Page 5 of The Mad Don
“Nothing,” I say after a moment. “It’s nothing.”
I close the door behind me.
In the corridor, I stop, lean against the wall, and breathe out.
The collector.
I have nothing. I have an oversized suit, a calm pair of eyes, and a goodbye that landed wrong. I have my own instinct, which Kirill respects but is not proof.
I do not sleep well that night.
Chapter Two
Yana
Iam against the earth behind a ridge of pine cover, my elbows propped in the dirt, my eyes on the south face of the mansion.
The compound sprawls below me in the dark. White stone, dull light at the front gates, the long curve of the driveway. The trees around me are thick enough to hide six men with a clean line of sight. We are positioned exactly where I asked us to be.
Friday. 11:47 p.m.
The earpiece on my left side crackles.
“Boss, the shipment is in. We’re rolling out in seven.”
That is Mikhail on the dock. I press the receiver.
“Copy.”
The earpiece on my right side comes alive a second later — Kirill’s voice.
“Yana. Status.”
“Nothing.” I keep my voice quiet. “No movement. The house has been still for two hours. Lights on the second floor, lights at the gate, nothing else.”
“You’re sure.”
“I’m sure. No cars in or out since I called in at nine. No guards rotating off the perimeter. No one has even opened a window.”
“Update me at the next mark.”
“Yes, Pakhan.”
The line goes quiet on his side.
I lower the radio and turn my head a fraction. The man at my left shoulder is one of the six Kirill assigned to me, Yegor, who has been with the family for nine years and whom I have worked with twice before. The other five are spread in a loose arc behind me, two at my back, two further along the ridge, one at the car, twenty meters down the slope.
“You’re certain this is the only exit,” I say to Yegor without looking at him.
“South gate, north gate, and the service road behind the east wing. South is here. North, we have covered from the other ridge. The service road has Pyotr and Lev on it.”
“And no other way out.”
“No, Yana. We mapped it twice.”
I nod. I press my eye back to the scope.
The mansion is calm. The kind of calm that, after thirty minutes of watching, starts to feel rehearsed.
