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"If you have some time, stop by the hotel," John Wick quietly reminded him.
"Something wrong?" Henry asked. He had been trying to keep his distance from the Continental.
John nodded slightly.
"Yeah. Some things have come up recently. I think you should know about them."
With outsiders present, John couldn't speak too openly.
Henry simply nodded in acknowledgment before asking,
"Want to join us for dinner?"
John took a step back and smiled apologetically.
"I came here with Viggo. I should get back."
The "Viggo" John mentioned was naturally Viggo Tarasov, the head of the Tarasov Bratva—the Russian crime syndicate that John would eventually wipe out in John Wick.
In the first film, John Wick killed a total of seventy-seven people, with well over half belonging to the Tarasov organization. Judging purely from the numbers and the way they were portrayed, the gang looked like nothing more than a medium-sized street outfit.
Yet after arriving in New York, Henry had made some discreet inquiries through his own channels.
To his surprise, the Tarasov Bratva, with only forty or fifty actual members—and an even smaller core group—was already considered one of New York's top-tier criminal organizations.
Among Russian gangs, the Tarasovs unquestionably sat at the very top.
It was little wonder that someone like Viggo had connections to the High Table, eventually drawing John Wick into that world.
As an aside, Kingpin's name had once surfaced throughout the underworld after he usurped the criminal empire of the notorious Don Rigoletto, seemingly poised to unify New York's entire underworld.
In the end, however, Kingpin had been driven out through the combined efforts of the city's other crime syndicates.
As for where the future King of Crime was now—or what he was doing—Henry had no idea.
Thinking seriously about why he'd underestimated the Tarasov Bratva, Henry eventually reached a conclusion.
He'd been misled by Asian organized crime.
Particularly the portrayals of Hong Kong triads and Japanese yakuza.
More specifically, he'd only known the romanticized versions from movies and television before coming to this world.
It created the impression that unless a gang could casually assemble hundreds of men armed with machetes to wage street battles against rival organizations, they weren't worth mentioning.
But in much of Asia, where firearms were heavily restricted, machetes were already top-tier weapons.
Without overwhelming numbers, many gangs couldn't even defend their own territory, much less expand it.
America was different.
Guns were everywhere.
One man with a firearm could easily equal several men armed with blades.
Leaving aside the motorcycle gangs that rose after World War II, traditional American organized crime groups actually maintained surprisingly small core memberships.
The Sicilian Mafia family structure had once become the dominant model.
Since blood ties formed the backbone of the organization, membership couldn't simply snowball indefinitely.
Russian criminal organizations, meanwhile, were bound together by the thieves' code (vorovskoy zakon), fostering extraordinary loyalty and cohesion.
That also made it extremely difficult for outsiders to earn trust and join.
Leaving, meanwhile, was even harder.
Simply put, the difference between American and Asian gangs was like the difference between warfare in the age of firearms and warfare in the age of cold steel.
One relied primarily on weapons.
The other relied on numbers.
That was why a group with fewer than a hundred real members like the Tarasov Bratva was still regarded by law enforcement as a major criminal organization.
Furthermore, once trouble started, as long as the Tarasovs were willing to spend money and offer bounties, their ability to mobilize manpower became astonishing.
Street punks could instantly become hired muscle.
They couldn't organize like a professional army.
A gang was, at the end of the day, still little more than an unruly mob.
But in America...
There was certainly no shortage of guns.
So after learning that the boss of the Tarasov Bratva was also dining in the restaurant, Henry had no intention of asking John Wick to stay.
It was fine to cautiously befriend certain individuals.
But organized crime was best kept at arm's length.
Even if some interaction was unavoidable, involving oneself in another gang's internal affairs was never a wise decision.
People liked to romanticize gangsters as loyal brothers willing to take knives for one another.
The truth was that stabbing your own brothers in the back was far more common.
Their sweet words and apparent camaraderie weren't much different from corporate bosses manipulating employees with emotional blackmail.
When they stopped pretending...
You got something closer to the criminal scam compounds in Myanmar.
Anyone who thought hypocrites were villains while straightforward scoundrels were somehow admirable probably needed to look up Stockholm syndrome.
Both kinds were scum.
The safest approach was to stay away from all of them.
Wasn't that exactly what had happened with the Continental Hotel in Los Angeles?
The moment he'd become associated with it, the organization had clung to him like chewing gum on a shoe.
And now, even the New York branch had already sent someone to pass along a message asking him to stop by whenever he had time.
After seeing John Wick off, Henry naturally had no intention of dragging either Eternal into those messy affairs.
Instead, he chatted with them as if nothing had happened while waiting for the food.
Since Henry didn't elaborate, and the two Eternals adhered to their principle of noninterference, neither of them asked.
They focused instead on the dishes arriving one after another.
Russian cuisine paired wonderfully with vodka.
Even the well-traveled Eternals praised the combination without reservation.
After all, these culinary traditions had flourished during the very centuries when they had withdrawn from the outside world into seclusion, meaning they had never experienced them before.
Partway through the meal, the restaurant's sommelier arrived carrying an especially unusual bottle of wine.
Its label was written entirely in Russian.
It was a Russian red wine produced at a vineyard in the North Caucasus.
Most so-called "Russian wines" available on today's market were actually produced in California's Russian River Valley.
The label was Russian.
The wine was not.
During the Soviet era, however, the USSR had genuinely been one of the world's major wine-producing powers.
After its collapse, major wine-producing regions such as Moldova and Georgia became independent countries.
As a result, Russia's own wine production shrank to roughly twenty percent of what it had once been.
Political circumstances in the past, and limited production today, meant authentic Russian wines were rarely found on the American market.
It certainly wasn't because Russian wine tasted bad.
"This is compliments of Mr. John Wick," the sommelier said. "Would you like me to open it?"
Henry's eyes lit up with curiosity.
He nodded.
With practiced efficiency, the sommelier removed the cork, inspected it for leakage or cork taint, then poured a small sample into his own glass for tasting.
There was no need to think of this as someone else drinking your expensive wine.
Unlike hard liquor, wine could easily spoil if stored improperly.
The sommelier's tasting served as quality control, ensuring that guests never received a flawed bottle.
If any problem was detected at this stage, the restaurant would immediately replace it with a new one.
Much like exchanging a defective product under warranty.
Once Henry, as the host of the evening, had also confirmed the wine's quality, the sommelier began pouring.
First for Thena, the lady at the table.
Then for Gilgamesh, the guest.
Finally, for Henry himself.
After everyone had been served, the bottle was left on the table, and the sommelier quietly withdrew from the private room.
Surrounded by excellent food and fine wine, the two Eternals happily recounted the experiences of their travels over the past several years.
Most of what they described wasn't unfamiliar to Henry.
What fascinated him was hearing how beings who had witnessed seven thousand years of history viewed the breathtaking transformation of nations over the past one or two centuries.
Especially considering that Thena and Gilgamesh had spent several hundred years living in seclusion.
Returning to human society after such a long absence truly gave them the feeling of waking into an entirely different world.
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