The video uploaded to the same dark-web dead drop I’d been monitoring since 2005. It was a private onion service, a server designed for extreme privacy, anonymity, and security. Andrey had spun up on a bulletproof host in Ukraine. No log in. No password. Just a long, static access token he’d embedded in the taunting note he mailed me with the original tape.
I’d memorized that sixty-four character string printed on the back of a Polaroid still from the video.
He thought it was funny giving the grieving son a direct line to his next “product preview”. I knew he got paid to taunt me, by a client who enjoyed the trauma of others and prolonged it.
Andrey was a fool, though. He never changed it. Never rotated the token. He imagined no one would keep checking for thirty-eight years.
I did.
Every month, I chained proxies, logged in through Tor, and watched the upload directory. He used it sporadically with client confirmations, payout proofs, and low-res previews for old buyers who still paid premium.
Arrogant motherfucker. Did he really believe no one held a grudge? Or maybe that no one would ever be strong enough or have the balls to take him on?
But I held on like a knife pressed to the throat, waiting for the right moment to push in and bleed them out.
The video finished uploading and completing, and I felt another wave, a rush of adrenaline that he’d see the proof of life and pain that The Death Dealer had finally come to collect.
Zoya lunged, chain yanking her up short, wrists bleeding where the cuffs bit in. “I’ll kill you,” she hissed.
I chuckled, a genuine one that I felt in my gut.
“I swear on God I’ll?—”
I was on her before she finished the sentence. One hand collared her throat, not squeezing, just holding her still. My thumb pressed over the frantic beat of her pulse.
“Tikho, malyshka... a to Diler Smerti pridet.”Quiet,malyshka...or The Death Dealer will come.
She froze, breath coming in sharp little pants against my wrist. I let my gaze drag down her body, slow, deliberate. Over the gooseflesh, over the way her thighs trembled even though she tried to stop them. And then back up to those furious blue eyes.
I could have said so many things. I could have told her the truth about why she was here. Paying for her father’s sins. Instead, I said, “You’re cold.” I rose and pocketed the phone before shrugging out of my coat. This minor act of mercy was only because hypothermia would end her too fast. It would ruin the long, slow bleed I needed for her father.
I draped the heavy black wool lined with shearling over her shoulders. It swallowed her whole, the hem pooling on the floor.
She stared at me as if I’d grown a second head but stayed silent.
I stood, stepped back, and pulled a silver flask from my back pocket. Vodka. I took a swallow then held it out. She didn’t move. “Drink,” I said. “It’ll warm you up.” She pursed her lips again. “Drink, or I'll pour it down your throat. Your choice.”
Her chin lifted, defiant, but her teeth were chattering, and she was a smart girl. She reached with chained hands, fingersstiff and clumsy from the cold, and took the flask. The first sip had her coughing and wheezing. The second and third, she acted like a pro.
Tears sprang to her eyes from the burn, but color came back to her lips. I watched her throat work as she drank a little more, her long neck flexing and relaxing as she swallowed down, her pale chest flushing light pink from the fire of the vodka, her lips wet from drinking. I felt nothing I wanted to name.
When she was finished, I took the flask and took a hearty drink before pocketing it again.
“Why?” she rasped and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Why me?”
I let her question hang between us. I crouched again, closer this time, wondering how much I’d tell her or if I’d tell her anything at all. In the end, I wanted her to know what a piece of shit her father was. “Because when I was seventeen years old, Andrey took money to film my mother being murdered and made me watch,” I said with so much coldness, so much hatred in my voice, Zoya shrank back on instinct. “And then he sold the tape to men who jerked off to her screams, blood, and her dying on a cold, stained concrete floor.” I curled my hands into fists until my knuckles ached and turned white. “Because I have waited thirty-eight years to make him feel what I felt that night.”
Her face drained of color so fast it looked like the life had been siphoned out of her. Her blue eyes widened, pupils blowing, but she didn’t scream or sob. She just stared at me, at the man who’d dragged her into this hell, while her breath came in short, shallow bursts.
“No,” she finally said, voice barely above a whisper. “That’s… that can’t be true.” She shook her head back and forth, her hair slapping her cheeks, as if she could dislodge my words. “I knew he was bad. I knew the money wasn’t clean. Drugs. Guns.People got hurt. People disappeared. I told myself it was dirty business… but not this. Not what you’re saying he did.”
Her gaze flicked to the pocket where I’d slipped the phone then back to my face, searching for a lie. I stayed silent.
And the longer she stared at me, the more I let the truth show on my expression, the more final it all became to her. Doubt was already sinking in. I could hear the cold, heavy, irreversible reality filling her. She pressed her hands to her mouth as if she could hold the nausea down.
“I lived in that house,” she whispered almost to herself. “I ate at his table. I wore the dresses he bought me with that money.”
She closed her eyes for a second, as if she were trying to clear the words out of her skull. When she opened them again, her gaze lifted to mine, bright with fury, still edged with terror but now there was something harder underneath.
