Prologue
I was born to fight. It is in my DNA, a natural born soldier.
I wasn’t born a monster.
Who is?
Outside of fairy tales and the reassuring stories we tell ourselves, most monsters are made … by us. By society.
The same could be said of me.
I was born a boy. An ordinary boy, but maybe one with a hidden propensity for violence.
For mayhem.
For ruthlessness.
That little boy grew, as most do, unless tragedy strikes, into a man. Once a man, the state took my violence and honed it, trained it, and I became a solider. One might say they tamed me in some ways, tamed my anger and channeled it. Violence tamed, corralled, is a powerful weapon.
The wars I fought were horrifying and bloody, and still, after all I saw and did in war, I did not become a monster.
No, the monster came later.
Unlike the monsters in our collective stories and fairy tales, I didn’t lose control of myself and change shape, a terrible warning to all and sundry to stay away.
No, my demons hide on the inside.
My outside? Wealthy. Powerful. Successful.
Names matter. Words matter. Labels matter.
Those who don’t know me label me as a soldier, warrior, hero and later, businessman. Venture capitalist. Philanthropist.
Those who know me better might use different terms. Fighter. Oligarch. Ruthless. Shark. I like that one a lot. “You’re a shark,” my rival had said as I tore his empire down and sold off the bits I didn’t want. Once a soldier, always a soldier. For what is war if not organized theft? And what is business if not war?
All these labels fit. A great deal of my business is legit; a good portion … is not. No one cares. Money is legitimacy in this fucked up world. And I wear my wealth like a suit of armor, a disguise, and one that opens so many doors.
I have residences in Moscow, London, Paris, and New York. Businessmen come to me for advice, and I once got an invite to a meeting of world leaders, which I turned down rudely enough to not get anymore. I don’t need to hear what the latest bullshit policy is on sustainable capitalism. Capitalism, too, is war.
And like any good soldier, I enjoy the spoils of battle. Supermodels party with me on the yachts I holiday on, whilst politician lurk in corners and let me line their pockets for influence in the affairs of whole nations. I own the sort of toys most men can only dream of, and I could drown myself in beautiful women every night and never run short of offers. I drink the best alcohol, smoke the best cigars, and have more gold in the vaults than a small nation.
Yet through it all, through all I do, beats one thing—my overwhelming need for revenge. Revenge on the people who breathed the monster within to life.
In this fairy tale I am not the tragic beast yearning for love to make me a man again, but I’m not the handsome prince either.
I am the motherfucking king of my fiefdom. On the one hand, a legitimate businessman, but on the other, a Bratva Pakhan, and in the Bratva, the Pakhan is king.
Yet my kingdom is too small, and kings, as soldiers, love nothing more than the spoils of war and the conquering of new lands.
It suits me that conquering new lands will hasten my revenge.
It won’t be easy. It might get bloody. But the best wars always are.
The best revenge too.
This king is on the march, this soldier is armed, and in this coming war his enemies will tremble before him.
Chapter One
The boy
Russia in the 1990s.
“Konstantin, come and eat your stew.”
Mother calls me, and I run to the door of our home.
It is simple, a country home in a vast rural landscape a hundred and thirty miles from Moscow, a fact which I learned in school last week.
I reach the wooden door, with its peeling paint, and push it open.
“Sit, sit,” Mother says, fussing over me as I enter the kitchen. I do as she says and smile at Father as I take my seat.
My grandmother is already eating, slurping away at the stew, and I look away from her as a piece of beetroot dribbles down her face. I know it’s wrong because she’s elderly and can’t help it, but sometimes she makes me feel sick with the way she slurps and dribbles.
She’s very old, only has one eye, and with her long white hair, sometimes us children used to imagine she was a witch.
Grandma would play along and pretend to cast spells on us. Now she doesn’t. Now she mostly sits and hums and stares at nothing. I think she’s lost her mind, or most of it.
Some weeks we struggle to feed ourselves. Not this week, though, because Father shot a deer.
Mother serves me some warm bread to go with the soup as it is thin and watery. Thanks to father though, tonight we will eat venison stew.
Her rounded belly bumps my shoulder as she leans over me. I have a brother or sister in there. I don’t know how I feel about it. Neither does Father. I know because I heard him talking about it the other night when he’d had too much vodka. He was talking to his friend from the village, Yanis. Father said that with the collapse of communism things were meant to get better, but instead, no one could eat. The government didn’t care, and instead of being like America, we were more like Germany after the war. He was angry, bitter. Said we’d been defeated without a shot being fired.
Soon, he said, there’ll be another mouth to feed.
I eat my soup and try not to worry. Sometimes I worry a lot. About Mother mostly. Father can be horrible to her. He shouts at her, talks to her like she’s stupid, and sometimes, he even hits her. I’m getting bigger every month now, and one day I will hit him right back.
After lunch, I ask if I can go out again. Mother says yes, and Father ignores me. I think he’d be happy if I didn’t come back, then there’d only be the new baby to feed when it comes.
Thankful to be out of the stifling atmosphere in our house, I breathe in the spring air. It’s still cold enough to hurt your lungs a little during the first few breaths, but not cold enough to freeze your piss like in January.
Picking up a stick, I head up the hill to meet my friends. We’re playing soldiers in the woods, and this stick will be my gun.
At thirteen, Father says I should be done with childish things like this, but life is shit here, and there’s not money for much else. Maybe one of my friends will have smuggled some vodka and we can drink too, warm ourselves up.
As I cross the field, I see a lonely figure, a girl in a long wool skirt, and a coat far too big for her. Yulia. She’s the best friend I have, but today, I can’t spend time with her. She used to play with us, but in the last year or two some of the boys started to get too handsy with her, and it scares her. To be honest, it scares me. I don’t want anyone to hurt her. Yulia and me … we get on. We like the same books, the same films. We both love Silence of the Lambs and watch it repeatedly on a video machine her father got when he did some work for some rich guy, freaking ourselves out and scaring one another.
In many ways, she’s the person I’m closest to in this world, but today, I need to get rid of some of the aggression boiling inside me. Not watch a movie and talk about my dreams; dreams I know will never come true. I wave at Yulia, but then turn away and head to the trees.
I reach the edge of the woods and listen. Voices drift to me from my right, and I head in that direction. Reaching the group of boys after a few minutes, my stomach sinks when I see Igor there. He’s fifteen and huge, and he’s a bully. Mostly, he ignores me, but he picks on my best friend, Maxim.