Novel

Written in 2025

This story begins in a maximum security prison, in a cold consultation room. Observing a forensic psychiatrist carry out a required evaluation was my role as a guest at the event. At the other end of the bolted steel table was a man who, four years into a life sentence, was serving time for directing a huge port smuggling ring. Many times, the heads of criminal networks look like middle-level actuaries. Drywall and orthodontists are things that trouble them. This clinical observation was the seed from which Beno Gabai grew.

Story no. 13 / Novel

Prodigy

How far is it between who you are and who you almost became?

He is five foot four and he has never raised his voice.

Beno Gabai shatters a man’s knee with a steel pipe at ten at night and confirms the order for his daughter’s chocolate cake two minutes later. He controls a European smuggling pipeline through eleven prepaid Nokias and a strict code of silence. He operates invisibly.

But when a nameless extortionist calls a secure line and casually mentions the peppercorn his seven-year-old daughter used for a school science project, the distance between Beno’s criminal empire and his kitchen table drops to zero.

He has four days before the police breach his front door.

Built on clinical operational details and calculated betrayals, Prodigy is a psychological thriller stripped to its framework. The engine is the grinding pressure of a father determining the exact cost of refusing to run.

if he'd been born in Ramat Aviv, he could have been Prime Minister.
Prodigy