Chapter 75Welcome to the Slaughterhouse
Welcome to the Slaughterhouse
Isabella
It’s been over an hour since the first shots rang out. The Vor v Zakone, those who once sat like kings around the table, now hang like failed prayers. Some lie broken on the floor, holes where eyes used to be. Others have had parts removed. Others, worse.
And in the center of it all is him.
Not Aslanov.
Not the man who kissed me and cried in front of my eyes, held me, and loves me.
Diable .
That’s who he is now.
He walks through the aftermath with boots streaked in blood, sleeves rolled, arms exposed, tattoos slick and stained. His eyes aren’t angry, they’re empty. And that’s what makes it worse.
This isn’t rage.
This is discipline.
He doesn’t yell. He doesn’t lose control. He commands the room like he’s death in human form, cold, logical, inevitable .
I stand against the wall, untouched but not unmoved.
I can’t look away, I can’t escape this scene, this place. Even when I want to.
I share a look with Sawyer, who blocks the exit, he too feels it, fear. I can see it behind the mask he is wearing, straight in his eyes. Dominik doesn’t engage in the scene, it’s not his place.
There’s a man tied to a chair at the front now; Maxim Lazovsky.
The rat. He’s shaking. His hair matted to his skull, blood running from his mouth.
One eye swollen shut. One hand already missing a finger.
He looks like he’s been screaming, but here, screaming means nothing.
Not in this room. Not in front of him. This is Russian torture, which me and Ada read about in folders, saw on the news.
But this time we see it with our own eyes.
I hear Ada’s breath stutter in my earpiece.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispers.
That’s all.
Nothing else.
Aslanov circles him slowly.
No expression. No sound.
Then he stops. Tilts his head slightly.
“Who gave the order?” he asks.
His voice is a whisper. But it hits like a hammer.
Lazovsky doesn’t answer. His mouth opens, but closes again, like whatever he was about to say died in the back of his throat.
So Aslanov moves again.
Walks to the table.
Picks up something I hadn’t noticed.
A pair of pliers.
He turns them in his hand like he’s considering the weight.
Then he crouches down in front of Lazovsky, face calm, voice soft.
“You broke the code. You turned Zakharov. You turned Yegorov. You held meetings behind my cousin’s back. You plotted to kill him, your pakhan. You declared me dead.”
Lazovsky’s chest shakes. “Please—”
“No.”
The pliers move.
There’s a snap.
A scream.
A tooth hits the floor.
I flinch.
No one else does.
Zakharov is already dead, a bullet between his eyes and his pants soaked in piss. Yegorov is next to him, his throat torn open like he talked back to God.
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
And then there’s Dimitri.
He kneels to the side, quiet, hands behind his back, blood on his face but alive. Loyal. The only one who didn’t turn. His eyes stay down, unmoving.
And Aslanov doesn’t touch him.
Because loyalty is remembered in this room.
Everything else?
Is erased.
Another tooth.
Another scream.
Blood sprays. The air is thick with the scent of iron and death and smoke.
Someone else, farther back, one of the remaining Vor, breaks.
He drops to his knees, hands up, sobbing.
“Please—please, I didn’t know. I didn’t agree to anything, I swear to you—Ivanov, please—”
Aslanov turns slowly.
And he smiles.
But it’s not kind.
It’s not even cruel.
It’s empty.
He walks toward the begging man, gun raised.
The man throws himself forward, grabs Aslanov’s boot like it might save him.
“Mercy! Mercy—”
“There’s no brotherhood,” Aslanov continues.
He puts the gun against the man’s temple.
“I fucking hate rats.”
He pulls the trigger.
The sound is deafening.
The man falls sideways, body twitching, blood pooling like confession.
And Aslanov doesn’t flinch.
He just turns back to Lazovsky, crouching again, pliers raised.
His voice drops lower, into Russian now. I only catch the shape of it, the venom behind the syllables.
“Krysy ne umirayut bыstro. Oni gniyut.”
Rats don’t die quickly. They rot.
I cover my mouth, my breath short. Because this man? This isn’t my Aslanov, this is the most prominent crime boss of the underworld, of the Bratva.
He crouches again in front of Lazovsky, slow, unhurried, almost tender. Like this is a conversation over dinner instead of one surrounded by corpses and blood-slicked tile. His hand doesn’t shake. His eyes don’t narrow. There’s no satisfaction in his face.
The pliers hang loosely in one hand, red-stained and patient.
“Who was involved?” he asks, voice low, almost gentle. “And why?”
Lazovsky’s head jerks once, then again, as if he’s trying to shake something out of his skull. His lips tremble. Blood spills down his chin when he opens his mouth.
He doesn’t answer.
Aslanov tilts his head.
“You have maybe ten seconds before I start on your ribs.”
Lazovsky lets out a sharp, wet breath.
Then finally, he cracks.
“It was… it was us. Zakharov. Yegorov. Me. And more. Others were listening, waiting to see if it worked. We met three times in private, no records, no guards, no younger men. Lorenzo said you were finished. Dead. That Dominik was unfit. That it was time to Westernize. Cut the old blood out.”
