The hammer of the Nagant hung back, a black steel thumb pointed at the ceiling. For a moment, time itself seemed to recoil. Every man in the print shop froze—each breath shallow, each heartbeat loud enough to feel.
Orlov's face twisted into something between fury and disbelief. He drew himself up one last time, finding the only weapon left to him: contempt.
"You're the traitor, Jughashvili!" he spat, the word sharp enough to cut. "A butcher!"
Jake didn't blink. His eyes—flat, cold, merciless—were the last thing Orlov ever saw.
He pulled the trigger.
The gunshot wasn't a sound so much as a physical blow. It slammed into the walls, into lungs, into the bones of everyone in the room. The roar collapsed into ringing silence, leaving only the stench of powder and the metallic tang of blood. Orlov's body crumpled like paper, the wall behind him blooming red.
No one spoke. The committee members sat frozen, caught between shock and awe. They had spoken of revolutionary justice for years—but now they had seen it, naked and immediate, staring them in the face through the smoke.
Jake lowered the revolver with slow, deliberate grace. His hand didn't shake. Smoke curled lazily from the barrel, a ghost rising from the corpse on the floor.
"The cancer has been excised," he said, his tone cold and precise. Not triumphant, not shaken—clinical. "Now we save the body."
He pivoted from executioner to commander without pause. His authority filled the void before anyone could think, before fear could take root. Orders followed like hammer strikes.
He pointed at a wiry man with ink stains on his cuffs. "Nikolay. The train from Moscow—find the manifest. I want the car numbers and the markings on every barrel. You have ten minutes."
Nikolay jerked upright, pale and trembling. "Yes, Comrade," he stammered, and fled the room.
Jake's finger moved to another man. "Semyon. Send word to the rail yard. The shipment rendezvous is compromised. No one moves until they receive a direct order from me. Use the emergency codes."
Semyon rose so fast his chair toppled over. "Right away," he said, and bolted after Nikolay.
The room began to breathe again, the paralysis breaking under the force of command. Jake had replaced horror with action, terror with clarity. He was proving that only he could steer them through the chaos he'd unleashed.
But there was one piece left to secure—the legitimacy of what he'd done. Without it, he was nothing more than a murderer.
His eyes found Stepan Shaumian.
The older man sat rigid, his knuckles white against the table. He looked from Orlov's body to Jake, and in that terrible, quiet instant, he understood. He saw what the others were only beginning to grasp: that they were alive because of this man's ruthlessness.
Shaumian rose slowly. "Comrade Soso is right," he said, his voice steady. "He has done a terrible but necessary thing. This man"—he gestured toward Orlov's body, his tone hardening—"would have destroyed us all by dawn. The party owes Comrade Soso its life. We will follow his lead."
The effect was immediate. Heads nodded. The fear in the room shifted shape, turning from horror into obedience. They were all implicated now. Orlov's blood was theirs.
Jake gave Shaumian the briefest nod. Then he turned to business.
Danilov was huddled in the corner, trembling, trying to vanish into the shadows.
"This one," Jake said, his tone stripped of all emotion, "is now our most valuable asset. He knows Orlov's contacts, Yagoda's methods, the Okhrana's structure. We'll extract everything."
He turned to Kamo. "Take him back to the cellar. He's not a prisoner anymore. He's a resource. Bleed him for every secret he's worth."
Kamo nodded, wordless, and hauled Danilov to his feet. The man's terrified sobs echoed as they disappeared through the back door.
Jake's gaze returned to the body on the floor. "And get rid of that," he said flatly. "Take it to the river. No funeral. No grave. No martyr."
His voice dropped to a quiet, deadly calm. "As of this moment, Comrade Orlov has vanished—another victim of the Okhrana he served so loyally."
The committee obeyed.
As they moved, as the body was dragged away and orders were whispered into the night, Jake stood where he was, revolver still in hand. The smoke had cleared, but the air was thicker than ever—heavy with fear, obedience, and something new.
Power.
He wasn't just killing his enemies anymore.
He was rewriting history.