"No one decides my fate but me."

She takes a step back.

Sergei pulling the trigger seems to take minutes instead of the seconds it really was. Her last thought is that she hopes he doesn't miss at the last second. Belle knew her chances of dying when she decided to walk away from everything. She only wished that she would die quickly, so that there wouldn't be any time for her to change her mind and plead for life.

Sergei's mouth is twisted into a deep frown after his one shot. He holds up his other hand in a hold motion for his guards to see. He walks forward and sees his beauty's crumpled body, still twitching.

Kneeling next to her, he checks for a breath, for a pulse, a sign that she was still alive and not simply going through early rigor mortis. When he decides that she died instantly, he sighs and stands up straight.

Immediately, he orders for someone to come down and clean up the mess while the other guards gather all the new whores and the unbroken ones to take elsewhere for a few days. When one person dares to question him, Sergei's response is simple.

"Someone was sure to have heard that."

So Sergei organized the evacuation and made sure Belle's body was taken as well. He told the guards in charge not to do anything with Belle's body except chill it until he arrived at the safe house. As he watched the vans pull away, he turned the safety back on his gun and hid it away in a pocket as he got into character in case the cops arrived within the next few hours.

When the cops did arrive a half hour later, he feigned ignorance of a gunshot, claiming he thought the noise was some boys using illegal fireworks.

Waiting only another half hour, he sped to the safe house he sent his girls and his beauty to. Sergei ordered everyone to stay out of the room where they stored Belle so long as he was in there.

She was laid on a table, her head tilted to the side, her eyes, thankfully, closed. If it weren't for the gun wound, he would think she was sleeping. So he pulls up a chair, folds his hands, and stares.

He thinks about what could have happened had he let her go.

His empire could have dissolved overnight. She'd have given birth to that bastard child. And most importantly, she'd be alive.

Alive to yell at him, nag, insist that he leave his dark world.

His eyes stray to her belly, and for a moment, he entertains the thought that the child she would have had was his. But that was impossible. Before Sergei took her to his bed, she had been picked by the occasional high-paying customer.

So the kid could have been anyone's.

When Sergei stands up to leave the room, he feels like he owes the dead woman some sort of explanation even if she can't hear it. After a moment of internal debate, he says his goodbyes to his beauty.

"My power means more to me than you, do svidaniya, Belle."