“Rise.”
Dimitri does.
Slowly. Carefully. His legs tremble from hours of kneeling, his body streaked in dried blood, his face bruised, but he rises like a man who knows what it means to be seen by a god and spared.
And then, without ceremony, Aslanov pulls the Bratva ring off his own blood-slick finger.
He holds it for a moment. Then slips it into Dimitri’s hand, not onto his finger, into his palm. A gift. A mark. A warning to the world.
Loyalty isn’t inherited.
It’s earned in blood.
Chapter 76
Dead Center
Aslanov
The bodies are falling faster now. One by one. I give each of them a moment to understand what’s coming. I don’t rush. I don’t yell. They make it easy.
Because none of them fight.
They all beg.
One of them stumbles as he runs, tries to escape through a side corridor.
I shoot him in the back of the head.
He drops like a prayer cut short.
I turn to the next.
He tries to speak. I put a bullet in his knee first. He howls, then sobs. Then I silence him.
Not one of them earns a name.
Because names are for men.
And these? These were rats.
I see them for what they are now—quivering piles of silk and ego and fear. They lived behind thrones, behind whispers. Behind lies.
I drag them into the light. One by one. And I burn them.
Dimitri stands back.
He says nothing. Does nothing. He watches like a disciple witnessing divine wrath. He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t need to. He earned this silence. This seat. This survival.
I never speak their names.
I never grant them last words.
The Bratva is not being punished. It is being buried.
And I am the dirt.
Ten dead. Then twelve. Then thirteen.
