[b]Center City, WA
2:15 AM[/b]

Tracy sat perfectly still in his chair while Sebastian Hyde fumed. Tracy's shirt and pants were spattered with blood, his ears still rang from the shootout. He'd just left the Flynn home where he'd called Hyde and came straight away to his office. The old man drummed his fingers on the desk and stared at Tracy over his glasses. 

"You let the whole situation get out of control, Tracy."

"Flynn acted on his own accord. He made it clear he was going to move forward, regardless if I helped or not."

Hyde sighed and lifted his glasses up to rub his eyes. In the reprieve from conversation, Tracy thought about what went down at the soccer field. Two Russians were gunned down by Flynn's men, while all three of them were killed and Flynn was gutshot. A private doctor was back at the big mansion fixing him up. He was certain Flynn was going to make it alive. His daughter Linda was shaken up, but not hurt. The same for little Anton Belyakov. Tracy shielded him during the worst of the shooting. Anton's father was unhurt in the shooting. The last he saw of the two Belyakov's, they were running away from the shootout with the lone Russian who made it out alive.

"It's a mess," said Tracy. "But both kids were returned safely. The only ones killed in the whole thing were Flynn and Belyakov's gorillas."

"The money?"

Tracy laid a stack of banded bills on the desk. Five twenty thousand dollar stacks. Hyde's eyes twinkled from behind his glasses.

"That's one hundred grand, Flynn's worth of my service."

Hyde took two of the stacks and tucked them in a drawer in his desk.

"The rest if for you. I give you the lion's share because you've got one last job to do."

Tracy raised an eyebrow while Hyde leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar. The old man took his sweet time inhaling the first puff. Tracy wanted to come across the table and shove that cigar down his throat.

"Belyakov and his ilk can't be allowed to live. They perpetrated an unsanctioned kidnapping in my town. Anybody goes behind my back, the cost is death. The rest of the shit stains in this city need to remember that. Send a message, Tracy."

Tracy took the remaining sixty thousand and stood. He walked out the office without another word.

--

Konstantin Belyakov died two weeks later. He and an associate of his sat parked at a red light when an unknown person on a motorcycle rode up and gunned them down with a submachine gun. This was the final act in a two-week bloodbath where Belyakov's organization was picked apart by unknown assassins. A firebombing on his deli killed six known Russian organized crime members. Three more were gunned down over the course of a night, while one man was strangled in a back alley near a strip club. Another was found after jumping off a roof. Several sources claimed he was pushed by a tall, blonde man with scars on his neck.

When Center City Police found Belyakov's body, they also found a message. Written on the hood of the car in the Russian's own blood were the words: DEATH TO KIDNAPPERS. The handful of Russian Organized Crime members in town quickly and quietly left Center City, returning to their West Coast hub of Los Angeles. The message sent to them had been read loud and clear. Center City was off limits. This was and would always be Sebastian Hyde's town.