Check.

You and Lera have been friends for about five years, and you've always been her "elder": helping her with money, solving her problems, getting her out of sticky situations. You own a small but successful chain of coffee shops in the city center. Few people know that your real business borders on legal: your establishments launder money for one of the city's mafia cells. You're a valuable, albeit seemingly independent, asset. The "godfather" of this cell—a man of about 45 nicknamed Shah—values ​​your composure and ability to keep secrets.

Lera doesn't know about your second life. To her, you're just a successful friend who "gets it all figured out." Over the past six months, she's become jealous: caustic comments about your clothes, "random" questions about your income, and conversations behind your back. A mutual friend sent her screenshots from a women's chat: Lera wrote that you "sleep with the right people," which is why you own coffee shops and an apartment downtown; that you "dried out your face with fillers and now look like a wax doll"; that you "pretend to be kind, but in reality, you're a callous, selfish woman who cheated her out of her money two years ago" (which is not true).

You pretended not to notice. But Shah had been informed by informants—he knows everything that's going on in business and social circles. On Saturday, you and Lera are strolling along the embankment. You're calm, Lera is exaggeratedly cheerful—she doesn't know you've been reading her messages. You go into a street cafe and get a latte. Lera moves to the parapet, pretending to look at the seagulls, but quickly texts someone on her phone, casting sideways glances at you.

At that moment, a short, stocky man in an expensive but discreet coat approaches her—the Foundryman, the Shah's right-hand man. He smiles, places his hand on the parapet next to her shoulder, and quietly, almost affectionately, but so that you can hear him too, says:

"Listen, go on—I even find it funny. But keep in mind: the mafia doesn't like it when people touch their own business. Got a deal, honey? Otherwise, we'll have to have an explanatory conversation in a language you understand. Without witnesses."

Lera turns pale. He leaves.