44. Roman
CHAPTER 44
Roman
It is a victory that defied the odds and that many would say was impossible.
But it is a victory that we achieve by the end of the violent, bloody night.
Katerina was brave enough to risk her life, stabbing the pakhan in the stomach. I was on them at once. I speared into him before he could even react to the knife sticking out of him and pull the trigger of his gun. Tackling him to the ground, I quickly knocked the gun from his grip and held him down.
Katerina was shoved aside in the struggle. She fell hard to the ground several feet away.
It was over.
I had the pakhan where I wanted him and no one was around to protect him. Not anyone in the bratva. Not the security guards from the Midnight Society.
It was just the two of us. I gripped his throat and glared into his eyes. Instant bitterness burned in them as he reached the same conclusion—he was a dead man.
But I didn’t kill in the moment.
That would be too easy for a man who needed to suffer .
My men fled as SWAT officials from the city flooded the hotel. Salvatore Mancino’s men managed the same. We left the scene a bloody mess, the hotel littered with dead bodies on the floor.
The pakhan came with us. In shackles, we shoved him in the trunk of our Hummer and took him back to the base of operations.
He was thrown into the room we set aside for occasions like these. Moments where we needed to make someone pay.
He knows what’s coming when I walk into the room and it’s just the two of us.
“Zver,” he says from where he’s chained, “I wondered when you would come.”
I grin at him. “I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting.”
“You pulled off a win. Pozdravleniya? * .”
“Yes, except I’m sure you preferred for it to turn out differently.”
He shrugs. “I always knew you were the formidable one. Your father could never be you. Though I was surprised he would do what he did.”
“You underestimated him,” I say. “Just like you underestimated me.”
“No, I never underestimated you. I knew I had to get to you some other way.”
“You created distrust between me and the sovietnik.”
“Leonid was happy to help.”
“How did that work out for him?” I ask.
“About as well as it seems like it will work out for me.”
His dark humor is no surprise.
The pakhan has always been a serious man. He’s realistic and practical. He’s aware where this is heading.
I pick up a knife and turn it over in the palm of my hand.
There’re so many different ways I can make him suffer. I can keep him alive for hours, cutting him into pieces. I can beat him with my bare hands or with something like a metal baseball bat. Guns are always an option.
Fire. Poison. Siccing some animals on him to eat him alive.
But as I approach him, I already know how I will kill the pakhan.
I’ll keep things simple. Make him look into my eyes as I strip him of his power and let it truly sink in he’s lost. I’m the better man than he is. I’m the new pakhan.
My hand stretches out and wraps around his throat, showing how easily I can dominate him. His eyes widen by a millimeter, recognition flashing in them.
“You are going to die like this,” I growl, squeezing at his windpipe. “Looking me in the eyes as I watch the life seep from yours.”
His hands come up to mine as if in hopes he’ll pry them away, but he it’s futile. He’s a dead man and he knows it.
The air leaves him with every passing second. His lungs try to function anyway, his sputters coming the harder I squeeze. The muscles in his throat tighten and contract against the palm of my hand. The rest of his body goes into panic mode, jerking like it recognizes what’s happening.
It doesn’t understand why it’s being deprived. His brain is being shortchanged of the oxygen it needs to survive.
But the light remains in his eyes to his dying breath.
His gaze stuck on my face, I grin down at him and then decide to go for a final surprise. Added suffering for what he’s done. The knife I’d grabbed gets plunged into his chest. Blood seeps immediately as his heart’s punctured with a gory wet sound.
I twist it in deeper and watch as his mouth drops in shocked pain.
He has no air left to express himself. No means of communicating what he’s feeling.
Squeezing his throat tighter, I say, “Vashe vremya proshlo. Naslazhdaytes’ adom? * .”
He finally gives into death a few seconds later, slumping in the chair we’ve strapped him down in. I pluck the knife from deep inside his chest and hold it up, admiring each syrupy drop of blood.
This will go in my office as a trophy. The knife I used to slice up the heart of the fucking pakhan as I took control of his empire.
“I want him pulverized into nothing,” I tell Oleg when he returns to the room. “Turn him into dust. Make him disappear. There’s no greater punishment for someone so arrogant.”
* ? Pozdravleniya - Congratulations
* ? Vashe vremya proshlo. Naslazhdaytes’ adom - your time is up. Enjoy hell.