Page 50 of Koroleva

To everyone else, my friend and I didn't associate any more than necessary to maintain cordiality in our territories. To our men, we were going to hold a tripartite meeting.

Cheng, us, and our trusted men. We agreed that for safety, we could only bring one person each.

What we didn’t expect was that it would be an ambush to eliminate the competition in one fell swoop.

The Chino didn't even show up.

It was past midnight when Yuri, our men, and I entered a kind of drying shed on the outskirts of Málaga.

"This smells fishy to me," I told my friend. The night was too quiet, and I had a bad feeling.

"That's because of the ducks," he pointed out, nodding at the animals hanging there. I looked at them with disgust.

"I'm not talking about that, and you know it," I muttered. I scanned the surroundings, looking around anxiously. "Cheng should have been here by now."

"Maybe his night got complicated. Have you seen the whorehouses he's opened? My guys say they're the bomb—you go for a haircut, and you get a blowjob; you go for a massage, and you get a blowjob; you get a pedicure, and..."

"I get it," I grumbled, my gaze piercing above our heads.

The place had two levels; it was a kind of industrial warehouse.

Cheng mentioned that we wouldn't have any problems accessing it, that he'd leave the door open and we'd meet at the back. We were about to get there, our footsteps echoing on the asphalt floor.

Yuri laughed.

"What’s up? Don't you like getting a good blowjob anymore?" He was still on that topic.

"It's not that. You seem too calm, and we barely know this guy, except for his reputation."

"The Chinese avoid conflict, they tend to be men of honor, and you've been very tense lately, maybe we should visit one of Cheng's barbershops and ask for a full lowdown service to relax you." I glanced at him sideways and offered a grunt. "Come on, R, relax, no one in their right mind would set up an ambush against us, they'd be at a loss. The Chino wants to negotiate. You and I would do the same if we were eyeing a piece of the pie from two guys with our reputation. Nobody is foolish enough to go against the Bratva and the 'Ndrangheta at the same time."

"The world is full of motivated fools," I told him. Yuri started laughing.

"If Cheng were a motivated fool, he wouldn't be increasingly riding the crest of the wave."

I heard a noise and nervously scanned the area. We were surrounded by food machinery. Our men also became alert, searching for the source of the sound.

I gestured with my head for Aleksa to move to the right; he was my best man, a former hitman for a Colombian cartel before I recruited him. Yuri's man waited for his boss to give an order that never came.

"What?" he asked me when I fixed my gaze on him insistently.

"Didn't you hear that?"

"The creak? This place is old, come on, man, you're becoming a bit paranoid," he joked, slapping my back.

"And you're too carefree to be the future Vor v zakone. Many people want to see you dead."

"You're wrong, they'd kill my father first, I don't have the title yet."

"But you will, and that puts you in the crosshairs, just like me."

"Times have changed, R, people don’t just kill anymore."

"Things haven’t changed that much, and our deaths would never be just because." It pissed me off that Yuri thought he was invincible and didn't take the necessary precautions. Another creak sounded, and I tensed up.

"It might just be that they have just arrived," he sighed. My warning look made it clear that I didn't appreciate the attitude he was adopting.

"Alright, alright, fine. Basile, take a walk so my girl can relax..." Yuri loved to joke about our relationship. Or maybe it wasn't much of a joke.

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