Ruslan has power. I am power.
“You swore your blood belonged to this family, and that you understood what the word loyalty meant in our house.”
I crouch in front of Pavel until we’re at eye level. He smells rank up close—sweat, panic, and the stale arrogance of a man who really thought he could survive playing both sides.
I study his face and watch the moment he realizes I’m not angry. That’s the moment he stops hoping; I’ve seen it often enough to know exactly when it lands.
“You made the mistake a lot of old men make,” I say, tilting my head to the side. “You thought I needed my father’s permission to become what I am.”
His mouth trembles. “Please.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your pleas.” I grip his jaw hard enough to keep his eyes on mine. “You’ve been in my house, eating my food, taking money out of my accounts, hearing my name spoken with respect, and somehow you still thought I was standing in another man’s shadow. That’s what will kill you today, Pavel.”
“Please, Niko—”
The use of my old nickname earns him the first real sign of anything from me, though it isn’t anger—it’s disgust.
“This is the last thing you’ll ever understand,” I cut in. “I am not my father.”
I let go of his face and straighten up. Behind him, one of the guards hands me a knife. I look at it for a second, and Pavel starts crying harder when he sees it. Probably because a knife feels more personal than a gun.
He’s right. Bullets are efficient, but knives are intimate. A bullet says die, while a blade says I came close enough to look at you while you did.
I circle him once, slow enough for every second to stretch. Men who are new to this life sometimes think executions are loud. They imagine shouting, cursing, or spectacle.
Real power is quieter than that. Real power lets the condemned man supply the noise himself.
“You have two children,” I say, stopping behind him.
He sobs out a broken yes.
“And a wife who thinks you travel for business.”
“Yes.” He makes a wounded sound and twists in the guards’ grip, trying to look back at me. “Please, Pakhan. Mercy. I’ll disappear. I’ll leave Russia. I’ll never—”
I pull his hair back and slide the blade across the front of his throat before he can finish.
There’s no flourish to it, no dramatic motion. Just a clean, practiced cut and the immediate consequence of it.
His body jerks, and the sound he makes is wet, shocked, and brief. Blood spills hot over his shirt and the floor in a dark rush. The men holding him back let him drop, and we watch as he clutches at his neck with both hands, eyes bulging. He tries to speak, but all that comes out is a gurgling noise and a torrent of blood gushing over his fingers.
I step back before it reaches my shoes, but I watch him until his body stops twitching. I always watch until the very end; anything less feels careless.
Maksim pushes off the wall and glances down at the corpse with open contempt. “Should’ve let me take him apart in front of the others. Could’ve been educational.”
“It was educational,” I say.
Kai takes the knife from my hand and passes me a folded cloth. I wipe my fingers even though the blood barely touched me. “They all know about the hearing tonight. By morning, they’ll see how it ended.”
Maksim grins. “Fair point.”
I hum low in my throat and glance back at the altar. We stripped it bare when we took this place, but sometimes I still see the outline of the cross in the stone where the metal used to hang.
The Dragovich crest sits there now. We didn’t erase God from this monastery—we replaced him.
Ruslan knows it, too. I see it in the way he looks at me now and how his jaw tightens when I speak, and my men move. He wanted a weapon. He sharpened me, honed me, then pointed me at his enemies.
He expected the blade to stay in his hand. Instead, I became something he can’t grip without bleeding.
