never killed anyone that he didn’t think deserved it, and he never killed an innocent for any reason.
But Ivan was different. He had been since they were kids, even before their mother had passed. He had never once seen the boy show remorse unless it was for getting caught.
I should have killed you too, Dmitry thought to himself as he wiped his tired eyes. But the question was would he?
Ivan was all that he had in the world, and he knew that he would do anything to protect him no matter how sick he truly was.
Dmitry knew that without a doubt the blame rested with him. He could have taken anyone to the hit. He didn’t have to take his brother. He didn’t have to expose him to this life, but he did...he had for many years. Now, he had created a monster, incapable of real emotion and deadly. And not only had he created him, but now he was taking him to London. For some reason, he thought of Jack the Ripper.
Feeling for the bag nestled tightly between his legs, he thought of the task that lay before him. There was a group of Vory waiting for him in London, once they landed and a man named Davyd, who was supposed to help him learn the city.
With this money, he planned to start a completely new family, strong enough to last the decades. The only thing that could ruin everything was the 15-year old man resting beside him. He looked over at Ivan and sighed.
The End
Volume Two
Prologue
Prague, Czech Republic
Sitting in his favorite leather recliner, Dmitry Medlov watched his television in the great room and looked through his daughter’s graduation pictures. Where had the time gone? It seemed that he had blinked an eye and nearly an entire century had passed him by.
Flipping through pictures of Anya and her friends at her party held at the Hotel de Arc, he stopped and held her image in his hand. Such a beautiful girl. So pure. Her resemblance to his late brother, Ivan, was almost sinful. The plains of her perfect face, the darkness of her eyebrows and lashes, the thick inky mane that reminded him of his wife, Royal, and Ivan, were all reminders of every single choice he had made in his life.
Hearing his name on the History Channel, he grabbed his remote and turned the television up. Pressing the button with his meaty fingers, he put down the picture and kicked his feet up. What new lies would the media tell about him today?
Some nameless reporter had pegged his organized crime family as the most feared and untouchable of the entire free world. The thought made his lip quiver and a smile tugged at his lips, but he quickly repressed it. He could never show his pleasure with his accomplishments for fear of what his younger sons might think.
They were growing boys. Twin angels of his size and stature but with pure hearts like their mother. They kept their heads in books, their minds on girls, their actions within reason. He imagined that he might have done the same if someone had afforded him the opportunities that he had given them.
He heard his son’s name and snapped out of his thoughts back to the television. A picture of Anatoly Medlov’s distinguished face flashed across the screen. They spoke of his riches, his domination and his wrath. He almost laughed again. He always thought his oldest son was much too forgiving as a Czar. Anatoly’s reign was full of kindnesses afforded human demons who should have been assassinated by the very bullets that they purchased.
His wife’s voice entered his mind. He could hear her admonishing him. And who are you to judge, you big ape? she would always say. You had better hope Jesus is more merciful when it’s time to judge you. She was right. He had slaughtered on Biblical proportions as a young man. Not much was sacred. There was only his desire to make something out of nothing. But the History Channel would never be able to tell that story….
Chapter One
Maybe it was the fog that made Dmitry melancholy, but as he stood in the cemetery shrouded in black, he felt even darker than his macabre surroundings. It was near midnight, and he had arranged to meet with the leader of a local militant group, The Free Right, to coordinate the sale of a large shipment of USSR-made AK-47s. Only the contact was running late.
Perched against a statue of an angel, he looked across the hallowed ground and took a deep, frustrated breath. How long was he to wait on these people? Five minutes. Ten at the most? If they didn’t show soon, he’d cancel the arrangement all together and make life a living hell for them in the future.
A few feet away, Ivan, his younger brother sat on top of a tomb drinking out of a silver flask and scanning the grounds. Dmitry nodded towards him. And Ivan quickly threw a finger sign in response, flipping his long middle finger at his brother while he wagged his elongated feet against the concrete slab.
Was it really necessary to sit atop the final resting place of a dead person? Did the boy have no respect? Inwardly, Dmitry knew the answer to both questions was no. Ivan was indiscriminately abhorrent, and there was little that could be done about that fact.
A rustle of leaves behind a copse in the far corner near the entrance of the cemetery made both of them turn. It was the petite footsteps of a redhead woman with fiery short locks dressed in green fatigues. She walked quickly over to them, hands in her pockets, her green eyes focused.
