Chapter 72A Godless Return
A Godless Return
Aslanov
Yesterday, Ada and Karpov made history bleed.
They timed it to the hour, the minute. Uploaded through ghost servers and back-channel proxies that lead nowhere, but echo everywhere. What they unleashed wasn’t just a leak; it was a virus. A purge.
One document. One sealed baptismal certificate. One forensic confirmation.
Isabella: daughter of the dead king.
The underworld flinched.
I watched it spread in silence, sitting back as the empire of lies Lorenzo built began to rot from within. His men read her name, saw the signature of Salvatore, saw the dates and blood matches and DNA confirmation. They saw what he hid. What he gave away like she was nothing more than a liability.
And now?
Now they know she was the blood rightful to a throne he never owned.
Loyalty shattered. The foundation cracked. The whispers were immediate and vicious.
He’s not the chosen heir. He’s not the most direct blood.
He’s a thief.
And in this world, you don’t survive long after stealing from the legacy of a name carved in bodies and blood.
Men rose against him before the day was done. Gambino soldiers breaking rank. Old dons calling in favors. Rival families paused their feuds just to watch this unfold. Even the Russians, my world, felt the aftershock. Because if a Gambino can fall, anyone can.
And now?
It’s evening.
The eve of extinction.
I’m in the basement beneath the old monastery where it ends.
Stone walls. Sweat-damp air. It smells like old blood and older prayers.
This is where the meeting will happen. Where Lorenzo will stand before the Vor v Zakone and try to convince them he’s still king.
That nothing’s changed. That they should support him in killing the last Russian pakhan : Dominik.
That he should be king of both families.
He has no idea what’s coming.
Dominik sits silently across from me, typing into a tablet, monitoring real-time feeds.
Malik is on my right. His hands move with ghostlike calm, assembling a custom rifle from black steel and carbon fiber, each part clicking into place with the soft finality of a blade sliding into bone.
Sawyer is pacing.
Vest unstrapped, sleeves rolled, glass of whiskey dangling from his mouth. He’s electric, coiled tension and silent rage. He doesn’t like waiting. But he’ll wait. For her. He is here for her.
And two more loyalists, men I once bled beside, who vanished when I did, stand silent at the door, watching. Ready.
Above us?
The city waits.
Snipers are stationed on every rooftop. Every upper window. Every unseen opening above us holds a breathless man with a finger resting on a hair trigger. They won’t miss. Malik made sure of it.
Ten more men, armed to the bone thanks to Sawyer, circle the perimeter. Hidden in parked vans, old shops, and back alley service doors. At my signal, they’ll swarm. One word, and Brighton Beach becomes a graveyard.
Ada and Karpov are stationed in the surveillance van two blocks east. Ada’s already rerouted the building’s power grid, looping every internal camera feed on a 15-second delay.
She’s watching everything in real time through drones.
She’s our eyes. If one of Lorenzo’s men moves, she’ll know before they do.
She’ll film the entire scene too, perhaps for use to send heat into the underworld.
Karpov is monitoring transmissions. Calls, text pings, heat signatures. Nothing leaves that building. Not a cry. Not a whisper.
The chessboard is set. These rats will burn.
And me?
I look like a polished monster.
Black tactical pants, combat boots laced tight.
A knife sheathed behind each thigh. A pistol at my hip, another at the small of my back.
Two more in a harness across my chest. My shirt underneath is black, sleeves rolled to the elbows, revealing the full language of my skin.
Ink runs down both arms; old symbols, Bratva marks, prison codes.
My heartbeat is calm. Cold. Precise.
I look like death risen for the final time.
And that’s exactly the point.
My face is clean-shaven. My hair is slicked back, not a strand out of place. I look controlled. Cold. Timeless.
Not like a man returning.
Like a Devil reclaiming his throne.
Isabella and I planned everything last night. Carefully. Purposefully.
She’ll walk into the meeting first. Alone.
Dressed in black and silence. Hair loose, wild like smoke curling from the mouth of a gun. A woman carved from myth, bloodlines, and something far more dangerous— choice.
She’ll wear a bulletproof vest beneath. Fitted. Custom-cut to her frame. Lightweight, but reinforced. Not to shield her femininity, to protect the last thing in this world that still feels like salvation.
Strapped to her thigh beneath the slit of her dress: a pistol. Sleek. Loaded. Hers.
She asked for it without blinking.
I gave it to her without hesitation.
Because she’s not walking in there to be pitied.
She’s walking in to disturb the peace they thought they controlled. He thought he controlled.
