The moment Lionel Steenberg allowed himself to consider Boris as an option, he felt a wave of distaste roll through him. The former Wagner operative, a man of no principles beyond brute efficiency, was the antithesis of everything Steenberg had built his career upon. Steenberg prided himself on operating within the confines of the institutional world, wielding financial mechanisms like a scalpel. Boris was a sledgehammer, a blunt-force instrument meant for operations that left trails of blood and silence in their wake.

But this? This was outside the realm of central banks, financial regulators, and economic pressure campaigns. Pegged had burrowed itself deep into the informal networks of the manteros—networks that didn’t rely on institutional approval or corporate infrastructure. These were street-level, cash-based, trust-driven economies that operated with the fluid adaptability of a virus, replicating and embedding themselves beyond the reach of traditional enforcement.

Pegged was no longer a question of disrupting financial infrastructure—that battle had already been lost. The lifeblood of the system was now raw, physical liquidity, spreading organically through informal merchants, bypassing every conventional financial choke point.

The problem wasn’t crypto, wasn’t DeFi, wasn’t anything Steenberg had spent years mastering. It was boots-on-the-ground economics, controlled not by institutional players but by the kind of shadow networks that had long evaded Western financial oversight.

The manteros had become a hydra—cutting off their European circulation only accelerated their growth elsewhere. Pegged wasn’t just moving through West Africa anymore. It was pouring into Latin America, finding footholds in Southeast Asia, and even creating underground corridors in Eastern Europe and Russia.

And the lotteries. The goddamn lotteries. They weren’t speculative. They weren’t driven by hype or impulse. They were fueling the machine in ways Steenberg hadn’t anticipated. People weren’t gambling, they were opting into an economic system that actually worked for them. Each ticket purchased was stabilizing $PEG, reinforcing liquidity streams, and spreading governance participation via the PegDAO NFTs.

It was a nightmare.

No entity to pressure. No central exchange to shut down. No regulatory framework that could contain it.

That left him with one option. Shut down the lotteries at the source.

Steenberg’s fingers hovered over the encrypted communication terminal on his desk. He took a breath. He hated this. Hated that it had come to this.

There were other options, of course. But none that could be executed within a timeframe that mattered. Institutional pressure took time. But force? Force could be immediate.

Boris was the key.

If there was anyone who understood how to suffocate underground financial networks in Africa, it was Boris. Not because he was some brilliant strategist, but because he had burned through enough black-market supply chains to know exactly where the pressure points were.

His men had crushed war economies, taken over mining operations, manipulated currency flows in conflict zones. They weren’t bureaucrats; they were predators.

Steenberg grimaced at the thought. He had spent his entire life ensuring that the world remained ruled by institutions, by structure, by order. The idea of unleashing someone like Boris was a personal defeat.

But pragmatism demanded it.

He straightened his tie, then pressed the button.

“Schedule a meeting,” he said, voice flat.

His assistant on the other end hesitated for just a second—the name Boris carried weight, even in whispered conversations—before responding.

“Yes, sir.”

Steenberg exhaled slowly and sat back, staring at the ceiling.

For the first time since the beginning of this fight, he felt something resembling doubt creep in.

Not because he wasn’t sure about his decision.

But because he realized Pegged had forced him into a war he never wanted to fight.