Putin’s plan for New Economy. Goal: Make people rich and happy. List of people attached.

I feel my strength leaving me, but I keep up the facade, jovially mocking Botkin about his new spectacles. They are growing frustrated, but if I am to die it will be on my terms.

All know the tale by now of how I plowed through the field of womanhood in Moscow and Sanct Peterburg, deflowering all who caught my notice and probably ruining them for all men to come after. I have needs, and it is not my fault that God gifted me with a phallus which would look more at home on a donkey. But Alix has ever held my heart. My wife back home understands that I am ministering to the royal family.

Before I came to this meeting I left a sealed note for Nic telling him everything, and predicting his family’s fall. I begged him to protect Alix and the children. Nic has known about his wife and I for almost three years, and has on many occasions joined us in the bedroom, sweet Alix having more than enough love for both of us.

The rumors say that I have replaced him in all but title as the head of state, which is why these imbeciles are in the process of murdering me. The truth is that I have always acted in his and the Empire’s best interest, and always by his leave. He is my Tzar, and I am but a humble servant of God.

I can take no more. I shake my head and rise to my feet. “Gentlemen, I must take my leave.”

The looks on their faces are priceless. I have already imbibed enough arsenic to lay low every man in this room. I turn and walk toward the door.

“Grigory...” Markary’s voice booms loudly, causing me to turn. He stands there with a chair in his gigantic hand.

The blow to my head is brutal, but somehow I do not fall. Ygevney slips a knife between my ribs and the pain is exquisite. Felix is crying in the corner, the little bitch. I turn again to leave, mounting the stairs without a word.

When Dimitri pulls the trigger for the first time, I must admit I am surprised. The bullet catches me in the shoulder, but I have already gained the ground floor.

In the courtyard, more bullets fly. I feel each one pierce my flesh, shattering bone. I orgasm.

It is Markary that fires the bullet that shatters my right hip, yet I continue to crawl.

I’ve almost reached the gate when I see Felix standing over me. The little catamite has found his balls. He points the pistol at my head, point blank, and pulls the trigger. All goes red and black and I know nothing more for a bit.

I come to slowly, my world is pain. I must be on Markary’s shoulder. No other man is as large. He heaves and I am sailing through the air for a moment before the ice rises up to meet my blurred vision.

I crash through. I have a sense of blackness and cold. I can feel my lungs filling with water, my right lung anyway as my left has been punctured, probably by one of the eighteen bullets in my body. It’s a wonder I don’t rattle.

Alix.

(AN: Trust me, there’s a reason for this. All will become clear.)