The annoying thing about continuity moving on and contradicting itself as it does in Alex Rider (book series) is that I'm sitting here feeling like a conspiracy theorist for being like 'I don't think the Cray job was in any way Scorpia related'.
Like, obviously Scorpia is the plot hook for the next book so maybe that's why it's not mentioned more in Eagle Strike itself, but in Scorpia there's still no mention of the Damian Cray thing being a Scorpia operation. Mrs Rothman says she 'heard about Yassen' and mentions Cray casually as one of the people Alex killed. There's every implication that this is the first they come into contact with Alex, barring the John Rider connection, and that Nile almost killed him simply for sneaking into the Widow's Palace and asking questions. Even at the end of Scorpia, Mrs Rothman wants him dead for what John did, not any of Alex's own previous interference. MI6 in the same book talk about how Scorpia hasn't been very active recently, and at no point link Yassen to Scorpia's recent actions.
In fact, it's not until Snakehead when the Sayle job gets retconned to have been linked to Scorpia with them supplying the virus. The implication in Stormbreaker itself seems to point towards the Chinese government in a 'we can't say this outright but' kind of way, although fair on Ahorz for trying to retcon that kind of xenophobic plot.
But basically, I don't think Yassen was actually working for Scorpia when he was helping Cray in the books, and I don't think there's anything to suggest he would need to worry about Scorpia when thinking about his retirement plans either. He certainly doesn't when we see his POV in the book itself, and he considers killing Cray multiple times and washing his hands off the job, with no indication that he would have to answer to someone else for his actions.
