Chapter 55 Sienna
SIENNA
Fuck, yes. I sat back in my chair as electric energy raced through me.
“I have to say, I’m impressing myself here.”
Vovchyk lazily raised his head to give me what I interpreted as a look of approval before lying back down on the jumbo dog bed I’d ordered for him.
I turned back to the computer screen with a wide smile.
It had been weeks since I’d had a breakthrough in the Souleater job, and the challenge only increased my obsession.
With the exception of building the decoder to unlock Claude’s safe in Paris, it had been ages since I’d taken a job that actually posed a challenge.
It was horrible and frustrating and thrilling, but each failure brought the correct path closer.
Tonight had finally brought answers, and it was all thanks to Arta.
Apparently, the Souleater had come to Albania from Russia years ago, when the Syndicate was still ruled by corrupt men, including Arta’s and Elira’s husbands.
The women took careful note of the Souleater’s proposal to form an alliance to expand sex trafficking operations.
They wasted no time creating a strategy for how to stop him, and it had seemed like the universe was finally smiling down on them when he dropped dead shortly after his visit.
Arta had let out a string of what I could only assume were Albanian curses when I’d sent her the evidence that he was still alive.
I had asked Arta if she wanted to work together to find the Souleater, but she was currently leading a mission to liberate a secret mountain prison.
That didn’t stop her from sending over any intel she came across, which was how I’d found out the Souleater was known for keeping detailed daily journals.
Finding them had become my new fixation, but Arta had beaten me there, too, when she sent over intel that the Souleater had a sister and stored all of his files on her server—one I had just successfully infiltrated.
I drummed my fingers on my desk as I ran the thousands of files I’d stolen through my anti-encryption software.
Should I message Atlas to let him know what I’d found?
Despite my excitement, exhaustion clung to me and I lowered my head to the desk.
I would wait until I saw what the files were.
Didn’t want to get his hopes up if they were nothing.
I drifted off, floating in a half-asleep, half-awake state until the ping of my computer jolted me upright.
The first batch of files was ready. I held my breath as I clicked on the top one.
It was a low-quality scan of a handwritten note dated March 1977.
There was a list of numbers, but the rest was in Russian.
I quickly scanned through the rest—there weren’t many notes from the 70s and 80s, but by the time the 90s hit, the Souleater was writing long, detailed weekly reports.
Thankfully, he had switched to typing his notes by then.
I chose an entry at random and ran it through a translator. The excited satisfaction I’d felt minutes ago evaporated the longer I read.
What they documented was horrifying beyond belief.
The screen blurred until I could no longer read the words through my tears.
Vovchyk had stayed glued to my side all night, but as the first rays of sun crept over the horizon, he’d tugged on my sweatshirt and pulled me away from the computer until I followed him outside.
I sat in the middle of the garden, my arms wrapped around my belly while the steady falling snow covered my body in a white blanket.
The world was quiet. Snowflakes fell in an unseasonably cold Chicago March, and the wind played with the messy ends of my hair. But there was nothing quiet or gentle about the thoughts racing through my mind.
I wanted to burn the pages of the Souleater’s journals from my brain.
Every line I’d read and image I’d seen would haunt me for the rest of my life.
But I couldn’t turn away, no matter how much I wanted to.
His victims deserved more. They deserved to have someone in their corner fighting for them after the horrific, torturous experiments he’d carried out.
Things had ramped up with his sick experiments around twenty years ago when he’d turned to a new victim named Mitka.
The physical and psychological torture the boy had suffered for two years was horrifying, all in an effort to break him—whatever that meant.
After Mitka, he’d turned to Lev, and later Sasha.
Their torture was documented in pages and pages of detailed notes that painstakingly described every scar the Souleater inflicted.
My insides were raw and hurting. Nothing could make this better. Nothing could ever undo the pain those people have endured.
Right before dawn, I read the final entry from five years ago.
