Time passed strangely underground. There were no windows here, no sky to trace the light or noise from staff. Only the steady mechanical breath of the vents and my own thoughts.
I ate a protein bar and finished a bottle of water, and after a shower and changing into a new set of clothes, I heard the scratching of the padlock on the door. The bolt snapped back and the heavy door swung open with a groan and the scrape of steel on concrete. Dmitry stepped inside, filling the small space with broad shoulders, cold air, and control.
“Did you get what you needed from my father?” I asked.
“Not yet. It’s been twenty-one hours,” he said. “He has three left.”
I nodded but remained silent. If my father didn’t send what was demanded of him within twenty-four hours, Dmitry’s hand would be forced. I heard it myself.
Velvet box. Ribbon. Pieces of me.
Although, a strong part of me didn’t believe Dmitry would actually mutilate me. Or maybe it was hopeful thinking that my life wasn’t in someone else’s hands.
My father hadn’t asked if Dmitry was bluffing. He had asked something far more telling: whether I still had value.
I sat on the cot as Dmitry watched me. He stared at me to see how I handled pressure. Men like him didn’t mistake tears for weakness or composure for strength. They knew both were tools.
“Come on,” he said in a tone that sounded softer than normal, unusual for how cold this man could be.
I followed him out of the room and up the staircase that led back toward the slaughterhouse levels. The icy temperature dropped the higher we climbed, and by the time we reached the old office, I was shivering again but had been smart enough to bring a blanket with me and wrap it around my shoulders.
The office felt colder than the bunker below. Dmitry pushed the door open and let me step inside ahead of him. Thehowl of the weather creeping through the cracks and broken windowpanes of the building vibrated up from the concrete floor as if the building still remembered what it used to be.
A laptop sat on the metal table with its lid already open, and the closer I moved toward it, the clearer the screen became. An encrypted notification blinked in red at the bottom corner.
Dmitry didn’t speak as he sat down nor did he tell me to move. He let me stare at the screen and experience all of this chain-free. He tapped a few keys, and the encrypted attachment expanded across the screen in neat blocks of cipher and code. There were no men here to run interference, no subordinates to handle the technical side. Everything Dmitry did was done with his own hands.
I realized then why people feared him. He didn’t need an army. He was one.
It took nearly twenty minutes for the layers to peel back. When the last shell dissolved and raw data finally flooded the screen, I stepped closer despite myself. Three warehouse IDs appeared, along with mapped locations, shipment manifests, inventory spreadsheets, and contact numbers that looked like another language to me.
Dmitry exhaled without looking away from the monitor. “Disposable,” he murmured to himself. He moved through the tabs with the same precision he’d used the night before when he made me speak into the phone.
A second tab showed lists of clients. Some names I recognized as associates of my father. I’d even met many of them; their grimy, greasy gazes always locked on me as if they were stripping away layers of my clothing.
“Is that everything you asked for?” I asked quietly.
The chill in the room now came from Dmitry. “He’s still calculating how much of you I’ll keep intact if he feeds me trash.”
The words should have cut, but they didn’t. They only confirmed what I’d learned over the course of my life and especially since I was taken. My father had never loved me, not the way daughters were meant to be loved. He’d invested in me and protected me because I was a valuable object that gained interest when properly groomed and rarely damaged.
Dmitry remained silent as he kept working, clicking through additional tables and compressed directories. His focus never wavered, and the longer I watched him, the more I understood why his name had been whispered with the same reverence other men reserved for saints and surgeons. He wasn’t just deadly; he was also damn smart.
The way he dismantled my father’s data was deliberate and methodical, like he was cutting into infected bone and removing the rot piece by piece. Then he reached the footer, and I knew whatever was in that one inconspicuous line buried at the bottom of the manifest must have slipped through whatever filtering my father intended.
route_black_sea → genoa → sicily → buyer_group_rossi
I knew what that was… who that was. My breath left me all at once, and I covered my mouth with a trembling hand. Rossi. Of all the names my father hid, that was the one he never let slip. The Rossis weren’t street players or even warehouse operators.
They were at the top of the food chain, the type of people who bought screaming women inside of shackled crates.
I didn’t realize I’d moved until the edge of the desk pressed against my thigh. “God,” I whispered.
Dmitry finally looked at me. He didn’t appear sorry or even surprised. His expression was that of a man who had seen too many fathers weaponize their bloodlines to be shocked by it anymore.
“You think he’s sparing you from being sold like those women?” he asked. “No. You’ll just bring a much, much higher price than them when he sells you.” His words weren’t cruel, just precise, truth without anesthetic.
Something inside of me clicked I didn’t shatter. Didn’t explode or scream. It simply tilted into hatred and pivoted with quiet certainty, as if a lock inside of me found the right key. For the first time since Dmitry had taken me, my father wasn’t the most dangerous man in the room. He was just the most desperate.
