They talked about life, rules, and the direction their world was heading. Skala could see that everything was changing fast. The uneasy eighties were beginning, and the old order was cracking.
Younger criminals wanted quick money and easy power. The state no longer seemed to care about any rules at all. The old authorities were dying off or sitting in prison. “We need men like you now,” Skala said on the last day.
“Men who still remember what this was supposed to mean. Tell me straight—are you ready for that step?” Boris knew exactly what he meant.
He meant the highest initiation, the chance to become a fully crowned authority. It meant giving his life over completely to the code—no ordinary family, no legal work, no authority except what came from that world.
“I’m ready,” Boris said without hesitation. The ceremony took place in 1983, in a safe apartment in the center of a major city.
Ten of the most influential criminal authorities of the time gathered there. Skala led the ceremony himself. Boris stood in the middle of the room while the older men sat around him.
One by one they asked difficult questions, testing his knowledge of the code and whether he was truly ready to take the oath. Boris answered clearly, without stumbling.
He had been preparing for that moment almost his entire conscious life. When the last question had been asked, Skala rose slowly. “From this day on, you are one of us,” he said.
“Your name in this life is now Severyanin—the Northerner. You’ve taken on responsibility for the brotherhood, for the common fund, and for the younger men. If you ever break this oath, you answer with your life. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Boris said calmly.
He was thirty years old. His real life—the dangerous one—was just beginning. He had no way of knowing that thirty-five years later the same road would end with him standing beside a filthy bucket under the contempt of young thugs who didn’t even know his name. After that ceremony, something in Boris changed for good…