Her presence alone will be the strike.
Her name, her face, the unmistakable fire in her gaze, she is proof. That Lorenzo lied. That he took what wasn’t his. That he hid blood that outranked his own.
And while she walks...
I will ensure no one lays a hand on her.
The snipers upstairs will have every finger in the room locked in their sights.
Sawyer’s stationed at the exit, watching her back through an earpiece linked to Ada.
Karpov has eyes on the comms, any movement outside the room, any breath that shifts the tension, we’ll hear it before it happens.
I will stand just beyond the chamber doors.
One breath away.
One second behind.
The moment someone twitches wrong—
The Devil will walk in.
And he will not walk out until every man who looked at her the wrong way is dead.
She thinks this is a role.
But this isn’t a performance.
This is war.
And she’s the queen entering first, while I prepare to burn the board.
Sawyer is here because he wouldn’t take no for an answer. When I told him to stay back, he just said:
“If you think I’m letting you walk her into that pit without me on the edge, I’ll shoot you in the leg and carry you there myself.”
I could respect that.
He’s not here for the Bratva.
He’s here for her.
That’s a kind of loyalty I understand.
I appreciate him, he has been there for her while I couldn’t be.
He’ll be at the south entrance, guarding the exit point. He’ll be the first to move if anything goes sideways. I told him he’d only move on my signal. He told me to go fuck myself and that he’d know before I did if something went wrong.
Malik and Sawyer go back farther than I expected.
Military pasts. Different blood, same war.
Malik in Istanbul, a cold sniper, low-profile ghost. The kind you forget is in the room until someone’s throat opens.
Sawyer in Afghanistan. A medic with blood on his boots and steady hands. They met during a multinational op; siege extraction, held out for 72 hours in a blown-out compound with six men and no food. They kept each other breathing. Then never spoke again.
Until now.
Some threads don’t break.
I light a cigarette with steady hands.
Not because I need it.
Because I always do before a massacre.
I drag it slow. Exhale slower. The smoke coils through the basement like a specter, like something ancient preparing to feed.
There are Russian methods. Techniques born in frozen cells and carried in whispers.
Torture designed not to kill, but to preserve pain.
Keep it alive in the bones. They peel men apart without ever spilling blood.
Make you scream without sound. You walk out of those rooms, but you leave something behind. And you never get it back.
Lorenzo won’t get that mercy.
I ash the cigarette on the concrete floor. Press it out with my boot. Watch it die.
I will take his body apart piece by piece, but I will leave his soul awake . That’s the difference. That’s the punishment.
I will whisper things in his ear; old things, things I learned in black cells beneath Moscow, in prisons that don’t appear on maps. Places where no one screams, because screaming was taken from them. Where men are kept alive only to be taught how to die slowly.
And I listened.
I remembered.
I made every unholy technique my own.
There are things you can do to a man with wire, salt, and silence.
Things that don’t break bones—but faith .
He won’t bleed.
He’ll leak memory. Thought. Sanity.
He’ll forget who he is.
And right before the end, I’ll remind him.
I’ll show him her face. Isabella’s. And I’ll whisper her name as I make my final cut, just deep enough that he never forgets that he lost to her.
Not to me.
And then, I will move on.
To the rats, to whom I thought were my Russian brothers.
To the Vor v Zakone who turned their back on their own blood. The ones who held secret meetings behind closed doors and carved up the Bratva throne like it was theirs to take.
They will die slower.
Because betrayal from the inside isn’t just disloyalty.
It’s heresy .
And I am the priest.
I will kill them like brothers who forgot my face.
They won’t just die.
They will be disavowed.
Erased from the code.
Removed from the blood.
They will be the cautionary tale Bratva children whisper about in the dark—how the dead man came back, not for justice, but for balance .
Because I am not returning to the council.
I am coming to dismantle it.
To remind them that rats don’t get trials.
They get buried.
And when I’m done, when Lorenzo’s breath is a gurgle in his own throat, when the Vor v Zakone are bones in the dust, I will let everyone else kneel in the blood I’ve spilled.
Kneel because they’ll know nothing else. Kneel not to worship—to survive. And then... Diable will be spoken again. Whispered from lips that once swore I was dead. The name they tried to erase from Bratva history will be carved back into its spine, with fear .
And after this?
The rest will fall in line.
The loyalists still hidden, the half-men watching from shadows, the infiltrators who thought they could fade into ranks without consequence, they’ll be dealt with.
The balance will be restored.