Lev exhaled smoke. “Same as always. Nobody owns the mobtop. You just rent it from me.”
Lev zoomed in. The ghost drone was military-grade. Silent Eagle model. Only one man in Verensk could afford that: Viktor the Accountant, the soft-handed broker who’d recently decided he wanted to be king.
He killed the line, poured a vodka, and watched the sirens race toward Viktor’s burning chandelier. Above it all, his own drone—a silent, unmarked thing—hovered and watched. Because the man who controls the air above the crime owns the crime itself.
Lev leaned back, lit a cigarette, and did what he did best. He didn’t shoot the drone down. He didn’t alert the cops. He redirected .
Lev Tarasov didn’t need a gun. He had gravity.