Chapter 34
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Maksim
The only sound in the room is his breathing—uneven and heavy, grinding against my nerves like a relentless itch I can’t scratch.
“What does this mean?” Ivan’s voice cuts through, indignant, from where he’s tied up like a stray dog.
I always knew I wouldn’t be there when he finally died, not physically. But that didn’t mean I’d let him leave this world without answering for everything he did to me and the people I’ve loved.
Ilya had done his research and found a compound, A-7—a black market chemical, still experimental, used on heart attack patients in military facilities. Combined with electric shock, it was enough to drag Ivan back from death.
It was a gamble, of course. There was always a chance we’d lose him for good, but I knew it was a risk worth taking.
Somehow, luck was on our side and he survived.
His eyes are bloodshot, his body failing.
The heart attack and the shocks have left him weak.
It’s just a question of how much longer he can hold on.
I know what I want to do to him, and after a few minutes, he’ll be more dead than alive, but still, it’s something.
I’ll be the last face he sees before he goes to hell.
After I told Akim the device was disabled, we waited for the convoy of children to arrive.
Ivan doesn’t get involved in his favorite activities much anymore due to his poor heart that can’t take it, but every now and then, someone catches his attention. This convoy was the only one this week, and we had to move fast to take advantage of the opportunity.
With a little bit of help, his blood pressure triggered a cardiac episode.
He didn’t even have time to pull up his pants before he hit the ground.
Akim called the doctor who’s been living on the property for five years, and in less than five minutes, after the defibrillator failed, the doctor declared him dead.
While the doctor made a few calls, Akim injected the compound.
Ivan wanted to be cremated, so Akim took his “corpse”—freshly snatched from death—and hid it in this factory.
Vasili, an old man who died in a car accident an hour earlier, took Ivan’s place at the crematorium thanks to Ilya, who delivered the body to Akim.
Aleksandr was out of town. Ivan’s lawyer confirmed the death with the doctor, and several soldiers saw Akim carrying Ivan, unconscious but alive, out to the car, supposedly on his way to be cremated.
No one doubted a thing. We needed the doctor to see it with his own eyes, and luckily, he’s old school so he never thought to double-check. At my adoptive father’s age, everyone expected this to happen eventually.
ErestonLabs has kept quiet about the security breach, probably too scared of the fallout if their clients found out how close they came to dying because of a mistake.
And now, here I am, face-to-face with the monster who’s haunted me for over twenty-six years.
“So this means I finally get to watch you bleed out, drop by drop, until your veins stick together,” I say, my voice steady.
“Maksim, let me go. You know you won’t get anything out of this. The inheritance, the accounts, everything disappears if my death looks suspicious,” he says, calm as ever, like he’s scolding a child.
There were so many times I almost gave up. Almost. Because I couldn’t find a way to take him out without raising suspicion.
“Well, good thing your death wasn’t suspicious at all,” I reply, a sly grin spreading across my face.
That’s when I see it: his confidence wavers for the first time. He realizes that whatever god protected him from my wrath has finally abandoned him.
“Officially, you died twenty-four hours ago. I’ll be sure to stop by your grave with some flowers after I’m done here,” I say, my voice nearly trembling with anticipation.
A thousand ideas flash through my mind about how I could cut him, make him scream, make him bleed. But just then, the factory doors swing open, and ten pairs of eyes lock onto us.
I didn’t bring everyone because I didn’t want to draw attention, but I managed to fly in ten of Ivan’s victims.
I catch Mikail’s eye, the first boy I ever saved, now twenty-five. When Akim and I pulled him from that car, he had two broken ribs, a shattered left arm, and his face was so swollen with bruises it looked like it might burst.
Isabella is the second. I rescued her straight off a boat. She’d been taken from an orphanage in Rome, destined for an eighty-year-old degenerate.
I’ll never forget how she trembled, how we spent two hours in the freezing waters of the Moskva River to make sure we weren’t being followed.
One by one, I look at each person in front of me. I know they’re here to reclaim the piece of their soul that was stolen from them.
