Chapter 18
One Way or Another
—Maksym—
One bottle later, we were slumped across from each other at the kitchen table, both in track pants and sweat-stained white tank tops, looking like the saddest bastards. The air was dense with smoke and the ashtray between us overflowed with the stubs of half-smoked cigarettes.
Sashko’s eyes were glassy, his jaw slack, his cigarette clinging to his bottom lip like it had a death wish. He lit a new one with the dying ember of the last and exhaled slow.
“You know,” he slurred, lifting his shot glass with the reverence of a priest at confession, “you’re like a br— brother to me.”
I raised an eyebrow, narrowing my eyes. “I don’t have brothers.”
“Don’t give a fuckkk,” he said, sloshing half the vodka onto the table as he downed it. “You’re still mine. Blood of the fucked-up covenant. Mafia baptism or some shit. I’d go to war for you. I’d tattoo your name on my ass.”
“Please don’t,” I muttered, squinting at him with a mix of disbelief and secondhand shame, dragging my palm down my face like I could wipe the image from my brain.
He squinted at me like I was two people and both of them annoyed him. “I love you, suka. Like trench brothers. Like if you bleed, I bleed. That kind of love. Deep. Ugly. Forever.”
I snorted, stubbed out my cigarette with a little too much force. “You’re an idiot.”
“But I’m your idiot,” he said, grinning, and leaned over the table to grab the back of my neck, yanking me forward so our foreheads knocked together. “Brotherhood, blyad. Fucking sacred.”
We stayed like that for a beat, both reeking of smoke and sweat and liquor, and then burst out laughing like lunatics.
“But seriously,” he said, tone dipping. “What happe— what happened? What the hell’s going on with you?”
I picked up the bottle, tilted it, took a long swallow. My throat burned.
“I’m going to kill Pakhan.”
He snorted vodka out of his nose and grabbed a paper towel. “Shit, warn a guy. Big ambition. You and every other miserable fuck with a conscience.”
“Next time you won’t be able to stop me.”
Sashko leaned in, elbows digging into the table, eyes narrowing. “Okay, but why now? What finally snapped in that sociopathic head of yours? Did he insult your tattoos?”
I didn’t blink.
“He kidnapped my sister when she was three. And sold her.”
The room went dead. Sashko froze mid-drag. Smoke curled between us like a noose tightening.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
I staggered to my feet and wandered out to the wrecked living room, crunching over broken glass and splintered wood.
The folder was still on the floor, half-buried under a toppled chair.
I bent down, grabbed it with shaking hands, the pages gaping open like a fresh wound. I tossed it down in front of him.
“Everything she said. It’s true. He’s been kidnapping kids. Selling them. U.S., Europe—whoever’s paying. It’s all here.”
Sashko stared like it might explode.
“You sure it’s her?”
“You think I wouldn’t know my own blood?”
We sat in silence, the fridge humming in the background, the ashtray overflowing, our shot glasses empty again.
Then he poured two more shots. We didn’t clink glasses. Just drank.
“There’s a limit even for me,” he muttered, quieter now. “This is that limit. I’m standing with you—no question.”
“You serious?”
“Dead fucking serious. And guess what? We’re not alone. Plenty of guys under Pakhan, they got kids. They still got scraps of conscience buried somewhere. If they see this? They’ll turn.”
He leaned in like we were planning a heist.
“We’ll build something. A real fucking army.”
I gave him a look. “An army of drunks.”
“Exactly. Dangerous as fuck. Belligerent, broke, and high on vengeance. No one’s scarier than pissed-off men with nothing left to lose.”
We laughed again—the kind of laughter that hurt your ribs and made your eyes water. It spilled out in ragged bursts, bitter and wild and laced with something close to madness.
“We’re gonna end him,” I said. “One way or another.”
“I’ll stand behind you,” he said, tapping the table like a sacred oath. “You’re cold as fuck, Reaper, but people will follow you. Even if it’s straight to hell.”
“You’re fucked in the head,” I muttered.
“And you’re my fucking brother,” he shot back, grabbing the back of my neck again and knocking our heads together with a solid thud. “You hear me? You and me. Till the end.”
“Jesus, you’re dramatic when you’re drunk.”
“Drunk? This is clarity, suka.”
And we poured another round.
The morning hit slow and bitter, like poison settling in the blood.
My mouth tasted like smoke and regret, dry as ash.
My head throbbed as if something industrial had taken up residence inside it—a slow, merciless pounding that reminded me I was still alive.
Sashko was passed out on the couch, snoring like a war crime.
His limbs sprawled across the cushions, mouth open, one foot still wearing a shoe like he’d lost the battle with gravity halfway through taking it off.
Empty glasses littered the table between us, surrounded by the graveyard of cigarette butts in an overflowing ashtray.
Burn marks dotted the wood. The air reeked of stale liquor and something else—something heavier.
I sat in the living room, elbows on my knees, a cigarette smoldering between two fingers. The folder was back in my lap. I hadn’t even realized I’d picked it up again. My eyes burned as I stared down at it—creased pages, smeared ink, fingerprints like bruises. The same fucking list.
All those children.
A six-year-old from Odesa. An eight-year-old from Lviv. Tiny photos were attached to a few, but most didn’t even have that. Just sterile data, printed in tight, impersonal columns. Sold like livestock. Tracked like shipments.
Pakhan didn’t just approve of this. He built it.
Designed it. This wasn’t one rotten deal he’d looked the other way on.
This was infrastructure. Organized. Catalogued.
Monetized. He probably laughed while counting the cash, drinking something aged and imported, toasting to another fucking milestone.
I dragged from the cigarette again, ash tumbling onto my thigh.
