The sky unleashed its fury upon St. Petersburg in a torrent of freezing rain, as though nature itself were attempting to wash away the disgrace that had befallen the Kuznetsov family that night. Hours after the gala, the armored black car pulled up to the massive iron gates, but they did not swing open automatically as they usually did. There were no guards offering a salute, no hunting hounds barking a welcome to their master.
Sergei stepped out of the vehicle, utterly alone. Larissa had returned before him. He stumbled like a drunkard waking to a nightmare. His shattered wrist hung uselessly at his side, and the dried blood on his dark blue shirt made him look like a butcher returning from a botched slaughter. He shoved the gate open with his good shoulder, stepping into a courtyard swallowed by an eerie silence.
"Where is everyone?" Sergei roared, his voice echoing hollowly among the marble statues. "Yuri! Pavel! Where are you, you cowards?"
No answer. The mercenaries and bodyguards he had paid thousands of dollars had realized in an instant—following a brief phone call from the "Commission of Families"—that Sergei's bank accounts were now nothing more than worthless digits. In the mafia world, loyalty expires with the last cent paid. They had all vanished, taking whatever weapons and valuables they could carry.
Sergei entered the grand foyer. The massive crystal chandelier flickered weakly, the result of failing generators no one bothered to maintain anymore. He trudged across the priceless Persian rugs, heading straight for Larissa's private wing.
The door stood wide open.
The room was in absolute chaos: drawers pulled out, dresses strewn across the floor, and empty jewelry boxes scattered about. Amidst the wreckage, Larissa stood before her vanity mirror, frantically stuffing whatever cash remained into a leather suitcase. She was still wearing her black evening gown but had discarded her heels to move faster.
"Going somewhere, Larissa?" Sergei asked, his voice low, like the hiss of a viper cornering its prey.
Larissa jumped, letting out a stifled gasp as she spun around. "Sergei!"
"I returned to see my faithful wife sweeping up the remnants of her treason." Sergei took a step forward, the dim light casting harsh shadows over a face contorted by rage and creeping madness. "I saw the numbers, Larissa. 130 million dollars. You were bleeding me dry while I was fighting to secure our future."
"Our future?" Larissa let out a hysterical laugh, tears cutting tracks through her makeup. "You never cared about our future! You only cared about your empire, your madness, and crushing those twins! I saw the ship sinking, Sergei, and I had no intention of drowning with you."
"Where is she?" Sergei demanded abruptly, his eyes frantically scanning the room.
"Who?"
"Elena! Where is my daughter?" Sergei roared. He grabbed the collar of her dress with his good hand, slamming her against the wall.
Larissa's expression morphed from terror into a kind of desperate defiance. "You won't touch her, Sergei. You won't make her another victim of your insanity, like you did to Hayoon. I sent her away... to a place you will never reach. She is under the protection of people your money cannot buy and your guns cannot intimidate."
Sergei felt the chill of death grip his heart. Losing the money was a blow to his pride, but losing his "final heir"—the child he had planned to mold into the perfection the twins had failed to achieve—was the fatal strike that shattered what remained of his sanity.
"You betrayed everything," Sergei whispered, his hand slowly rising toward her throat. "You destroyed the family I tried to build."
"You never built a family," Larissa spat back. "You built a graveyard, and you wanted us all to be its decorative corpses. Elena is the only survivor, and I am going to join her."
At that moment, Sergei's eyes drifted to Larissa's open closet. He spotted a simple white dress she had recently bought for Elena. The stark whiteness reminded him of Jinho's suit at the gala, and before that, of Hayoon on her final night.
Time collapsed upon itself in Sergei's fractured mind. He no longer saw Larissa standing before him; he saw Hayoon. He saw the rebellion he could not crush. He saw the failure that haunted him in every woman he touched.
"I will end this now," Sergei said, his powerful fingers curling around Larissa's neck, exactly as they had done all those years ago.
But Larissa was not Hayoon. Larissa was a viper raised in the swamps of the mafia, and she knew Sergei would come to kill her. With chilling composure, she reached blindly behind her toward the vanity, where she had hidden a small, nickel-plated Beretta.
"I won't die like her, Sergei," Larissa choked out, gasping for air.
She raised her hand and fired the first shot.
The bullet tore through Sergei's shoulder, but the pain wasn't enough to stop the monster that had slipped its leash. Sergei stumbled back two steps, his good hand pressing against the heavily bleeding wound. His bloodshot eyes never left Larissa's face. He exhaled hot, ragged breaths, like steam venting from a broken machine.