They all suffered at Ivan’s hands: beaten, cut, raped. Justice isn’t just mine. It’s theirs too. I wanted at least some of them to have this chance.
I don’t need to say anything. They know what’s about to happen. We’re all going to take a piece of him. My hands close around my favorite blade as I step toward the demon who stole every reason I had to live.
“Maksim, think about what you’re throwing away,” he says, and I pause.
He looks weak—his heart probably ready to give out for good. But I just need a little more time. Just a little longer.
This is the moment I’ve waited for, dreamed of, prayed for, held onto when nothing else kept me going. If not for the promise I made to Vera, I’d have been gone long ago.
Ivan swallows hard, but he doesn’t beg. He doesn’t ask for anything. I know his heart could give out at any second, but at least we’ll be the last faces he sees before he finally slips away.
I can’t tell if he’s surprised by the betrayal. Maybe, deep down, he always knew he’d die by my hand—that his sick obsession with me would be his undoing. He clung to the idea that we were bound by fate, by this cursed defect in our hearts.
I can tell he recognizes the people behind me.
I know he remembers every plea, every drop of blood, and I just hope he doesn’t start begging too soon.
I want to watch him swallow every complaint, see the veins in his neck strain until they’re ready to burst. His heart is weak and time is short, but I want us to have the satisfaction of cutting him—just once—before the devil calls him home.
One by one, his victims step forward and pick a weapon from the table where Akim has laid out everything we’ll need for this.
Mikail grabs a hammer, turning it over in his hand, hatred burning in his eyes.
The rage makes him tremble, but it’s that same fury that drives him to bring the hammer down on Ivan’s shin in a single, brutal swing.
My adoptive father bites his tongue, letting out nothing but a guttural sound.
Good. I hope you last until it’s my turn. Save your screams for me.
Isabella chooses a handful of nails and a mallet. The little girl Ivan once forced to kneel before him is the first to get a real reaction—a slight jerk of his head, just enough to show he knows this is going to hurt. Badly.
She looks at me, and I know what she wants to do. I take Ivan’s left hand and press it flat against a makeshift wooden table.
The first nail bites into his skin, a stream of red pooling on the table. Isabella doesn’t stop. When she steps back, Ivan has five nails in each hand.
“For every day you touched me. For every breath that reeked of whiskey. I hope you burn in hell forever.”
Each person chooses their weapon, reclaiming the part of themselves that was destroyed in this place.
By the end, Ivan is barely breathing. His whimpers are a twisted mix of agony and relief. Does he really think it’s over? That I’ll just put a bullet in his head?
I know how much blood he’s lost, how fragile his heart is. He’s got minutes left, at most, but I’ll make them count.
The scalpel feels electric in my palm. I lean in, meeting his eyes.
“You were so blind. So deaf. So numb. I hope I can show you just how much that hurt me. Goodbye, Ivan. If we meet in hell, I’ll come play with you again.”
He hisses, “You’re my greatest disappointment.”
I shake my head. “No, Ivan. You should be proud. I learned to be an even bigger snake than you.”
I grip his throat to steady his head, press the scalpel to his chest, and his screams—God, his screams—are my release. I feel the old Maksim, the one he tried to bury, clawing his way out of the darkness.
Vera’s last request echoes in my mind as I work, feeling every layer of tissue give way under the blade.
It takes effort, but with Akim’s tools, I finally pull his heart from his chest and squeeze.
This chunk of flesh kept him alive all these years, pumped blood through his veins while he destroyed us.
Now he’s gone.
The scalpel clatters to the floor, the only sound in the warehouse’s silence.
Mikail takes my hand. I look down and see Isabella take the other. One by one, we form a human chain, standing together while the man who tore us apart lies dead at our feet.
He’ll never hurt anyone again.
Maybe this is the cure we needed to finally leave the past behind, a past so stained with blood and pain that I know it’ll ripple into the future. This fight won’t end tomorrow, but I feel a chapter closing.
And right now, standing here together, complicit in this act, I realize I was never alone. I was with them. Every step. In suffering. In escape. In writing our future.