My jaw still ached from how hard I’d clenched it last night.
I’d nearly walked into that mansion like an executioner without a plan.
Gun in hand, eyes blind with rage. If Sashko hadn’t stopped me, I might’ve done something irreversible.
I knew I’d acted recklessly—stupidly—and had come close to getting myself killed.
But the second I saw her name, printed on that page like any other, something inside me fractured.
The part of me that calculated, that survived by shutting off everything human—it just stopped working. All that was left was fire.
I stared at the folder again. The paper trembled between my fingers, my pulse hadn’t slowed since last night.
But this couldn’t be about emotion. Not anymore.
I couldn’t kill Pakhan yet. Not until I had every detail. Every connection. Who was involved, who was buying, who was looking the other way. The money trails. The logistics. The fucking diplomats and businessmen pretending their hands were clean.
More than anything, I needed to know where Mila was.
Whether she was even alive. I doubted it; the odds were brutal.
Twenty years had passed since she was taken.
Yet if fate had spared her, I had to know.
Needed to look her in the eye, to prove she was real.
She was my sister. My blood. And if she was still out there, nothing would keep me from her.
So I would wait. I would listen. I would move through the shadows with purpose.
And when the time finally came, I would kill him.
There would be no quick death. No clean bullet while he slept, oblivious in his silk sheets.
I could already picture it—what I’d do to him.
I would unleash everything the Reaper had ever learned about pain.
With a cruelty calibrated for every child he ever stole, every scream he ignored.
And in the end, when his body was broken and his soul begging for release, the last thing he would see would be Mila’s face—her image carved into his mind—before I shut off his light for good.
I didn’t care if I had to do it alone, with no allies and no backup. Retribution wouldn’t be a fleeting strike. It would be something carved into him—bone deep and permanent. And he wouldn’t be the only one. Every man who played a part in this rot would fall. One by one.
Every bastard who signed a form, who drove a van, who looked away while a child screamed—they’d all pay. Burned out of this world like the rats they were. I’d make them understand what it meant to destroy something innocent.
I glanced over at Sashko again. Still drooling into the pillow, twitching like he was arguing with someone in a dream.
Loyal bastard. Loyal enough to put his life between me and my own rage.
Idiot. Brother. The only one who saw me at my worst and didn’t run.
Maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t as alone as I thought.
And Kira… maybe the cruelest twist of all.
That I’d fall for the daughter of the man who’d engineered my destruction.
Who set the fire that scorched everything good out of me.
But she wasn’t him. She was everything he wasn’t.
And no matter how twisted this got, I wasn’t giving her up.
She didn’t know what he did to me. And I wasn’t going to bury her with his crimes.
Even though I didn’t know where she stood, not really.
She hated him. Of course she did. But hate alone doesn’t mean she’d let me kill him.
Maybe she still hoped for some kind of love.
Some final chance at redemption. Maybe, when his blood started spilling, she’d panic.
Scream. Try to save him. And that scared the shit out of me—because I wouldn’t stop. Not for her. Not for anyone.
Then came the thought of Felix. Fucking snake.
I saw his eyes, the way they crawled over her like she was a gift wrapped just for him. He’ll choke on that fantasy. I’d tear his throat out before I let him breathe the same air as her.
I blew out another drag of smoke and watched it twist toward the ceiling.
War between Pakhan and Moscow had once seemed like the worst-case scenario—a bloodbath with no end, a chaos too sprawling to contain. A month ago, I’d have done anything to avoid it. I knew how fast that kind of fire spread, how deep it burned. But now, I saw it for what it could be.
An opportunity.
If I played it right—if I used the tension, the politics, the suspicion—I could burn him from both ends. Turn his enemies into my weapons. Let the fire swallow him whole.
I’d find Mila.
I’d make him suffer.
And when it was done, it wouldn’t be his legacy that lived on.
It would be mine.
By the time evening descended, I stood outside Pakhan’s estate with a fresh cigarette smoldering between my lips and a new sense of purpose thrumming beneath my skin.
He’d summoned me—claimed there was a job that needed my attention. Something I had to handle. But this time, I wasn’t just going to kiss his ring and play the obedient pit bull. This time, I had a different agenda. I was going to observe. To calculate.
I needed to see everything.
The guards. The cameras. The entry and exit points.
The rhythm of the patrols. The layout I’d once known like the back of my hand, now viewed through a new lens.
I hadn’t paid attention before—I’d never needed to.
I used to stride into that house like I owned it, familiar with every hallway, every imported bottle on every shelf.
But now, I had to relearn it. I had to look at everything as if for the first time, with eyes sharpened by the promise of war.
I dressed in black—cargo pants, a hoodie, and boots. The fabric was thick, the pockets deep. The blade went into one side, the gun into the other. I didn’t plan on blood tonight, but planning had nothing to do with how things usually ended.
When I reached the estate, the gates opened smoothly. No delays. The guards didn’t ask questions. They never did. Some feared me more than they feared Pakhan—and they were right to.
Still, I watched them closely. Counted them. Took note of who was posted where. Spotted new faces. Looked for the nervous ones. The ones who might hesitate. The ones who might switch sides when it mattered.
Some of them might join me. Others would need to be eliminated.
I recorded every detail in my mind: the gate rotation, the camera placements, the spots where shadows pooled thick and undisturbed. The back exit by the garages had a weak chain-link and two bored guards who never once glanced over their shoulders.
I nodded at the familiar faces, kept my voice civil, my posture relaxed. I played the role. All the while, I was assembling the blueprint in my head. Every hallway. Every weakness. Every opportunity.
Because when the time came, I wouldn’t hesitate.
I’d destroy this place from the inside.