Maksim: A Dark Mafia Romance (Akimov Bratva), Nicole Fox [love letters to the dead txt] 📗

Guns. There’s must be at least fifty stacked up. The sheer scale and audacity of it are equally thrilling and threatening. It’s an overarching sensation concerning his whole operation.

I turn to him, a thousand questions running through my head, but the one that pops out isn’t what I expect.

“How does he know who I am?” I ask, indicating with my head to the old man.

“Charles likes to know everything about everyone,” Maksim says. “Is that all you wanted to know?”

“You know that I want to know everything,” I say.

“Yes. That’s why I’m showing you everything.”

“No, it’s not,” I say. “You have some alternative motive. Why on earth would you store guns in a bookstore?”

“The public thinks the store is using it for storage—and we are,” he says.

“This is also where everything started for me,” Maksim says, shutting the metal container. “After a few years of living on the streets, Charles took notice of me and let me stay here at night—in this very room. When the city tried to take the store from him, I helped him keep it, in exchange for my old bedroom.”

“Maksim is being too modest. All I did was give him some space to stay out of the cold. He saved my bookstore.” Charles grins. “I sometimes wonder what I would have gotten if I’d provided him with a mattress.”

“I’d love to hear more about his beginnings,” I tell Charles.

“Oh, there’s not much to say,” Charles says. “I knew he’d do what he needed to do from the moment I saw him steal Crazy Ben’s coat.”

One thing is clear: Maksim Akimov has developed a remarkable set of skills that have fueled his rise to becoming the pre-eminent force in the city’s criminal underground. The breadth and sophistication of his operations inspires awe and fear in equal measure. Yet it is his personal story that is perhaps most impressive. From humble orphan to ruthless titan, his trajectory defies all logic, just as much as it defies the ceaseless attempts of law enforcement to restrain his ever-expanding empire. One could spend a lifetime wondering what it will take to bring him down—or one could simply wait for the oats he has sown to be reaped. A man unconstrained by morality will inevitably self-destruct. In the end, it is only our morals that separate us from the beasts. And this much is certain: Maksim Akimov is a beast. The time has come to cull him from the herd.

That’s how the article will end.

That’s how this whole thing will end.

As I try to get back into the passenger side of his truck, the door won’t open. Maksim crosses around the front of the truck, his keys still tightly in his hand.

I should be afraid for my life. He’s locked me out right after showing me every secret of the Bratva. I should have seen this coming. I was so consumed in my drive to write this article, I didn’t see the only reason he’d let me witness it all—I wouldn’t be alive to tell anyone.

But I’m not afraid. Maybe because of the inevitability. Maybe because the truth does set you free.

He leans against the door, staring straight at me.

“You have everything to take me down now,” he says. “But if you do, you won’t just be hurting me. You’ll also be hurting all the people you met today. Not just the Bratva men, but all the employees in my legitimate businesses that depend on me to pay them, so they can feed their families. And I know what you’re thinking—someone else will take my place. When it comes to my legal businesses, that’s not true. Their jobs will be eliminated. But you’d be right about the Bratva. Your article would take me out and likely most of my lieutenants as well. The Bratva would be too badly maimed to recover. We’d be replaced. It’s too large of an area for your father to take full control over, so the others would flood in as well—Dos Gatillos, the Polish mob, and all those petty little street gangs that make the Bratva look like the royal family. You’d be allowing these mafias and gangs to come in.

“First, there would be an all-out war over territory. Multiple mass shootings as each group tried to get the upper hand by eliminating the others. After several months, one or two of them would win out. I’d put my money on Dos Gatillos—they have the ammunition and they don’t care about killing civilians. They’d saturate the streets with drugs. They’d keep everyone under their thumb by killing off anyone who doesn’t go along with their racketeering. Several of the gangs traffic women and they’d love the new supply offered by the new territory.

“You must have done your research into the Bratva since I’ve taken over. We don’t deal in that filth. We don’t involve the innocent. You’re an investigative journalist. You know that if you kill a tyrant, it doesn’t mean that every citizen goes on to live in complete bliss. Someone is always waiting in the background, waiting to take over. There is a power vacuum that is waiting to be filled. I need you to think about that. Get in the truck.”

He unlocks the doors. I get inside, more panicked than I was when I thought he was going to kill me.

Everything he said is true.

My job is to tell the world the truth in the hope that it will trigger change and benefit society. But this story may not necessarily have that effect. I’d like to convince myself that Maksim was exaggerating, but I can see everything he said happening.

He drives us north. I look out at the streets, imagining another Mafia or gang taking over the area. I’ve seen Dos Gatillos and the Polish mob’s territory. Everyone in those areas lives with a defeated acceptance. The addicts roam the streets, but they don’t have to roam far to find a dealer.