The air inside the cottage tasted of stale tobacco and iron. Outside, the Russian winter was a silent wall of white, but inside, the floor was stained a messy, dark crimson.
Reyansh Chakravarti sat in a wooden chair, his legs crossed, watching the smoke from his cigarette curl toward the ceiling. He didn't look at the man screaming on the floor. He didn't need to. The man was a traitor, a small-time informant who thought he could skim off the top of Reyansh Russian shipments.
Next to the man was his daughter. She was twenty-seven, beautiful in a way that meant nothing to Reyansh. Six hours ago, she had made a fatal mistake. She had looked at Reyansh…his sharp jaw, his cold, god-like face..and she had reached out. Her fingers had grazed his cheek, a gesture of desperate lust and misplaced confidence.
Reyansh hadn't flinched then. He had simply stopped breathing for a second, his skin crawling with a deep, violent loathing. He hated being touched. To him, a touch was a violation of his sovereignty.
"Again," Reyansh said, his voice flat.
One of the six bodyguards stepped forward and slammed a heavy boot into the father ribs. The sound of snapping bone filled the room
.
Reyansh sister, Meera, stood by the fireplace, her eyes bored. She held a glass of vodka in one hand. She walked over to the daughter, who was sobbing on her knees.
"You touched him," Meera said, her voice dripping with a cruel kind of amusement. "You thought you were special? You’re a fly on a windshield."
Meera looked at Reyansh, who remained a statue of glass and iron. She knew his temper was a ticking bomb. She looked back at the girl.
"Get up," Meera commanded. The girl wobbled to her feet. "Now, get down. On your knees. My boots are dirty from the snow. Clean them. With your tongue."
The girl hesitated, her eyes darting to her mangled father. A bodyguard gripped her hair and shoved her face down. Shaking, she began to lick the salt and mud off Meera expensive leather boots. Meera laughed, a cold, sharp sound that didn't reach her eyes.
"Enough," Reyansh said. The room went silent. Even the father groans stopped.
Reyansh stood up and walked toward them. He pulled a serrated hunting knife from his belt and handed it to the girl. She looked at it, confused, her face smeared with the filth of the floor.
"Your father stole from me," Reyansh said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "And you touched me. Both are crimes. Only one of you gets to leave this cottage."
He pointed the knife toward the father chest.
"Stab him. Ten times. Directly in the heart. If you stop at nine, you both die. If you do it, you walk out into the snow."
The girl’s breath hitched. "Please—"
"One," Reyansh counted.
The girl hands shook as she gripped the hilt. She looked at her father. He was already half-dead. With a scream of pure agony, she plunged the blade into his chest.
She did it ten times. By the end, she was covered in her father blood, her eyes vacant and shattered. She dropped the knife.
She looked up at Reyansh, her mind snapped by the trauma. She didn't see the monster anymore; she saw the only thing left in her world.
"Reyansh..." she whispered.
The air in the room turned to ice. The bodyguards stepped back. She had done it again. She had touched his name with her mouth. She had spoken to him as if they were equals.No one here in the world dared to call him by his first name. Even his own sister avoided it, preferring the cold formality of “Sir “
Reyansh didn't look angry. He looked clinical. He reached out, his gloved hand gripping her chin with enough force to bruise. He forced her mouth open.
"I told you I hated being touched," he said softly.
He didn't signal a bodyguard. He did it himself. He moved with a terrifying, practiced speed. The girl scream was cut short as he sliced the muscle from her mouth.
Reyansh stepped back, wiping a single drop of blood off his cuff. He didn't look at the girl convulsing on the floor.
"Throw her out," he said to the men. "The wolves are hungry."
He turned back to the window, lit a fresh cigarette, and waited for the silence to return.
The girl lay in a heap on the floor, her muffled, wet gasps the only sound left in the room. Reyansh didn't look back. He stood by the window, watching the moonlight hit the snow. The violence hadn't moved him; it had simply reset the balance.
Meera stepped over the pooling blood, her expression bored as she adjusted her coat. She didn't spare a glance for the mutilated woman or the corpse of the father. To her, this was just another Tuesday.
"It's done, sir ," she said, her voice cutting through the silence. "The Russian accounts are settled. The message has been sent. There’s nothing left for us in this wasteland."
Reyansh took a final drag of his cigarette and crushed the ember out against the window frame. He didn't respond immediately. He never did. He just stared at his own reflection in the glass—cold, sharp, and empty.
"The plane is ready at the private strip," Meera continued, checking her watch. "Let's go back to India. The Sovereign has business in Mumbai that needs your direct hand."
Reyansh finally turned. His eyes were like flint, showing no trace of the brutality he had just committed. He adjusted his cufflinks, the silver glinting in the dim light of the cottage.
"Fine," he said shortly.
He walked toward the door, stepping over the girl twitching hand without a second thought. He didn't look back at the cottage or the lives he had just dismantled. He walked out into the freezing night, his mind already miles away, back in the heat of India where his throne was waiting.
Behind him, the six bodyguards began dousing the room in gasoline.
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