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Jasper side-eyes me. We can both guess what that means.
“She’s setting up her own shop?” Jasper says.
“Possibly.”
“With who?”
“Maybe Ilsa …”
“You think the Markovs are cutting us out? Poaching our chef?”
“I don’t know.”
I don’t know if Neve Markov is a part of this, or only Ilsa. It’s no secret there’s been friction between the sisters since the wedding—Ilsa might be disgruntled enough to strike out on her own.
Sabrina and Ilsa won’t get far alone. They’ll need money and assistance.
“We’re so fucked,” Andrei says, looking around the wreckage with a level of awe bordering on amusement. Sabrina has put us in a hell of a jam.
We owe drugs to Avenir Veniamin for his nightclubs, to Eban Franko for his strip clubs, to the half dozen brothels we promisedEliksir,and to our street-dealers. To the Markovs as well, though they just dropped to the bottom of my priority list.
“What are we gonna do?” Jasper murmurs.
“Can you make it yourself?” I ask Hakim. “If we get you another lab …”
“I can makeMolniya.We hadn’t finalized the recipes forEliksirandOpus.”
He means Sabrina hadn’t finalized them. I don’t know if Hakim can do it on his own.
Molniyais our bread-and-butter—it’s the one that matters most. But we still need somewhere to make it, and a new supplier for raw materials.
It’s going to cost me dearly to rebuy all this equipment. Sabrina’s doing this on purpose—putting the squeeze on me. Turning the screws to prove her point that I should have kept a larger cash reserve. She knows exactly where I’m scraped thin. She knows everything about our business.
I can’t stop staring around at the damage. This is Sabrina’s rage, directed at me. Destroying everything we built.
The inside of the brewery looks like the interior chambers of a heart—burned, blackened, ruined …
This is how much I hurt her.
Now she’s hurting me in return.
* * *
Back at the house,Chief, Andrei, Hakim, Vlad, and Jasper argue in the kitchen, a babble of conflicting ideas and warnings.
“We need a supplier—”
“We could go back to Kovalenko—”
“Fuck no—”
“The Chechens could sell to us, temporarily—”
“It’s a month at least until we’re up and running again—”
“Not if we—”
“That’s not possible—”
