Chapter 74The Devil Sends His Regards
The Devil Sends His Regards
Aslanov
The door closes behind me with the soft finality of a coffin lid.
No one breathes.
The silence isn’t respectful. It’s not reverent.
It’s horrified.
Fifteen men—all blood-soaked, power-hungry, legacy-fed wolves—freeze at the sight of me like children staring into the open mouth of a beast they thought had died long ago.
I walk slow. Not because I have to, but because I want them to feel every second of what’s coming. The weight of footsteps echoing across stone is heavier than any bullet. I cross the threshold like I own the room.
Because I do.
The air is thick, choked with sweat, cigar smoke, and something deeper: fear. The kind that clings to skin. That seeps into your bloodstream like cold oil. That smells like rot and realization.
I’ve been called many things in this world.
Pakhan . Executioner. Ghost. Diable .
But in this moment, I am none of them.
I am what they never wanted to see again.
The man they tried to erase. The name they wiped from ledgers, from histories, from whispered threats.
I walk past Isabella. She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. Her presence is fire, mine is famine. I brush her shoulder, just barely, just enough to tether us.
Lorenzo doesn’t speak. He doesn’t blink.
His hands are still near the table, his knuckles white around the wood, as if it might save him from me.
His lips part like he wants to say my name, but even that’s been burned out of him.
He looks at me like a man staring into the mouth of hell and realizing it’s not fire that waits.
It’s me.
The Vor v Zakone—the ones who betrayed me, betrayed Dominik, betrayed the code—look like they are about to shit their expensive pants.
Their eyes shift like trapped animals. Their suits, tailored, expensive, stitched with old power, look too tight now, like the clothes themselves want to flee their flesh.
I step to the center of the room.
One long, slow breath fills my chest.
I can smell their fear.
It’s real.
It smells like sweat and piss and sour breath and something ancient, the kind of fear that belongs to prey who just remembered what it means to be hunted.
And then I raise my gun.
Three clean shots.
The first one catches the man who mocked her legs. Right between the eyes. His head jerks back like a puppet with its strings cut.
The second bullet takes the one who called her fuck-me heels. His body slumps instantly, blood trailing down his cheek like a weeping god.
The third? The one who compared her to her mother?
I shot him through the throat.
He gurgles. Falls sideways. Chokes on his own blood as the air fills with a wet, sick sound.
Three dead.
Three warnings.
Still, I haven’t spoken.
No one else moves.
The rest of the room, these men who lead dynasties, who control cities, who have made murder a language, look at me like they’re seeing death for the first time. Not because they haven’t seen it before.
But because now it’s personal.
Because now it has a face.
Mine.
Lorenzo’s lip trembles.
The rest of the Vor v Zakone sit like they’ve already been sentenced.
Because they have.
And they know it.
I scan their faces, now twelve monsters who thought they ruled something eternal.
They don’t look like rulers now.
They look like animals waiting for slaughter.
I let the silence breathe for a few more seconds. I want it to rot in their chests. I want it to settle behind their ribs and shake loose their arrogance.