Dmitry could tell by her menacing glower that she was the contact. Most people stared at them like they were freaks of nature because of their size, but she simply strode directly to them, determined to push against the violent, cold winds that ripped through the night.
Ivan walked up beside Dmitry, only a few inches shorter than seven-feet tall, and smacked his mouth together. “A midnight snack,” he said with a joker-like grin.
“Behave,” Dmitry reminded his brother under his breath. “This is our contact not one of your whores.”
The woman stopped a few feet from them and darted over towards the shadows. The men followed, looking around as they went to ensure that no one was watching.
Dmitry thought it odd that such a small woman would be so comfortable doing business in the middle of the night with two giants. Without so much as one hesitation in her movements, she quickly pulled a yellow envelope from her jacket and passed it to Dmitry. His large hand engulfed hers.
“Guess there’s no
need to ask if you’re my guys,” she said cleverly in an English accent. “Sorry, I’m late. Had a tail,” she explained. “Some bloke in a black truck. Was it one of yours?”
“No.” Dmitry took the envelope and slipped it inside of his coat. He could feel the thick bulkiness of cash inside. He nodded at Ivan as a signal to go and get the package. His brother did so obediently. Ivan never screwed up a deal, just everything else. He disappeared into the darkness, leaving them alone.
“The key will open the garage that Armand was shown earlier this week. Inside there will be a van for you filled with your shipment. We will guard the garage and the van until you pick it up. After you leave, we carry no responsibility.” Dmitry’s voice boomed in the silence of the night, even as he tried to speak low.
“We can take it from there,” she assured. It was nearly impossible for her to look up at him. Crooking her head, she studied him carefully.
Dmitry barely blinked. Looking back for his brother, he saw Ivan approaching and turned back to the woman. “Any questions?”
“No. We’ll pick up the shipment in six hours at the location,” she said, reaching out to take the key from Ivan. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you gents.”
With that, she headed back towards the way that she had come, silently moving through the darkness back into the obscurity of the London streets. Dmitry watched her until her body disappeared then turned to his brother.
“Let’s get out of here,” he ordered, yawning.
As they headed towards the entrance of the cemetery, six other men - strategically hidden out of sight - came out behind him and followed him and Ivan back out to their cars.
Dmitry’s crew was getting larger. It had only been a year since they had left Moscow, but already they had grown from two to ten men. His old boss, Kirill, had coordinated a few meetings that ensured him Vor soldiers from back home, who had also left the mother country to look for more opportunities. In all, the decision to flee Moscow had been a wise one. However, there were still times, like tonight, when he missed the cold, crisp air of the USSR.
Everything he had known had been replaced in the last year. London was an animal unlike anything he had ever seen before. This place was no communist society. Here, the pound spoke loudly, and people were allowed to live. Soldiers didn’t monitor the streets. There was no threat of immediate danger or death on site. So polar opposite was their law enforcement until the police in London seemed more like school hall monitors to him than the filthy pigs at home.
In truth, he hardly feared prison. The only reason why he avoided it was because of his troubled little brother. He was certain that if he went back again, Ivan would get even worse. There was certainly something wrong with the boy. He was off. Touched. Troubled. Evil. Whatever people called it. Still, he was certain that it was his fault. Ivan had not been raised properly and probably harbored a great deal of resentment against him and his dead mother.
***
The Medlov headquarters was a dingy little warehouse in the middle of Brixton, lined with old cars and tires. The bricked building housed several abandoned apartments that the men used for business and a place to call home. Purchased through a banker with ties to the Vory in the USSR, the warehouse was given to Dmitry in exchange for a few jobs that he and his crew had done to eliminate the banker’s competition in North London.
Dmitry was a quiet man. He enjoyed the silence of his surroundings in order to help him think, but his crew, minus an older man named Davyd, seemed to always surround themselves with chaos. Below his apartment, lined with leather bound books and piles of papers, there was a constant boom of the radio and men playing instruments. He tried desperately to drown them out, grateful that they were always at his fingertips when he needed them. But sometimes, the noise flustered him to the point of raising his voice. He rarely did it, but when he did, there was always hell to pay.