Aslanov nods once, as if that confirms something he already knew.
Then:
“And why you?”
“Why did you betray me?”
The question stills the room.
Lazovsky doesn’t look at him. His eyes dart, around the corpses, around the faces still alive.
Then finally, his head lifts, barely.
“Because I was tired of being afraid of you.”
Silence, Aslanov just stares at him for a beat, unblinking.
Then he slowly stands. Straightens his spine. Wipes blood from the pliers onto Lazovsky’s shoulder.
His voice drops to a level I feel in my chest.
“Good.”
“You should’ve stayed that way.”
He raises the gun, but then he doesn’t fire.
He turns.
And now he faces the rest of the table.
The remaining Vor v Zakone.
The ones still alive.
He steps slowly to the center again, boots echoing over blood and bone.
“You heard it,” he says, voice low, controlled, lethal. “You all heard it.”
He spreads his arms slightly, like a preacher about to deliver a final sermon.
“The brotherhood is dead.”
No one responds.
“You sat here for years,” he says, circling the table. “Pretending we shared a code. Pretending blood mattered. Pretending you were building something for the future. But when you thought the Devil was dead…”
He stops.
“…you sold your souls to a fucking coward.”
Eyes flick to Lorenzo, still curled near the far wall, cradling his hand, his face pale with blood loss and terror. He is an absolute coward.
“You didn’t lose your way,” Aslanov continues. “You abandoned it. The moment I fell, you started carving pieces off the corpse and claiming you’d always owned it.”
He looks down the row, face by face. Every man flinches. No one speaks.
“From this night forward,” he says, softer now, but sharper, “there is no council. There is no code. There is no family.”
He looks toward Dimitri, who still kneels in silence.
“The old Bratva is dead.”
The words hang in the air like smoke off a funeral pyre.
He walks slowly, circling the table, gun hanging loose in one hand, his other covered in someone else’s blood. His boots leave red prints behind. Every step sounds like judgment.
He pauses beside one of the living Vor, an older man, trembling, silent, face pale like chalk. Aslanov doesn’t even look at him.
“You want a new code?” he says softly, to the room.
“Fine.”
He turns toward the center. Faces all of them. Bloodstained. Untouched. Invincible.
“There is no more brotherhood. No more pakhan . No more counsel. No votes. No second chances.”
He lifts his gun and points it to the ceiling.
“There is only obedience. Or extinction.”
No one breathes.
“You speak my name without loyalty?”
“You disappear.”
“You fail to kneel when summoned?”
“You choke on your own teeth.”
“You betray the blood that walks beside me?”
He fires into the corpse of Zakharov, still slumped over. The bullet snaps bone. No one flinches anymore.
“You burn.”
He turns, stepping closer to the table, closer to a man now visibly crying, shoulders shaking, eyes glassy.
“There will be no trials. No whispers. No threats.”
He slams his gun down onto the polished oak.
“From this night forward, I don’t run the Bratva. I end it.”
He points at the remaining men, one by one. Naming them. Not aloud. Just with his eyes.
Each man stiffens when Aslanov’s stare lands on him. Like a sword hovering above the neck. A curse choosing its vessel.
Then, finally, he crouches beside Lazovsky again.
The man’s breathing is thin now. Weak. Foaming.
“You chose Lorenzo.”
He whispers it like a confession.
“Over me.”
Lazovsky tries to lift his head, but he can’t.
“You followed a coward because I frightened you.”
“You didn’t just betray me.”
Lazovsky makes a gurgling sound, foam thick in his throat, lips unable to move. But Aslanov isn’t looking for a response. He’s laying the last stone in this burial.
“You let him use you.”
He stands.
Turns back to the table, what’s left of it.
“Lorenzo didn’t just want the old blood cut out.”
His voice hardens, sharpens like a scalpel being turned over in gloved hands.
“He didn’t want reform. He didn’t want strategy.”
He steps over a body, slow, boots slick.
“He wanted to own you. You brainless fucks. He needed you to give him a claim, you all fell for it. While he got all his information from me, locked away in a bunker to rot.”
Someone swallows loudly.
“He didn’t just want the brotherhood ended.”
“He wanted to dismantle it himself, and piss on the bones.”
He turns his head slowly, gaze locking on Lorenzo, still curled near the far wall like a dying dog, breathing shallow, watching his empire burn around him.
“But you failed.”
Then he turns to Dimitri, still kneeling. Still untouched.
Points at him.
“Rise.”
Dimitri does.
Slowly. Carefully. His legs tremble from hours of kneeling, his body streaked in dried blood, his face bruised, but he rises like a man who knows what it means to be seen by a god and spared.
And then, without ceremony, Aslanov pulls the Bratva ring off his own blood-slick finger.
He holds it for a moment. Then slips it into Dimitri’s hand, not onto his finger, into his palm. A gift. A mark. A warning to the world.
Loyalty isn’t inherited.
It’s earned in blood.