Page 212 of Inevitable Endings
And I fire.
Dead center.
Chapter 77
Us
Isabella
It’s been one week.
One week since the massacre. Since the floor bled history. Since the last screams died and I pulled the trigger that closed the chapter of everything I was forced to be.
And now?
We’re all back in the clinic.
The one where it started. Where plans were drawn in whispers and scars were tended with shaking hands and coffee. But it feels different now. It feels lived in. Not like a battlefield. Like a place people survived through. Built something from. Maybe even something like peace.
We’re all gathered around the table in the main room. Ada’s seated at the far end, legs crossed, eyes sharp. Sawyer is perched on the edge of the couch with a half-drained bottle of something expensive in his hand, like he needs to keep his fingers busy. Dominik stands near the window. Still silent. Always watching. Dimitri beside him now, the last loyal man left.
And Aslanov, he’s not at the head of the table anymore.
He’s standing to the side.
Still dressed in black, still cold-blooded as ever, but there’s something... different.
Ada leans back, folding her arms. She eyes him like she’s not sure whether to shoot him or offer him a job.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she mutters. “You’re a psychopath.”
He gives her the barest smile.
Then he says it.
“I’m standing down.”
The words don’t echo. They land like something that’s not supposed to be spoken.
I stare at him, words struggling to form in the chaos spinning through my chest. The air in the room shifts, charged now, thick with something I can’t name. It’s like every molecule is waiting for someone, anyone, to break the silence. My hands are cold against the edge of the table, knuckles white with pressure, and yet I can’t feel a damn thing. He said it so casually. Like it was nothing. Like you could juststand downfrom being thePakhanof the Bratva, like you’re clocking out of a bad shift. My mouth opens, and I hear myself speak before I can think better of it.
“Can you just… stop?” I ask, my voice quieter than I expect, laced with disbelief. “Just like that? Quit being an international mobster?”
I sound breathless.
Aslanov doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t snap back or smirk or deliver one of those sharp, cruel lines he used to throw like daggers. He just stands there, back straight, face unreadable, as if he’s already decided. As if this is done.
“Yeah,” he says. Just that. Like it’s simple. “I’m going on retirement early.”
A beat passes. He tilts his head slightly, his gaze locking with mine. “I made that decision the second I got back and lay in the clinic. With Dominik. It was already over the moment I woke up and felt something other than only vengeance inside me.”
I don’t know what I expect him to say next. I don’t know if I want him to take it back or defend it or explain how you just step away from a world that doesn’t let anyone leave unless they’re six feet under. The Bratva doesn’t do resignations. There’s noexit interview. Just blood or silence.
My chest tightens, like there’s a fist squeezing my lungs from the inside. I whisper the question, not because I don’t know the answer, but because I need to hear him say it. I need to know what could be powerful enough to rip a man like him away from the throne he built with his bare, bloodied hands.
“Why?” I ask.
He turns fully now, and for a heartbeat, there’s no warlord in his eyes. No cold-blooded strategist. Just a man.