One month after the entry, the underground spy networks had reported his demise, which was the first time I’d heard the Souleater’s name.
I hadn’t paid much attention to it. I was freshly graduated and determined to establish my reputation in the hacking community.
Why focus on the dead when the living caused enough trouble?
Except he wasn’t dead.
White-hot rage sliced through the icy cold enveloping my trembling body. I would do whatever I could to eliminate him from the face of the earth. And this time, he would not rise from the dead.
My frozen fingers clutched my phone. I needed to send everything I’d found over to Atlas, but the task was too overwhelming.
Sobs wracked my body as the pain I’d been holding inside spilled out of me.
It wasn’t fair. Nothing about the world was fair.
My lack of sleep, the horrible cruelty I’d spent hours reading, and the despair I felt knowing I was bringing my daughter into such a cruel world overwhelmed my ability to cope.
I was breaking apart at the seams. I clung to Vovchyk, but it wasn’t enough. I was drowning in my loneliness.
My finger hovered over my phone contacts…but instead of messaging Atlas, it was Dimitri’s number I called. The second the phone rang, a wave of doubt crashed over me, so strong I almost hung up. What if he didn’t want to talk to me? What would I even say?
He picked up on the second ring. “Sienna? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
I squeezed my eyes shut against a fresh wave of tears. “Hi.”
“Why are you crying? Did something happen?”
“No, everything’s fine.” My breath hitched and I clutched my chest as if that would somehow ease the sharp pain.
I wanted to tell Dimitri everything—about my hacking, this client, the Souleater—but I couldn’t.
My hacking set him off last time and even though confessing everything would prove I didn’t put the Bratva at risk, what if he reacted like Matteo?
By screaming at me about my foolishness and the dangers involved?
So I gave the only excuse I could think of, one I knew he’d understand. “I had a bad dream.”
“I’m sorry, malyshka.” His tone was so soft, as comforting as a warm blanket against the snowy cold. “Want to tell me about it?”
“No.” I wiped my tears with my sleeve. It was soon soaked.
“Okay, sweetheart. Are you still in bed?”
“I’m outside.”
“What? Why? Isn’t it cold out? And still dark?”
I sniffled. “The sky’s getting lighter.” A sharp gust of wind blew through the garden, slicing through my clothes like a knife, stinging my face and making my teeth chatter.
“You need to go inside and get warm.” When I didn’t respond, he deepened his voice. “Now. Go inside.”
My stiff, frozen limbs creaked as I pushed to my feet. Vovk did the same, shaking off the dusting of snow on his fur before following me inside. The wall of warm air stung my skin.
“I’m inside,” I said through my chattering teeth.
“Good girl. Why don’t you go upstairs and get back in bed?” He phrased it like a question, but it sounded like a command.
“My clothes are wet from the snow,” I responded.
“You can get changed in your room,” he said patiently.
Right. That was where the clothes were.
Dimi stayed on the phone with me as I shuffled to my room, stripped off my clothes, and curled up under the covers.
“I’m in bed,” I whispered.
Early morning sun peeked in through a gap in the curtain, but I was still trapped in the darkness.
“Are you warming up?”
“Yeah.”
“If I was there, I’d wrap my arms around you to keep you warm and banish the nightmares.”
Tears welled in my eyes again. “Why are you being so nice to me?” I choked out.
“Should I not be nice?” he asked.
“You haven’t always been.”
“Oh, malyshka. I was an ass. You deserve kindness all the time.” His breath hitched. “When I had bad dreams as a child, sometimes my mama would read to me to help me fall back asleep. I have a couple of books here. They’re in Russian, but maybe it could still help if I read to you?”
“You want to do that?”
“More than anything.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as another sob wracked my chest. “Okay.”
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Now, close your eyes. I’ll keep the bad dreams away.”
My fire to see the Souleater ended would return when I woke, but right now, I surrendered to Dimitri, drifting away to the sound of his voice.