Page 204 of Inevitable Endings
“You heard it,” he says, voice low, controlled, lethal. “You all heard it.”
He spreads his arms slightly, like a preacher about to deliver afinal sermon.
“The brotherhood is dead.”
No one responds.
“You sat here for years,” he says, circling the table. “Pretending we shared a code. Pretending blood mattered. Pretending you were building something for the future. But when you thought the Devil was dead…”
He stops.
“…you sold your souls to a fucking coward.”
Eyes flick to Lorenzo, still curled near the far wall, cradling his hand, his face pale with blood loss and terror. He is an absolute coward.
“You didn’t lose your way,” Aslanov continues. “You abandoned it. The moment I fell, you started carving pieces off the corpse and claiming you’d always owned it.”
He looks down the row, face by face. Every man flinches. No one speaks.
“From this night forward,” he says, softer now, but sharper, “there is no council. There is no code. There is no family.”
He looks toward Dimitri, who still kneels in silence.
“The old Bratva is dead.”
The words hang in the air like smoke off a funeral pyre.
He walks slowly, circling the table, gun hanging loose in one hand, his other covered in someone else’s blood. His boots leave red prints behind. Every step sounds like judgment.
He pauses beside one of the living Vor, an older man, trembling, silent, face pale like chalk. Aslanov doesn’t even look at him.
“You want a new code?” he says softly, to the room.
“Fine.”
He turns toward the center. Faces all of them. Bloodstained. Untouched. Invincible.
“There is no more brotherhood. No morepakhan. No morecounsel. No votes. No second chances.”
He lifts his gun and points it to the ceiling.
“There is only obedience. Or extinction.”
No one breathes.
“You speak my name without loyalty?”
“You disappear.”
“You fail to kneel when summoned?”
“You choke on your own teeth.”
“You betray the blood that walks beside me?”
He fires into the corpse of Zakharov, still slumped over. The bullet snaps bone. No one flinches anymore.
“You burn.”
