I didn’t spiral. I didn’t chase. I didn’t burn for anyone.
But he hurt her. I saw the way she ran. I saw her eyes, swollen and raw. I saw how she looked at me like she wanted someone to care. Like she didn’t expect me to be that someone.
He made her cry.
And I was going to make him pay.
But not now. Not like this.
I sat there in the dark until the rage stopped boiling and settled into something colder. Sharper. Something I knew how to use.
I’d take care of him in the next few days. For now, I had to make sure no one else ever got the chance to touch her.
That meant knowing where she was. At all times.
Which, objectively speaking, sounded a lot like stalking.
Great. Maksym the Reaper, professional problem solver, reduced to shadowing a spoiled twenty-year-old around Kyiv.
I dragged a hand down my face.
But Stanislav existed.
Men like him were the worst kind—rich enough to believe the world bent for them, stupid enough to think no one would ever snap their spine for crossing a line.Men like that didn’t hear no. They just waited for a moment when no one stronger was standing nearby.
And I had already made that mistake once.
Did I want to track her movements like some obsessive psychopath? No.
Did I want to wake up one day and hear that Stanislav tried something while I was somewhere else breaking the legs of a man who actually deserved it?
Also no.
So I drove across the city to one of my old contacts, a former military tech who owed me more favors than he had teeth left. He didn’t ask questions. Just handed me a tiny, high-grade tracker the size of a fingernail and installed the matching app on my phone. A blue dot appeared instantly on the map—all that was left was slipping the tracker into place.
By the time I got back to the estate, the place had gone quiet. Most of the lights were off. The guards nodded when I passed—used to me coming and going like a shadow.
Her door wasn’t locked.
I stepped inside.
She was asleep, curled up under the covers, soft breathing the only sound in the room. I stood in the doorway for a moment—watching. Just watching. Like a fucking creep.
I told myself to leave.
I didn’t.
I moved toward her like I didn’t trust myself to get too close. Like one wrong step might wake her—or worse, wake something in me. Her face was soft now. No anger, no sadness—just something close to peace. I hated how much I liked seeing it.
I caught myself staring.
Focus.
Her phone was on the nightstand, case floral and cracked in one corner. I picked it up, slid the case off, and carefully pressed the chip into place between the plastic and the phone.
Done.
Her father wasn’t going to protect her. If anything, he’d do worse. And I wasn’t supposed to be the one doing this. I told myself from the beginning—I wasn’t going to get involved.