Tonight, he chose to hold his tongue and wait. The exchange had already happened, and the pickup was scheduled for four hours from now. He looked at his watch and noted the time. It was already 2:15 a.m., and he had not slept in a day and a half. His tired eyes had dark, heavy bags under them that made him look older than nineteen. He was due to turn twenty soon. However, considering the life that they lived, there was never a guarantee that he would see the next day.
Standing over his bathroom sink, he ran cold water over his face and grabbed a grimy, black towel from the rack. He ran the towel over the stubble of his dirty-blonde beard and looked in the mirror, trailing over his cheek with his index finger.
“Boss, you have a minute?” a deep voice screamed into his room.
Dmitry put down the towel and grabbed his gun off the counter. “Da,” he answered, walking towards the doorway.
Davyd, his true underboss, came into the bedroom and closed the door. “I spoke with Carmella today. There’s going to be a bid next week,” he said in a hushed tone.
“Good,” Dmitry said, sitting down on the tethered leather chair behind his desk. He put the gun away and grabbed a pen from the drawer. Quickly, he scribbled something in his notebook.
Davyd watched him for a moment then continued, “Not as good as it could be. McLauren and his men are coming in as well. They have damned good connections to munitions in Ireland. We stand to lose the bid.”
“Those Irish pricks can’t get half the fire power that we can,” Dmitry spouted off as he quickly closed his journal. He looked up and clenched his wide, square jaw. “Kirill has promised me only the best on this bid and for bottom dollar.”
Davyd looked down at the ground and shook his head. “Let’s hope that he comes through. Last time, you know it didn’t go so well.” He looked back up at Dmitry, hoping for the right response.
“So what do you suggest? We don’t have any other suppliers to get the product. Plus, our allegiance is with Kirill.”
“Your allegiance is with him. I like him alright, but there are other Vor with a hell of a lot more money. We need to diversify, Dmitry. The world is bigger than the USSR.” Davyd sat down on the couch across the room and pulled out a cigar.
“Don’t light that in here. It messes up the smell of the place,” Dmitry said, turning around in his chair to look out the stained windows over the skyline of Brixton.
“What smell? It reeks of ink and old books in here,” he said, putting the cigar away.
“I know,” Dmitry answered. “I like it. It smells like knowledge. You know, I never had the chance to get an education,” he lamented. “So, I try to gain as much knowledge as I can through all of these books. I read every day, all day. And I don’t want my room to smell like cigars as I learn.”
“You have more education than those boys in Oxford.”
Dmitry frowned in thought. “I’d trade with them any day.”
“Well, back to your current life. What are you going to do about your supply chain? We could crash and burn if we only depend on Kirill. No one is going to do business with us if the word gets out that we can’t always deliver. We’ll be pushed out of the London market.”
The thought disturbed Dmitry. Closing his eyes, he ran through the scenarios in his head and came to one conclusion. Davyd was right.
“Fine. Find someone here, someone we can depend on with ties to the Vory or that is Vory, and I’ll meet with him,” Dmitry said, getting up. “I’m going to go and take a run to keep me awake. When I get back, we’ll prepare for the pickup.”
***
Jogging in Brixton at three in the morning was a tricky thing for most people. They stood the possibility of being mugged or killed. But Dmitry never worried about any of that. He cleared his head with every mile, with every long stride. The blackness of the night wrapped around him and even he, a seven-foot tall man, was swallowed up in its massiveness. All he could hear was his footsteps splashing through water, beating the pavement. As he ran, people moved out of his way, marveled at his height, looked on, but they never bothered him.
The sweat pou
red from his salty pores as he ran. Taking in the fresh air, he was no longer a killer, a murdering bastard. At that very moment, he was just a guy taking his nightly run. The wind cooled his head as he made it to the outskirts of Brixton.
Stopping at an old warehouse, he wiped the sweat from his brow and leaned against the cool bricks to catch his fleeting breath. He had gone every bit of ten miles, and his heart was pounding out of his chest.
Covering his eyes, he tried to fight the sleep that still haunted him. All he wanted to do was take a nap and rest his aching body, but he knew that if he were to lie down now, he would sleep past the pickup, which was completely unacceptable.
As he straightened up to run back to his place, he noticed that he was not alone. A group of men was on the other side of the building talking. When they noticed that he was near them, they stepped out from the darkness.
The Chronicles of Young Dmitry Medlov: Book One Page 5
