Page 9 of Koroleva

What I needed to focus on was tying up everything and strategizing. Everything else was secondary. There was no time to lose.

I picked up my phone and typed the name of our star drug.

I scrolled through the news of recent events and looked for one of the first by date.

My brother's face appeared, the one I was looking for, his first unpaid interview, where his face beamed with happiness.

Mentium was the legacy of his effort. He put a lot of work into it. In the discovery of a new psychopharmaceutical much more addictive than morphine or diazepam.

You couldn't get off it after having tried it, and the side effects were like any other drug of similar characteristics, nothing noteworthy, until now.

The exceptional aspect of Mentium lay in its effectiveness. You didn't have to wait fifteen days for the neurotransmitters to catch fire. Mentium's effects were noticeable from the first dose. Several studies concluded that within a week of taking the first pill, patients felt as excited as a seven-year-old about to receive birthday gifts. We had in our hands the revolution of psychiatry, much like Prozac had been years ago.

Yuri was ecstatic for having discovered the Holy Grail for the illness of the 21st century. Sales skyrocketed, and its high price didn't deter everyone wanting to try it. They bought it as if it were candy bars in the supermarket.

We no longer needed to pay doctors, pharmacies, or grease the palms of prestigious medical journals to publish positive reports about it. It sold itself. Its effectiveness spread like wildfire, and the final touch was added by a prestigious TikToker with millions of followers, who claimed that our little golden pill saved her life.

The press dubbed it the miracle drug that pulled the famously known @Anne_Shein out of depression.

Tecnosalute, our main competitor, had a product with similar characteristics, but it didn’t work as well as Yuri’s design. And as you might have guessed, the company belonged to the Capuletos.

My father couldn’t stand the Italian, who came from the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. They controlled 80% of cocaine distribution in Europe.

They gained business capability through a holding mindset that allowed them to acquire a multitude of businesses, hotels, and properties all along the Spanish coast. They had shell companies and frontmen to camouflage the drug money within the legal economy.

I massaged my temple, overwhelmed. I never told my brother, but in part, I blamed him for the Capuletos' interest in the pharmaceutical sector.

He and Massimo's eldest son had attended the same university. I think they met on campus; the Italian was two years older than Yuri. They hit it off and one thing led to another. They became "friends."

Ha! I laugh at friendships like that.

Tecnosalute was established before our company, only they lacked my brother's prodigious mind.

When Yuri finished his studies, he tried to get our father and R's, as he called him, to smooth things over, aiming to unite forces, even talking about a merger. According to him, times were changing and the Chinese were entering the market

forcefully. My father was outraged.

The Russian mafia did not collaborate with any other mafia, no matter if they were Italian, Chinese, or from hell itself. We only answered to ourselves and, of course, to Putin. As my father used to say, "tights are for women."

My father flatly forbade his "friendship" with R, warning him of the Capuletos' bad intentions. They wanted information for personal gain; they were using him. My brother could not trust someone from the 'Ndrangheta.

"Courage and loyalty," that was their motto, but only towards their own. We were the competition, and they wanted to eliminate us.

In 2007, the Calabrian mafia was accused of cold-bloodedly killing six Italians marked as belonging to other mafia bands. They were brutal, finishing them off next to a restaurant in Duisburg.

If they killed their own compatriots, what wouldn't they do to Russians?

I sided with my father; it was the first time I argued with Yuri and the last. We never spoke again in our house about the possibility of joining forces with the Capuletos.

Until now.

Pharmaceuticals, the third-largest sector of the global economy after arms and drug trafficking, moved the world, exerting pressure on legislators who promoted or blocked laws in their favor. They directly pressured the World Trade Organization to enforce their exclusivity rights on essential medicines that could save millions of lives yet remained accessible only to those who could afford them. That's why we chose this sector, given my brother's passion for chemistry.

"We've arrived," announced Andrey, in front of the Anantara Villa Padierna Palace Benahavís Marbella Resort. The place where I was staying and where, in an hour and a half, I would become a Capuleto.

5

Preparing the bride

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