"One bullet?" Sergei sneered, his voice thick with blood. "I gave you everything, Larissa... Power, a name, silk... and you repay me with a piece of lead?"
Larissa was trembling, the hand holding the gun shaking violently. She tried to aim at his head to finish it, but her fear of Sergei—a terror rooted deep in her soul for years—made her hesitate for a fraction of a second. That second was all Sergei needed.
Sergei lunged at her like a madman, ignoring the second bullet that whizzed past his ear to shatter the vanity mirror behind him. He slammed into her with the force of a concrete wall, and they crashed together onto the blood-stained rug. The gun flew from Larissa's grip, skittering beneath the bed. She found herself face-to-face with death.
The struggle between them was brutal and primal. Larissa clawed at his face with her red-painted nails, gouging at his eyes, while Sergei used his massive weight to crush her ribcage. Then, amidst the chaotic violence, Sergei's fingers locked around her throat.
In that instant, time stopped for Sergei.
He no longer saw Larissa in her black dress with her stolen jewels. The flickering, dancing light in the room, coupled with the memory of the white suit he had seen Jinho wearing, pulled his mind completely into the past. He saw Hayoon. He saw his first wife begging for her children's lives. He saw the exact same look of absolute terror, the same desperate struggle to survive.
"Why do you all betray me?!" Sergei screamed, his voice dissolving into a madman's wail. "I tried to make you great! I tried to build an empire out of you!"
"You're... a monster..." Larissa managed to choke out, her voice nothing more than a final death rattle.
Sergei tightened his grip. He wasn't just killing the traitorous Larissa; he was trying to kill the "failure" that hounded him. He was trying to strangle the bitter truth Jinho had laid bare: that he was a lonely man, bankrupt of love, power, and loyalty.
He maintained the crushing pressure until Larissa stopped moving entirely. The hands that had fought him went limp, and her eyes stopped darting, fixing upon the ceiling in an eternal, glassy stare. Larissa Kuznetsov, the woman who had manipulated everyone to secure her escape, was now nothing but a corpse in the very palace she had tried to flee.
Slowly, Sergei released his grip. He hoisted his battered body up and stared down at her. He felt no victory. He felt no relief. He felt only a crushing, bottomless void.
Dragging his feet, Sergei staggered out of the room, leaving a trail of blood with every step. He limped down the long corridor leading back to the main foyer. The mansion was so deathly quiet he could hear the raindrops striking the exterior glass.
"Yuri?" he called out weakly. "Bring me my medicine... and clean up this mess."
But no one answered.
He reached the grand staircase and peered down. The estate, once teeming with guards, servants, informants, and politicians begging for his favor, was now utterly desolate. The smoke-stained furniture, the precious paintings stripped from their stolen frames, the darkened hallways... everything screamed the bitter truth at him: Everyone had left. Even Elena, the daughter who represented his last chance at redemption in the eyes of history, had been torn from him.
Sergei slumped onto the cold marble steps. He rested his head against the wall, feeling the chill creeping into his extremities. He was losing too much blood from his shoulder and the minor stab wounds Larissa had inflicted during their brawl. He instinctively reached for his phone to call for help, only to remember there was no one left to call.
Ivan Sokolov was waiting outside to finish him. Jinho and Jin, the sons he had tortured, had orchestrated this very collapse. The Five Families had declared his blood forfeit.
Sergei let out a dry, rasping laugh that quickly devolved into a painful cough. He remembered Jinho's words: "Numbers don't lie." And for Sergei, the equation was now agonizingly simple: [Power - Money - Loyalty = Zero].
Outside, beyond the defenseless palace gates, the headlights of black SUVs began to pierce the distance. They weren't police cruisers; they bore the insignia of the "Falcon and Sickle." Ivan Sokolov was coming to claim his promised inheritance, while Jin moved through the shadows like a hunter closing in on his final kill.
Sergei closed his eyes. In his mind's eye, he saw Jinho in his white suit, standing atop the ruins of the empire. Sergei finally understood. Jinho hadn't shot him because he had designed exactly this kind of demise for him: to die utterly alone, an outcast, rotting at the bottom of the very palace he had built with blood.
This was Jinho's "mathematical revenge." Not merely the execution of the body, but the absolute erasure of his existence.
As consciousness slowly slipped away from him, Sergei heard the screeching crash of the outer gates being breached. The hunters had arrived. But he no longer possessed the strength even to lift his head.
_____________
To be continued...