Page 211 of Inevitable Endings

---

His voice scrapes through the silence like rusted metal.

I don’t answer. I don’t even blink.

But Aslanov does. His voice is right behind me. Calm. Final.

“Was what worth it?”

Lorenzo lifts his head with eyes wild and broken and still arrogant.

“Losing everything,” he snarls. “The Bratva. Your throne. Your name. All for her.”

The silence deepens.

“Absolutely.”

Lorenzo protests, he tries to get up from the blood-soakedground.

But the second he moves—

Three guns click into position.

Sawyer is the first to step forward, calm and cold, his weapon leveled at Lorenzo’s skull like it’s just another day at work. Malik moves next, slow and sure, his rifle trained on Lorenzo’s chest, breath steady, finger resting lightly against the trigger. And then Dimitri, the last survivor of the old code, lifts his gun with the precision of a man who knows this kill will mean something.

Three barrels. One body. No escape.

Lorenzo recoils like the word itself struck him.

And that’s when I know it’s over, all of it. I lift my chin. Aslanov waits, because I’m the one who decides how this ends.

And I do.

My voice cuts through the stillness like a blade honed on memory.

“Kill him.”

The moment I say it, I feel him behind me, closer than breath, heat blooming across my back like protection.

Then I feel his arms.

He wraps them around me slowly, carefully, with a reverence that doesn’t belong in a place like this. His chest brushes against my spine. His breath ghosts over my hair, his chin resting on top of my head.

His gun slides into my hands.

But he doesn’t let go.

He wraps his fingers over mine, both of us holding it now, just like in the woods, when he taught me how to shoot. When he braced my arms. Now I don’t need teaching.

We raise the gun together.

His hands wrapped over mine. His body is steady against my back. And his voice, low, warm, dark, whispers against my ear:

“Pull the trigger,solnyshko.”

And that’s when Lorenzo spits.

One last burst of venom through cracked lips.

“You’re still nothing, Isabella. A whore in a new crown.”

---