I almost smiled.
They’d called me The Death Dealer since I walked out of a basement with five dead men’s fingers lined up in a cigar case.
Thirty-five years of taking souvenirs.
“Prezhde chem ya soglashus’,” I said, “ya khochu koe-chto.”Before I agree, I want something.
“Ty ne v polozhe—”You’re in no?—
“Ya vsegda v polozhenii, chtoby uyti.”I’m always in a position to walk.
Viktor’s eyes narrowed, calculating. Finally, he took the drive and pocketed it and the photograph. “Ch? tebe nado?”What do you want?
“Ya ego zamochu za tebya, no informatsiya tol'ko u nego. Mne nado vytyanut' yeyo pered tem, kak ub'yu, tak chto mozhet zatyanut'sya dol'she tvoego dedlayna.”I'll kill him for you, but I need information that only he has. I have to get it out of him before I take him out, so this might take more time than your deadline.
The words came out flat. Just facts, like reciting a grocery list written in blood.
Viktor studied me for a long second before he responded. “Ladno. Glavnoe, chtoby delo bylo sdelano, delai s nim chto khochesh'.”Fine. As long as you get the job done, do with him what you want.
I nodded once. Viktor was old school and produced the contract. It was on thick cream paper, already signed in Viktor’s spidery Cyrillic. I took my knife and sliced the pad of my thumb, pressing it to the paper in a perfect, bloody print beside my name: Dmitry Myasnikov.
But to the world, I had no legal name. I was known to those unfortunate to have heard of my reputation as just The Death Dealer.
My cell buzzed with the first wire transfer. I’d get the rest once the job was done.
“Gala zavtra vecherom,” Viktor said. “Rublyovka dacha. Chornyy galstuk. Ya organizoval formu ofitsianta. Okhrana strozhe, chem pizda devstvennitsy, no ty proskochish’.”Gala tomorrow night. Rublyovka dacha, Andrey’s estate. Black tie. I arranged a waiter’s uniform. Security’s tighter than a virgin’s cunt, but you’ll ghost through.
I said nothing after his crude instructions, and turned to leave.
“Yeshchyo odno, Dima.”One more thing, Dima.
The nickname dug deep. I paused under the broken arch.
“U Andreya yest’ doch’. Zoya. Dvadtsat’ tri. Simpatichnaya shtuchka. Izbalovannaya. Esli ona vstanet u tebya na puti—”Andrey has a daughter. Zoya. Twenty-three. Pretty little thing. Spoiled. If she gets in your way?—
“Ya ne ubivayu zhenshchin.”I don’t kill women.
“Ya i ne prosil tebya,” he said, smiling thinly. “Prosto ne day yey sdelat’ tebya glupym. Krasivyye veshchi tak vliyayut na muzhchin tvoyego vozrasta.”I wasn’t asking you to. Just don’t let her make you stupid. Pretty things do that to men your age.
Fifty-five years old and the words still landed like a boot to the ribs. Pretty things. Just like my mother when they broke her on camera. I walked out without answering.
Outside, everything was a white blur. I lit a cigarette under frozen statues and watched the snow devour the cherry. Time had threaded silver through the black at my temples, but my eyes were still winter-gray and empty.
My body was heavier now, thicker through the chest and shoulders, muscle layered over muscle like armor plating. Scars crossed every inch of my skin that the ink didn’t cover.
Tattooed across my chest in brutal Cyrillic was ?? ??????—I do not forgive.
The past rose. I was seventeen the night I heard my mother screaming in the apartment we couldn’t afford. They dragged us to the basement where I saw two animals waiting. They zip-tied me to a metal chair, taped my eyelids open, and made me watch from behind the camera as they destroyed everything good and pure about my mother. She begged for mercy in the voice that used to sing me to sleep when the violence was right outside our window.
Ivanov never showed his face on film, but I saw his reflection in a mirror, adjusting the tripod, laughing, telling the actor to drag it out because “the client paid extra for tears and for the son to watch, the sick fuck.” And then he’d laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
When it was over, it felt like days, weeks, had passed, like I had been in a hell that was never-ending. They left the tape in the VCR and walked away like they hadn’t just destroyed my world.
I sat in the dark until sunrise, wrists raw, piss cold on my thighs. And all I could see right in front of me was the carnage of the horror they forced me to watch.
I buried what was left of my mother in an unmarked grave outside Sergiev Posad. Then I learned how to kill quietly and never looked back.
I’d nursed that hate for thirty-eight years, letting it fester like a wound that never heals, because Andrey Ivanov wasn’t just some street rat I could gut in an alley.
