Chapter 77Us
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 just stand down from being the Pakhan of 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 no exit 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.
His voice is low, quiet, but it cuts straight through me.
“Because I finally have something I don’t want to lose.”
For the first time in what feels like forever, I smile. A real one.
Sawyer snorts into his glass. “Well, you certainly earned your retirement. The entire continent’s going to piss itself once they hear what you did.”
Aslanov shrugs. “Let them hear it. I’m done. The name’s buried.”
I look at him and I know he means it.
He didn’t just burn it all down.
He made sure no one could build on top of the ashes.
Dominik steps forward. Quiet. Measured. Still not speaking with a voice, but the weight of him does all the talking.
Aslanov looks at him once. And nods.
That’s all it takes.
Dominik will take over. His way. His version of what the Bratva should be. Not smoke and blood and legend, but something else. Something sharper, smarter.
Discipline. Order. Control.
And Dimitri will be at his side.
Loyalty doesn’t need a crown. Just a direction.
Aslanov leans back against the wall now. Watching. Just watching. And I move to stand beside him.
The future doesn’t look clean. It doesn’t look bright. But it looks possible.
The Gambino family will be watched closely. A cousin of Salvatore’s—one with no taste for war but enough memory to know never to cross the Bratva again—will hold what’s left of that legacy in place.
And over time?
The balance will return.
Not peace. But something better.
A silence that doesn’t scream. A future that doesn’t bleed.
‘‘I told you you were my endgame.’’
I look up at him, searching.
‘‘Are you sure you’re quitting?’’ I ask.
He nods once.
‘‘I am. I want to try and make those dreams we talked about real. All of them. No blood. No night gone. Just us .’’
Across the room, Karpov paces the space, pale as ever. This was maybe a little too much for an old man, even for a man like him.
Aslanov raises an eyebrow, grinning.
‘‘You look like you’re going into your coffin ten years earlier than planned after all this.’’
Karpov grumbles as he pours himself a drink. ‘‘Make that twenty years, you complete unhinged psychopath.’’
Aslanov and I both laugh because we both know he is right.
Aslanov crosses the room to Dimitri and claps a hand on his shoulder.
‘‘You stayed loyal. Thank you. I hope you can give that to Dominik now.’’
Dimitri nods, firm.
‘‘I will.’’
Sawyer stands beside me now, one arm crossed.
‘‘You better take good care of her,’’ he warns.
Aslanov doesn’t flinch.
‘‘I wouldn’t dare not to.’’
Ada walks to me last. She doesn’t say anything at first. Just pulls me into a hug.
Tight.
As the tension finally thins and the laughter around the table turns lighter, Ada lets go of me and leans an elbow on the back of her chair and glances sideways at Dominik. He doesn’t look at her, but there’s a small twitch at the corner of his mouth. A secret, quiet acknowledgment.
“I guess this is the part where I say something embarrassing,” she says, dry as ever.
Dominik raises a brow. Just once.
I know what’s about to come.
Ada rolls her eyes. “Fine. We’ve been seeing each other. Quietly. And… I want to keep seeing where it goes.”
There’s a pause.
Then I burst out laughing.
“Ada,” I grin, “you do know he’s a criminal, right?”
She smirks. “And you’re dating an ex-Bratva heir who burned down half the continent. So.”
Fair.
Across the room, Aslanov chuckles low under his breath. But when his eyes find mine, the humor softens into something else.
Something real.
Everyone chatters with one another, Karpov congratulating Ada and Dominik like their lost uncle. Aslanov strides over to me, caging me in between his arms and the wall. His face is serious, focused.
“I’m done picking up a gun, unless it’s to protect you. I won’t live in lies. I won’t disappear into shadows. Not from you.”
He swallows, the words weighted and bare.
“I want to be honest. For you. As much as I know how to be. You can have all of me, Isabella. The man. The monster. The wreckage. If you’ll take it.”
I stare at him.
For a long time.
Because I’ve seen this man with blood on his hands and ghosts in his eyes. I’ve seen him gut a legacy and make it bleed. I’ve seen the monster, held him when he cried.
And he’s offering me not just his love, but the ruins of who he was. The broken crown. The ash-drenched name. The hollowed-out parts he never thought anyone would touch and not flinch.
And I want it.
All of it.
I reach up and touch his face—just a light press of my fingertips to his jaw. He leans into it like he’s starving.
“I don’t need clean,” I whisper. “I don’t need easy. I need you . ”
He exhales like he’s just been forgiven for something no one else even saw.
His forehead rests against mine.
“I don’t know how to be soft,” he murmurs.
“Good,” I whisper back. “I don’t want soft. I want honest.”
He kisses me; not rushed, not devouring.
Just real.
Warm. Steady.
Behind us, I can hear the others laughing. Karpov is cracking another dry insult. Ada is teasing Dominik. Sawyer is saying something smug. It’s chaos, in a way. Loud. Disjointed.
I’m not alone anymore, the thought hits me.
Not the way I used to be. Not the kind of alone that makes the walls echo and the dark feel like it’s pressing in. Not the kind of alone where silence becomes a cage and love feels like a foreign language whispered too far away to learn.
No.
I have something now.
I have them.
This chaos, this misfit orchestra of violence and loyalty and scars, we’re not perfect. We’re stitched together with pain and stitched back together with loyalty.
But it’s life.
My life.
And I realize, I’m not a ghost anymore.