“Boss,” one of my men said, stepping in. “Got what you asked for.”
He tossed me a coil of rope and a roll of duct tape.
“Perfect,” I muttered.
35
The Reckoning Room
—Maksym—
The knot at his ankles was already done and I continued wrapping rope around his torso, his shoulders, his arms, winding it across his chest until he looked like a slab of meat strapped for slaughter. Then I took a strip of tape and sealed his mouth shut, pressing it down hard across the stubble and the dried sweat.
When I finally finished, I just stood there. Staring at him. This was it. The moment I’d been crawling toward for years. The monster who broke my family was right in front of me, trussed up like an offering—helpless, gagged, and bleeding already. Mybreath caught in my chest. For a second, it didn’t even feel real. Like my brain hadn’t caught up to the reality of it.
I waited for the satisfaction to flood in, for the triumph—but what came instead was a quiet, stunned kind of fury.He lay there, barely conscious, and I could almost see the ghosts crowding around us. Mila. My parents. The boy I used to be.
This was for all of them.
I reached up and pressed both thumbs into his closed eyelids.
I pressed hard.
I wanted pain to be the first thing that greeted him. Not confusion. Not light. Just the burn of rupture and the crackle of nerve endings.
He jolted awake with a choked scream behind the tape. Blood ran in twin rivers down his cheeks as he blinked rapidly, pain blazing in his swollen, red-raw eyes. He could still see—but barely.
“Welcome to hell,” I muttered, staring down at him.
He whimpered. A breathless, animal sound. The kind a man makes when the soul starts to understand it’s outlived its welcome.
I stood over him, towering, chest heaving. He was already groaning behind the first strip of tape, trying to form words—pleas, maybe threats—but all that came out were muffled, desperate noises. I slapped a fresh strip of tape over his mouth before he could work his jaw loose or try to beg through it. Let him choke on silence. Let him stew in it.
“Not yet. You’ll speak when I let you. So zip it and listen like your life depends on it. Spoiler: it does.”
I crouched beside him and grabbed a fistful of his greasy hair, jerking his head to the side until he whimpered again.
“This is your punishment. For Mila. For Kira. For every goddamn child you sold like they were cattle.”
I let go of him and started to pace slowly, every word a dagger.
“You call yourself a father? You offered your daughter to strangers like a fucking sample tray. You tried to control her with fear, with men you picked like butcher’s cuts. You think any of them were good enough for her? Stanislav? Felix?”
I turned back toward him and grinned.
“I killed them.”
His eyes widened, blood leaking at the corners.
“Yep. All me. Slaughtered your little choices one by one. And you—blind, arrogant bastard—you didn’t just let me in. You made me your right hand. Sat me at your table. Poured my wine. Invited to your house.”
I crouched again, nose inches from his.
“You built an empire on flesh and lies. And you didn’t even see me coming. You thought I was just another blade for hire. You never imagined I was the one you’d buried years ago.”
I pulled the photo from my pocket and shoved it in front of his face.
“Look. That’s Mila. The girl you erased, the child you sold, the reason the boy I was turned into the thing you made a weapon of. I didn’t start this path with blood on my hands—you gave me the reasons. All of them. You broke my family, you made me crawl through the wreckage, and you didn’t even care. But now you will. She’s going to haunt the last moments of your miserable life. Burn that into your fucking brain.”
