He was a ghost in the machine—buried deep in the Bratva’s web, shielded by layers of corrupt agents, private armies, and Rublyovka fortresses that made storming them suicide even for a death dealer like me.
I’d stalked his shadows from afar, piecing together his empire of flesh and film, but striking alone would’ve ended with my head on a pike and his sins buried deeper.
Viktor’s offer changed that. He gave me resources, intel, and a clean in through the gala. Not to mention five million to carve justice slowly and make him feel every second of what he stole from me.
Without it, revenge was a whisper. But with it… a scream that would echo through Moscow’s underbelly.
I finished my cigarette and kept walking. The city was drunk and asleep. Neon bled red onto the ice.
A homeless man held out his hand and offered me a smile that I didn’t return. I gave him a wad of cash, anyway. It was enough to keep the cold from claiming him tonight. Mercy for the weak; none for monsters.
I’d stopped at a flower stand earlier that day. I bought twelve white roses, long-stemmed and perfect. White like innocence. Like the lies Andrey fed his spoiled daughter, no doubt.
Back in my Taganka shithole, I locked the door, stripped off my coat, and opened the safe behind the loose brick. Passports. Bricks of cash. Guns. And one cracked VHS tape labeled in faded marker: “Lot #004–Svetlana M.”
I hadn’t touched it with bare hands in longer than I could remember. I didn’t need to watch it to know what was on it. I had the image burned vividly into my brain and had seen the horror firsthand.
I still saw my mother’s face. She’d begged more to save me from witnessing the horror than she had for saving her own life. Her first scream was still embedded in my bones, and I heard it in my soul every day since then.
I grabbed the VHS, wrapped it in plastic, and slid it into a padded envelope. I addressed it in neat block letters: A. Ivanov, Rublyovka.
No return.
Tomorrow, I’d deliver it in person. Along with something far worse.
I showered until the water ran cold, scrubbing until it felt like my tattoos bled. Thirty-eight winters had carved me into something the devil himself and his fire wouldn’t touch.
Once cleaned and dressed, I laid out tomorrow’s tools on the table like a surgeon: silenced Glock 19, ceramic knife, garrote wire, zip ties, chloroform rag soaked and sealed, and a tiny vial of Rohypnol just in case. I picked up my favorite scalpel… the one I used for my signatures.
I slept without dreams, the white roses on the table staring back at me, but all I could see was them painted in red.
Tomorrow, the king would lose everything.
Chapter 2
Dmitry
Idrove the catering van through the gates wearing a waiter’s uniform that strangled my neck and strained across my shoulders.
The real waiter was zip-tied in the back, gagged with his own socks, but still very much alive.
The dacha rose out of the snow. A palace built from blood money and tortured girls.
Heated marble driveways. Searchlights sweeping the sky. Dogs that were trained to go for the throat first.
Security wore tuxedos over body armor and pretended they weren’t packing Kalashnikovs. Inside smelled of champagne, cigars, and corrupt money so thick you could chew it.
Chandeliers the size of compact cars dripped light across Persian rugs. A string quartet sawed at Tchaikovsky while oligarchs laughed too loudly and politicians pretended they weren’t corrupt as sin and taking back alley deals.
And then there were the cages. Six of them, gilded and human-sized. They were suspended from the ceiling with chains, swaying gently above the crowd like perverse ornaments. And inside each one was a young woman, barely legal age. They were all naked except for leather and gem-encrusted collars thatspoke of ownership. And their eyes… their eyes were hollow and already accepting of their fate.
Some stood motionless, wrists cuffed to the bars, silent tears tracking down their cheeks. Others were curled on the cage floor like broken dolls that weren’t done being used.
Despite the noise filling the room, I could hear a few of the women begging in Ukrainian, some in Russian, others in languages I wasn’t familiar with. They spoke as if they were praying, but no god was answering.
All I wanted to do was slaughter all these motherfuckers and free those pretty caged birds. Not allowing the death dealer in me to satisfy those urges was hard, but I had a bigger task at hand.
I gritted my teeth when, every few minutes, a fat finger adorned with gold and diamond rings, crooked. A handler lowered a cage, and a leash snapped onto the woman’s collar. And then she was led away by the motherfucker who wanted her.
