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“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.