Chapter 2 #2
“But to me, you look like every other street dog that crawled out of Kharkiv. Mangy. Starved. Loyal to no one. How do I know you won’t turn on me the second I turn my back?”
Ah. There it was. The real interview.
I gave him a slow smile. Not the kind that invites trust—the kind that warns you not to.
“You don’t. But you’ve got money, power, and a job I want. That’s enough—for now. Just don’t expect blind devotion—I’m not that kind of dog.”
He studied me like he was trying to peel my skin back with his eyes. The way men do when they’re deciding whether to use you or kill you.
“Who do you answer to now?” he asked, casually enough.
I shrugged. “No one. Never have. But I can follow a man worth following.”
That made him tilt his head a little.
“And what do you want from me?”
“I like heights,” I said. “The view’s better from the top.”
He was quiet for a beat too long. Then, as if the whole conversation had been a warm-up, he threw in the last spark.
“I saw you talk to my daughter.”
Here we fucking go.
“What do you think of her?”
I kept my face blank. But my thoughts? My thoughts were a firestorm.
You mean the brat in the silk robe who stared me down like she owned the world? The one whose thighs would probably feel like sin but whose mouth talks like she’s never been told no?
“You’ve got the wrong guy if you want me babysitting,” I said, already done with the subject.
A thin smirk curled at the edge of his mouth, like he’d gotten the reaction he wanted.
He turned slightly, opened a cabinet, and pulled out a heavy bottle of vodka and two shot glasses.
He poured. One for me, one for him.
I took the glass without a flicker of hesitation, skipped the formalities—no sniffing, no toasting—and drank it in one clean, practiced motion before setting it back down with a quiet tap.
“Now,” I said, licking the burn from my teeth. “Tell me who dies.”
He slid a folder across the desk, as if he were handing me a menu instead of a murder contract. I opened it.
A photo. A name. A cop.
“That’s it?” I asked. “Just a cop?”
I didn’t even bother hiding the boredom in my voice. I’d taken out worse over unpaid debts and bad attitudes. This felt beneath me.
Pakhan’s smile barely moved. “Just a cop. But the kind who doesn’t listen when he’s warned. The kind who’s been sniffing too close to my shipping lanes.”
He leaned forward. “I don’t like noise, Maksym. I want this noise removed.”
He paused, then added, “I could’ve sent anyone for this. But you have a reputation. They call you the Reaper for a reason, yes? I don’t just want him gone—I want the message burned into every cop dumb enough to look my way.”
There it was—the nickname. I swallowed the urge to roll my eyes.
Now it all made sense.
He didn’t want silence.
He wanted screams.
I didn’t care who the man was. Didn’t matter if he had a badge or a Bible. He was just another job. Another future headline that would never get written.
“Fine,” I said.
Pakhan gave a single nod. “We’ll talk after.”
I turned and walked out, folder tucked under my arm.
Test accepted. This wasn’t about the kill. It was about the way it would echo. He wanted me to drag it out—make it hurt. Make it loud. And he’d picked the right man to do it.
He was called Alexey Ostapenko. Name sounded like a fucking puppy. The kind of guy who probably brought homemade sandwiches to work and smiled at neighbors. According to the file, he got home by nine like a good boy and never went out. Routine. Predictable. The kind that made him easy to erase.
Boring.
I was already parked across the street, one hand on the wheel, the other holding a cigarette, smoke curling through the cracked window in slow, uneven spirals.
I tapped ash into the stale air, the streetlight flickering across the windshield.
For a moment, I wasn’t looking at the house across the street anymore.
The silence, the stillness—something about it opened a door I hadn’t touched in years.
And there it was: the memory I never chased but never really left behind. My first kill.
I was eighteen. By then, the softness had long been carved out of me.
Regret wasn’t in my vocabulary. The order came from my boss in Kyiv, bored-sounding, almost lazy: take care of Oleksandr. No explanation needed.
Everyone knew he was slipping—dipping into product, stealing from the stash, pissing away loyalty like it was cheap vodka.
The fucked-up part? He was the one who found me first. Pulled me out of the orphanage in Kharkiv.
Gave me my first ride, my first job, showed me how to throw a punch without breaking my thumb.
A few years later he was the one who brought me to Kyiv with him too—said there was real money there if I was smart enough to survive.
And none of it mattered. Not to the boss. Not to me.
I waited for him near an alley off the back of a convenience store—one of his usual drop points. When he showed, hunched and twitchy, I already had the gun in my hand. He smiled when he saw me. Maybe he thought we’d talk. Maybe he thought I was still that kid from the bunk bed below his.
I didn’t say anything. Just raised the gun and pulled the trigger.
There was a flicker of something inside me—something sharp and bright and gone before I could name it. Then just silence. The gun was warm in my hand. His body folded to the concrete, blood leaking out fast and angry, painting the cracks beneath him.
I took the money out of his pocket and walked away. Didn’t run. Didn’t look back.
