I was still a good three hundred feet from the entrance when a shadow shifted ahead of me—someone stepping directly into my path, forcing me to halt mid-stride.
I didn’t even look. I just pressed the barrel of my gun to their forehead.
And then I saw the face.
Sashko.
“Move,” I growled. My voice didn’t sound like mine.
He didn’t move.
“You shoot me,” he said, keeping his eyes locked on mine, “and I swear, Reaper, my toddler will grow up thinking you’re a bigger asshole than I already do.”
“I don’t give a fuck about your toddler,” I said. “Don’t you know who I am? I don’t care about people.”
Sashko raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Must be exhausting, being that full of shit.”
I shoved the gun harder against his forehead, but he didn’t flinch. That’s the thing with Sashko—he always knew when to push and when to stand still. Right now, he was gambling that I wouldn’t pull the trigger.
He might’ve been wrong.
“You’re not going in there like this,” he said. “Not unless you want your brains on the pavement two seconds after. He’ll see you coming from a mile away.”
“Good. Let him.”
“Maksym—”
“Get out of my way.”
“No. I’m not letting you do this.”
I exhaled through my nose, sharp and trembling. The hand holding the gun was steady. The rest of me wasn’t.
“Sashko, I swear to God—”
“Then shoot me,” he cut in. “But you’re not getting past me with that look in your eyes. I’ve seen that look. It gets you killed.”
We stood like that for a beat too long. My heart was trying to punch its way out of my chest.
When Sashko’s fingers touched the gun, the pressure in my chest detonated.Something deep inside me cracked wide open. A tidal wave of grief and fury surged up from a place I didn’t even know still existed, and I couldn’t brace against it. My vision blurred. My throat closed. My whole body trembled as I dropped to my knees like a puppet with its strings cut. The heels of my palms pressed into my eyes, clawing at my face in a desperate attempt to hold it all in, trying to push the pain back in—but it was too late. It was pouring out, decades of silence and fury and heartbreak breaking through all at once. I saw her. Mila. A little girl stolen from the world. From me. In that moment, I wasn’t Maksym the Reaper. I was just a broken brother who had failed the only person that ever mattered. And it destroyed me.
Sashko crouched down next to me, voice low but urgent. “Come on, man. Not here. We gotta go before someone sees you like that.”
He grabbed my arm, pulling me up to my feet.“You’re not thinking straight. Let me drive you home.”
I stood, blinking against the sting in my eyes, jaw clenched hard as I forced the tears back. My whole body ached from the weight of it.
“I don’t need a therapist.”
“Good. I’d be a shit one. I’d just tell you to drink.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder like we were about to go bowling instead of fleeing a murder.
“We’ll go back to yours. You don’t have to say a single word. But I’m driving. I don’t feel like dying before I’ve had one fucking drink.”
I didn’t answer. I turned on my heel, stalked back toward my car, and unlocked it.
Sashko climbed into the driver’s seat, and I didn’t offer a word of protest. My hands stayed in my lap, fists clenched, jaw locked as the engine started. We rolled into the night, the silence between us thick, but not unwelcome. Just two men, one broken, the other trying to keep him from shattering completely.
