The world does not forget monsters. It just learns to wear their scent like cologne. And in this world, I am both the monster and the myth that follows it. Power has a sound.Not a roar. Not a scream. It hums - a quiet, ruthless thrum that settles in the walls of marble hallways and the creaking bones of men who sit at blood-slicked tables, pretending to rule. That sound has followed me since childhood, coiling in my ears, in my breath, in the echo of my own footsteps.
Now, I make it.
I don't walk into rooms. I enter them. And when I do, the air stills like prey sensing a predator. Eyes shift. Throats close. Conversation dies. I've learned that silence is sharper than any blade - that presence, when cultivated properly, can make grown men forget how to breathe. And I've made sure no one remembers how to breathe around me.
I was not born. I was forged. Zayden Morozov. Pakhan of the Morozov Bratva. Heir to violence. Consort of chaos. The wolf you send when diplomacy fails and fire becomes your only language.
My past is a vault I sealed with blood and iron. The body that birthed me is buried six feet under not in soil, but in silence. There is no room in this life for origin stories. No space for beginnings when all you carry is aftermath. Parents? No. They were architects of control, and I am the rebellion that refused to bend. I buried them in the parts of myself that feel too much - and I never once looked back. They say men are shaped by their scars. I say: Let the scars be a map - and I'll be the storm that follows it. This empire I built? It's not crafted in gold.
It's a cathedral of bone and fire, stitched together by silence and secrets. Every deal is a prayer whispered into the ear of a loaded gun. Every corpse is a cornerstone laid in the foundation of power. Loyalty is not asked. It's earned. Bled for. Paid in flesh and silence. Questions are punishable. Betrayal is terminal. And the past? The past is a land I do not visit.
Even when it stalks me. Even when it slips into my mind like a knife beneath the ribs - quiet, sharp, deliberate - I pretend not to feel it. Sleep has long betrayed me. I haven't rested in years. I used to dream of nothing. A void.Cold and endless - the kind of dark you learn to trust when you've killed more men than you've forgiven. But then something changed.Now there's a scent.Warm. Elusive. Floral and unplaceable. It coils around my dreams like a noose made of silk. A whisper I can't catch. A laugh that shouldn't exist in a world built of ash and iron.
It's her. Not in name. Not in face. But in presence. A softness I burned to the ground years ago... and still couldn't erase from whatever was left of my soul. And last night? She laughed. In the dream - or the hallucination, I don't know anymore - she was laughing. Not cruelly. Not sweetly. Just... like she belonged to a world where I never existed. And something in me broke. I woke up alone in my penthouse in Valdivostok with the sheets tangled around my legs and the taste of regret sour in my throat. The room was filled with early dawn - steel-grey light pouring in through bulletproof glass.
And I stared at the ceiling for a long time. Hating myself. Again. There are no weaknesses in me. None that live. Only ghosts. Only shadows. And her. (But I don't say her name. Not even in my mind. Names have power. And hers? Hers could burn me alive.)
---
The world wakes slowly, but I've been awake for hours. My men think I train before sunrise to keep my edge. They're wrong. I train to kill the silence. The kind that seeps into walls. The kind that knows what name I don't say. By the time Mikhail walks in, I've already torn the morning into pieces. The gym downstairs still reeks of sweat and blood - most of it mine. The punching bag split open twenty minutes ago, sand spilling like guts onto the floor. I didn't stop. Not until the silence inside my head turned into static again. Now, I'm shirtless, knuckles raw and wrapped in crimson gauze, standing at the tall glass window of my office as dawn breaks over Vladivostok like a bruise - cold, violet, uncaring.
He's sharply dressed as always. Charcoal suit, cufflinks, eyes like a loaded gun. Calm. Clean. Surgical. If I'm the execution, he's the erasure. The reason no one hears about it on the news. He throws a black folder on my desk and takes a seat. "Bad morning," he says, voice dry as vodka. I don't turn.
"What happened?"
"Cargo. Taken at the Indo-Asian border. Four of our men dead. Burned trucks. Bullet casings stamped with an Italian crest."
I glance over my shoulder.
" The De Luca's."
Offcourse it was. They've been testing our lines ever since I shut down the human trade they worship like religion. Selling flesh. Trafficking children. The things we don't even speak of in full sentences. Disgust sits low in my throat like bile. I walk over, fingers dusted with drying blood, and flip the folder open. My fingers flexed once against the oak before I opened the file. Inside: photographs. Blood. Burnt trucks. Slit throats. Our men lying in ash. A message. A provocation. A fucking mistake. I don't blink. Didn't snarl. I breathe. One long deep inhale. And then I spoke .My voice comes slow. Controlled.The same hum of power that makes grown men shiver.
"Anyone left alive?"
"No witnesses," Misha says. "Unless you count the flames."
I shut the folder gently. Almost tenderly. Then meet his eyes.
"Find the ones responsible."
Mikhail nods once . The way you nod when death is a language you speak fluently. Then, he walks to the bar in the corner and pours himself a drink. Not out of nerves. Habit. His rituals ground him. Mine drown me.
"You want me to leak this to the Bratva channels?" he asks, swirling his glass. "Or keep it quiet till we retaliate?"
"Quiet," I say. "For now."
He clinks the glass against the edge of the desk before downing it. Then, before leaving, he tosses me a flash drive.
"Encrypted footage. Niko has pulled it off from one of the burnt truck's black boxes. Figured you'd want to see it ."
Mikhail nodded once. And then he left. And I was alone again. Alone with my silence. My weapons. My ghosts.
Hope you made it out of Zayden Morozov’s mind in one piece. If not... welcome to the club🥴🤧.
He’s cold, ruthless, and allergic to feelings — but somehow still manages to make insomnia look sexy. If his broody silence, haunted past, or soft-ghost-whispers of "her" made you shiver,made you pause, or made you say “okay... I kinda love this dangerous man,”👉 drop a ⭐️ vote, leave a comment, and hit follow .
This is my first story, and your support means everything. Every vote and comment tells me I should keep going (and keeps Zayden from going completely unhinged... maybe).
More chaos, dark secrets, and emotional slow burns are on the way. Oh — and if you hear someone whispering in Russian at 3 a.m.?
…it’s probably Zayden. Don’t ask questions.🥶🥶
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