It didn’t feel like a beginning. It felt like recognition. Like I’d just stepped into the life I’d always known was waiting for me.
The sound of footsteps crunching across the pavement stirred the present back into focus, slicing through the haze of memory like a blade. My hand found the wheel again. The clock read 21:02.
And there he was. Trudging up the steps with grocery bags like this was the most normal night of his life.
Pakhan’s words echoed like an afterthought: I don’t like noise.
Well. Time to silence it.
The job was a joke—low-level, clean, quiet. No guards. No gang ties. Just a mid-tier cop who didn’t know when to back off.
I waited. Let the door close behind him. Gave it ten minutes. Then I stepped out.
The front door was one of those heavy metal slabs with a busted keypad. Most people just buzzed the entire panel and waited for some babushka on the fifth floor to let them in. I did the same. Pressed every button except his. Someone always answered.
Bzzz.
The door clicked. I slipped inside, past the chipped mailboxes and broken elevator, up the stairwell with its peeling green paint and burnt-out bulbs.
The front door of his apartment offered no resistance. There was no alarm, no extra locks—just a single deadbolt that gave way too easily under my hand.
Inside, the place was warm. Lived-in. The soft buzz of a flatscreen echoed from the living room.
I moved silently, every footstep calculated. I passed what looked like a home office—photos on the wall. Dozens of them.
I didn’t stop walking.
Not my fucking business. I wasn’t paid to care. I was paid to kill.
He was in the living room, back to me, drink in hand, eyes half-watching a game show. Something cheap and loud.
He had that cop sixth sense, though. Maybe it was the creak of the floorboard. Maybe just instinct.
He started to turn.
Too late.
I closed the distance in one step and slammed the butt of the gun into the side of his head. His body folded like the strings had been cut, the beer bottle slipping from his hand and rolling across the floor as he crumpled. He didn’t even have time to scream.
I caught him before he hit the ground wrong, lowered him down, and checked his pulse. Still there. Good.
I left him slumped in front of the TV, the flickering light washing over his unconscious face while the host on screen kept shouting about prizes. I tied him up right there—wrists, ankles, methodical knots I’d tied a hundred times before.
Pakhan hadn’t asked for a body.
He’d asked for a message.
While he slept, I moved through the apartment.
The office came first. A narrow room with a cheap desk and too many pictures pinned to the walls. Kids. Boys and girls. Different ages. Different years. Some smiling. Some not. Missing-person faces. The kind you stop seeing after a while because there are too many of them.
I frowned.
What were you digging into, Alexey?
A thick, worn folder sat on the desk. I flipped it open and skimmed through it, pages sliding under my thumb.
Tables filled with names, locations, ages, and dates blurred together.
There were printed articles clipped and stapled in, scattered receipts, and handwritten notes squeezed into the margins.
Interesting.
I took the folder with me into the living room and dropped onto the couch like I owned the place, the folder resting on my knee. I didn’t read it properly—just enough to know it wasn’t nothing.
A groan cut through the noise of the TV.
He was waking up.
I looked up as his eyes fluttered open, confusion swimming there before recognition hit and everything went rigid with fear.
“Rise and shine,” I said in a flat, deadpan drawl, like someone mimicking a cheerful wake-up call at a morgue. “We’ve got so much not to talk about.”
He swallowed hard, tried to move, failed. His voice came out rough. “I was too close, wasn’t I?” he said. “I just wanted to find them.”
I stood, walked over, crouched in front of him.
“Sorry,” I said, not meaning it. “Wrong man for a heart-to-heart.”
Then I taped his mouth shut before he could say another word.
“Nothing personal,” I said, rolling up my sleeves. “But it’s going to feel like it is.”
The tape would muffle, but not enough. I scanned the room and spotted the record player, a crate of albums beside it.
I wandered over, thumbing through the sleeves while he lay there watching me, eyes wide, breathing sharp and panicked. “Look at you,” I said mildly. “Didn’t take you for a vinyl guy.”
I held one up. “Beethoven? Nah, too heavy.” Another. “ABBA? You romantic bastard.” He groaned. “Hey, I’m not judging. Just... surprised.”
In the end, I picked an AC/DC album. Loud. Relentless. Perfect. I turned the dial up. “Better,” I said. “Let’s begin.”
What followed wasn’t quick.
By the time I was done, the apartment smelled like iron and sweat, and I was slick with his blood. He didn’t scream anymore. Not through the tape, anyway. Just choked sounds and the wet noise of pain. Pakhan would be pleased.
I washed my hands in the sink until the water ran clear. Dried them. Then I wiped every handle I’d touched, every surface, slow and thorough. Clean work mattered.
I picked up the folder from the couch and tucked it under my arm. Maybe I’d read it later. Maybe I’d burn it.
When I left, I didn’t hide what I’d done. I left him where he was, broken and unmistakable.
Let the rats clean it up. Let the neighbors talk. Let whoever finds him put two and two together and start sleeping with the lights on.