Page 7 of Bears Not Included

“I see you’re ready for some real entertainment now, da?” he asks, smiling with an ugly evil glint. “Oh, before we begin, congratulate me. I’m the new owner of The Chryus.”

Well, what do you know?

The Tulip Group is a franchise of casinos all around the world. Eight hundred and three casinos in total, to be precise. They’ve been independent and squeaky clean since their inception. Righteously powerful, a massive juxtaposition given their type of business, and also completely incorruptible, which was a shame since they’d make the ultimate money laundering partner.

But they refused our offers. All done legitimately, by the way.

Until now, that is.

We’ve been in negotiations with them for over a year and are now just days away from taking over their organization.

The positions of their casinos around the world are near-perfect, but to make it perfect, money laundering with all the stars aligned would be the acquisition of The Chryus, the small casino in Chania that would link up the northern hemisphere of our future operations.

It’s not so much that Kirill Yenin was able to buy The Chryus; it’s why he bought it and why he felt the need to tell us he bought it.

Again, our expressions don’t change when Yenin delivers what he thinks is his ace card. It’s a non-issue because we can go around this, but we want to know how he knows about our plans, which is what keeps us here.

I turn my head to the left at the sound of a woman screaming. My gaze flickers nonchalantly over a man twisting her arm while using his other hand to rip off her clothes until she is naked, and then he puts a brown bag over her head and face.

The audience around me lulls and Yenin can’t sit still in his seat.

“You ain’t never going to see this kind of entertainment, brothers,” he says, wiping the white powder off his nose. “I’m going to give you the best fucking show in the world. And then you’re going to see that I’m not fucking around. I’m better than my dead father because I have all the fucking power in the fucking world.”

He expects us to say something again. Or at least shift in our seats and nervously glance at each other at the thought of our livelihood being at stake at the hands of a man with a .38 special, a bowl of grenades beside him, and a tattoo of a dolphin on his chest, visible now that all the buttons of his shirt are undone.

We don’t even blink, but we’re curious on the inside about this man now.

He waits a few seconds longer to see if we’ll say something. We leave him wholly disappointed and a little frazzled. Again.

We’ve never been at war with the Russians before, simply because Boris Yenin knew better than to cross us. He offered friendship and loyalty, and we accepted it. It’s a pity he died without naming his successor. I’m sure he would have chosen wisely.

Of his eight sons, only three vied for the seat at the helm of the Yenin Bratva, and Kirill killed them both.

Yenin brings my attention back to him from the woman with the brown bag over her face. He screams at everyone to shut up and sit down before he uses his blunt, filthy thumb nail, and presses a red button from a remote he pulled out of his pocket.

The sound of steel gates sliding open echoes around the room. I hear the roar first before I see the animal emerge from the glass enclosure. Yes, a glass-encased arena now disgraces the center of the grand hall of the home of the Walter-Smith family.

Ironically, it’s a bear.

My gaze tilts lazily around the room. Half of Yenin’s guests scramble up on their seats, ready to bolt. The others take out their guns.

“Comrades, relax; this is for the entertainment of our esteemed guests,” he says, nodding to us. “Let us all enjoy the spectacle.” He swaggers toward the encasement, rapping his gun on the glass and taunting the animal. But nothing he does so much as results in a squeak out of the bear, and his embarrassment shows.

He wants to put a bullet in the bear’s head for embarrassing him, but that would mean he’d need to get into the enclosure with the beast.

“Bring out the bitch!” he shouts as he makes his way back to his seat next to us.

A door on the other side of the enclosure opens. A henchman shoves the naked woman, with the bag over her face, into the glass-enclosed arena before it’s bolted shut again.

There’s an eeriness in the stunned silence that follows. Yenin shouts at her to remove the brown bag from her head.

She does so slowly. And when she faces the bear staring her down on the other side of the enclosure, no sound comes from her mouth, despite the scream I see pouring out of her eyes.

She turns around and bangs her fists against the glass. Tears and snot are leaking down her face now as she begs Yenin to let her out. She spews how much she loves him. How she would do anything for him. She’ll be his good girl, she promises.

She turns at the sound of a low, deathly growl from behind her. She doesn’t stand a chance.

By now, Yenin can barely contain himself. His gaze sprints between us and the girl in the cage with the bear. He doesn’t want to miss a thing—not what’s happening in the cage or what’s going on with our faces. He so desperately wants a reaction that he looks manic. Well, more manic than usual.

---