A day later, another message arrived.
I’ve made arrangements with your father. I’ll pick you up this weekend.
That was the moment I almost threw up.
No fucking way. Over my dead body.
If that man ever showed up to take me for a weekend like he owned me, he’d find me hanging from the ceiling before I went anywhere with him. Maybe that was my destiny—to die a virgin just to avoid letting a man like him touch me. Frankly, that felt like a fair trade.
But then, coincidentally on the day of that ridiculous fucking orgy—he went silent.
No messages. No calls. Nothing.
Days passed. Then more days. The silence was unsettling in its own way. I checked my phone more than I wanted to admit, half-expecting his name to light up the screen again. It never did.
Even my father noticed.
He asked me one evening, casually, like he was asking about the weather, if I’d heard from Stanislav.
I told him the truth—that Stasik had gone quiet.
My father furrowed his brows—just slightly, the kind of twitch that said he was weighing whether to believe me or not.
He tried calling Stanislav himself later that night. No answer.
The next day he called Stanislav’s father. Apparently no one had heard from him there either.
Just… gone.
But then the whispers started.
At school, in the hallways and cafeteria lines, the rumor spread fast—someone beat him to death. No names, no suspects, just the kind of hushed, vicious gossip that sticks.
When I heard it, a strange calm settled over me first. The cafeteria noise dulled, like someone had turned the volume down on the world. My fingers went still around my phone. Then I laughed. A short, sharp sound that didn’t feel like it belonged to me.
But I knew better than to think fate ever did me favors.
None of it sat right. Guys like Stas don’t just disappear and die quietly. Not unless someone made damn sure of it. And when I really thought about it, the timing almost made sense.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Maksym.
He hadn’t looked at me for weeks. Not once. Not in the hallway. Not near my father’s office. Not even by accident. Like I didn’t exist.
But I remembered his eyes when he saw me crying. I remembered the anger there. The way his jaw tightened. The way his whole body went still, like a predator locking onto something. That look hadn’t been indifference. I knew this was his kind of kill. Brutal. Final. Almost poetic in its ugliness.
He’d done something. Something real. Something final. And the truth was, I didn’t care that Stanislav was dead. Not even a little. If anything, I felt relief—pure and sharp, like a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Beneath that relief, though, was something darker, something I wasn’t ready to name. Because some part of me, the part that should have been horrified, was hoping.
I was fucking furious at Maksym for being part of that disgusting party, but I still hoped it was him. Hoped he’d done it. Hoped he’d protected me in the only way he knew how.
If there was a line I’d crossed, I didn’t care. Stas got what he deserved and I slept better because of it.Maybe that made metwisted. Maybe it meant something inside me was already too far gone. But I didn’t care. That prick was dead, and the world felt cleaner for it.
By lunch, I was practically humming.
Valeria was sitting on the old stone ledge outside the law building, legs crossed, black sunglasses perched on her head like she was too hungover for sunlight. She had a croissant in one hand, joint in the other.
I dropped beside her, swinging my bag down with a grin.
“That bastard is dead,” I said, voice low but giddy. “We’re going out tonight.”
