They were evil. They weren’t just soulless—they were ravenous decay, maggots in suits, feeding on pain like it was pleasure.
They’d be my opening act—screaming, bleeding, begging before the real war even began.
28
No One Keeps Me Waiting
—Maksym—
Ididn’t need to sneak around anymore. Pakhan had handed me the keys, convinced I’d guard his kingdom like it was mine. He had no idea what I was really doing—what I’d already begun.
I went looking for Mila.
I combed through records no one had touched in years—paper folders yellowed with time, digital files buried on old drives protected by passwords so outdated they barely needed cracking. I went back nearly two decades, chasing shadows and fragments.
And then I found her.
Her name. The year. The coded initials alongside her real ones in parentheses. The port where she was loaded. The container number. The route.
New York. They had sent her to fucking New York.
I stared at the file, lungs locked tight. It felt like someone had poured ice straight into my spine. The document didn’t confirm anything I hadn’t already feared, but seeing it laid out so clinically, so precisely, hit me like a freight train.
That was my sister. Three years old. Barely out of diapers. And someone had written her down like freight. Labeled. Tracked. Shipped.
I remembered her laugh. The way her tiny fingers used to grab my shirt when she got scared. Her favorite pink bunny she carried everywhere she went. Her soft hair. Her voice.
She must have been so terrified.
My throat burned. My hands trembled. I wanted to reach into the past, rip open that shipping container, and pull her into my arms. Tell her she was safe. That I was sorry. That I’d never let her go again.
But I was twenty fucking years too late.
Everything was there—organized like some Nazi archive. Every horrifying detail except one.
The trail ended there.
For other children, the files kept going. Follow-up reports. Payment logs. Transfer summaries. Death certificates.
But not for Mila.
Just that single entry.
And then—nothing.
I stared at the screen, seething. It made no sense. Why was there no record of where she ended up? No buyer listed. No confirmation. No final transaction. Nothing that said whether she was alive or dead.
I punched the desk hard enough to split my knuckles. Blood welled up, but I barely felt it. My vision blurred, not from pain—but from the sheer helpless rage crawling under my skin.
I needed answers.
So I called someone I hadn’t spoken to in years.
Rothman.
An American. A hacker. Crooked as hell.
We met in Kyiv, back when I was still building my reputation. He was tangled up in some Interpol mess—embezzlement, identity theft, leaking classified intel. The kind of man who would sell his soul if it meant staying off a watchlist.
