Chapter 62 Planning
Viktor’s POV-Continued
I set the phone down slowly and reached for the folder sitting open on my desk.
Inside were the notes I’d been collecting on Aleksander’s inner circle.
Every king surrounded himself with the same thing.
Protection.
Loyal men.
Trusted guards.
And weaknesses.
Aleksander had more loyal men than most.
But loyalty didn’t make them untouchable.
I flipped the first page.
Adam.
Head of security.
Head of technology.
If Aleksander was the brain of the operation, Adam was the nervous system running through the entire thing.
Cameras.
Security systems.
Encrypted communications.
Digital tracking.
Everything Aleksander owned ran through Adam’s hands first.
That made him dangerous.
Men like Adam didn’t carry guns into rooms and threaten people. They watched screens. They watched movements. They saw problems before the problems even knew they existed.
Which meant any move against Aleksander had to consider Adam first.
Because the second something looked wrong…
Adam would see it.
I flipped the page.
Dimitri.
Different kind of threat.
Dimitri wasn’t hired help.
He was family.
Adopted or not, Aleksander treated him like a brother.
That meant Dimitri didn’t question orders.
He executed them.
Men like Dimitri didn’t negotiate.
They ended problems.
Violently.
Which made him the blade in Aleksander’s hand.
The next page didn’t need notes.
Maxim Volkov.
Old power.
Old discipline.
The kind of man who built empires before men like Adam ever touched a computer.
And now he was in Atlanta.
Which meant Aleksander’s circle had grown tighter.
Stronger.
More dangerous.
I flipped to the final page.
Henry.
For a moment I simply stared at the name.
Henry had been one of Aleksander’s quieter men for years.
Reliable.
Capable.
The kind of guard who blended into the background until someone tried something stupid.
But now things were different.
Henry wasn’t just another guard anymore.
He was Maria’s guard.
Her shadow.
Which meant Aleksander trusted him enough to place him between the woman he cared about and the rest of the world.
That made him important.
Very important.
I leaned forward slightly, studying the notes.
Henry had military training.
Special forces.
Disciplined.
The kind of man who didn’t panic when bullets started flying.
Aleksander hadn’t picked him by accident.
If Maria was Aleksander’s weakness, Henry was the wall standing in front of it.
That complicated things.
I picked up the whiskey again and took a slow drink.
Aleksander’s house had effectively become a fortress.
Maxim inside.
Dimitri moving between operations.
Adam watching everything through cameras and systems.
Henry guarding Maria.
A tight circle.
Too tight for a direct strike.
But tight circles had another problem.
When pressure started building outside them…
they had fewer ways to move.
I reached for the pen again and wrote along the edge of the map.
Waste routes — pressure
Inspection delays
Driver interference
Small disruptions.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing that pointed directly at me.
Just enough to make Aleksander start shifting his attention away from home.
Because the second he focused on the city again…
something inside that house would loosen.
And that was when mistakes happened.
My eyes dropped back to Henry’s name.
Aleksander trusted him.
Which meant if anything happened to Maria…
Henry would blame himself.
Men like that carried guilt like a weapon pointed at their own heads.
Break the right piece at the right moment…
and suddenly the entire structure collapsed.
I tapped the pen slowly against the desk.
Russo would talk to the families.
The garbage routes would start slowing down.
Aleksander would feel it.
And when he did…
the real game would begin.
I lifted my glass slightly toward the city outside the window.
“To your empire, Volkov.”
Then I drank.
Because soon…
Atlanta was going to start cracking.
I slid the folder shut and pushed it toward the edge of the desk.
For a moment I just sat there, letting the silence settle.
Plans always looked clean on paper.
Reality rarely was.
Aleksander Volkov had built something impressive in this city. I would give him that much. Most men who came to Atlanta trying to carve out territory ended up buried somewhere south of the interstate.
Aleksander had done the opposite.
He’d taken ground.
Quietly.
Efficiently.
The way a surgeon removed a tumor.
That kind of thinking made him dangerous.
But it also made him predictable.
Men who built systems trusted those systems too much.
They believed structure meant safety.
They believed if the machines kept running, nothing could touch them.
I stood and walked slowly back to the map.
My finger traced one of the highways running south out of the city.
Garbage trucks.
Transfer stations.
Landfills.
Ugly businesses most people never thought about.
But they kept Atlanta alive.
And tonight those ugly businesses were about to become a problem.
Aleksander would feel it first in phone calls.
Drivers complaining.
Contracts suddenly delayed.
Companies asking why their pickups hadn’t happened.
Adam would start digging through the system trying to find the glitch.
Dimitri would start knocking on doors.
Maxim would start asking questions.
And Aleksander…
Aleksander would realize someone had started pushing back.
Not loudly.
Not violently.
Just enough to make him uncomfortable.
I smiled faintly.
Because uncomfortable men made mistakes.
And mistakes were where men like me made our money.
I picked up the pen again and wrote one final note on the map.
Start with the south routes.
Then I closed the folder completely.
Tomorrow the trucks would start having problems.
And Aleksander Volkov would finally realize something important.
Atlanta didn’t belong to him.
Not yet.
I stayed there a moment longer, looking down at the map like it might answer back.
Things kept rolling through my mind.
Aleksander Volkov had built something impressive.
Even I could admit that much.
Confidence created blind spots.
I tapped the pen against the map once, then twice.
The south routes would be the first pressure point.
If those trucks started missing pickups, the complaints would spread fast. Construction companies hated delays. Restaurants even more. Nothing made businessmen nervous like the smell of garbage piling up behind their buildings.
Aleksander would move quickly.
He always did.
But speed meant decisions.
And decisions made under pressure were rarely perfect.
That was where I intended to live for the next few weeks.
Right inside those imperfect decisions.
I turned the office lights off and headed for the door.
By morning the first trucks would already be running late.
And the first crack in Aleksander Volkov’s perfect system would finally appear.