Chapter 35 The Reckoning Room
The Reckoning Room
—Maksym—
The knot at his ankles was already done and I continued wrapping rope around his torso, his shoulders, his arms, winding it across his chest until he looked like a slab of meat strapped for slaughter.
Then I took a strip of tape and sealed his mouth shut, pressing it down hard across the stubble and the dried sweat.
When I finally finished, I just stood there.
Staring at him. This was it. The moment I’d been crawling toward for years.
The monster who broke my family was right in front of me, trussed up like an offering—helpless, gagged, and bleeding already.
My breath caught in my chest. For a second, it didn’t even feel real.
Like my brain hadn’t caught up to the reality of it.
I waited for the satisfaction to flood in, for the triumph—but what came instead was a quiet, stunned kind of fury. He lay there, barely conscious, and I could almost see the ghosts crowding around us. Mila. My parents. The boy I used to be.
This was for all of them.
I reached up and pressed both thumbs into his closed eyelids.
I pressed hard.
I wanted pain to be the first thing that greeted him. Not confusion. Not light. Just the burn of rupture and the crackle of nerve endings.
He jolted awake with a choked scream behind the tape. Blood ran in twin rivers down his cheeks as he blinked rapidly, pain blazing in his swollen, red-raw eyes. He could still see—but barely.
“Welcome to hell,” I muttered, staring down at him.
He whimpered. A breathless, animal sound. The kind a man makes when the soul starts to understand it’s outlived its welcome.
I stood over him, towering, chest heaving.
He was already groaning behind the first strip of tape, trying to form words—pleas, maybe threats—but all that came out were muffled, desperate noises.
I slapped a fresh strip of tape over his mouth before he could work his jaw loose or try to beg through it.
Let him choke on silence. Let him stew in it.
“Not yet. You’ll speak when I let you. So zip it and listen like your life depends on it. Spoiler: it does.”
I crouched beside him and grabbed a fistful of his greasy hair, jerking his head to the side until he whimpered again.
“This is your punishment. For Mila. For Kira. For every goddamn child you sold like they were cattle.”
I let go of him and started to pace slowly, every word a dagger.
“You call yourself a father? You offered your daughter to strangers like a fucking sample tray. You tried to control her with fear, with men you picked like butcher’s cuts. You think any of them were good enough for her? Stanislav? Felix?”
I turned back toward him and grinned.
“I killed them.”
His eyes widened, blood leaking at the corners.
“Yep. All me. Slaughtered your little choices one by one. And you—blind, arrogant bastard—you didn’t just let me in. You made me your right hand. Sat me at your table. Poured my wine. Invited to your house.”
I crouched again, nose inches from his.
“You built an empire on flesh and lies. And you didn’t even see me coming. You thought I was just another blade for hire. You never imagined I was the one you’d buried years ago.”
I pulled the photo from my pocket and shoved it in front of his face.
“Look. That’s Mila. The girl you erased, the child you sold, the reason the boy I was turned into the thing you made a weapon of.
I didn’t start this path with blood on my hands—you gave me the reasons.
All of them. You broke my family, you made me crawl through the wreckage, and you didn’t even care.
But now you will. She’s going to haunt the last moments of your miserable life. Burn that into your fucking brain.”
His jaw tightened behind the tape, eyes narrowing at me—not broken. Not yet. Angry. Calculating.
“You fucked with the wrong man,” I said quietly. “And now… you pay.”
I ripped the tape from his mouth, slow and brutal.
He sucked in a breath, straining uselessly against the ropes biting into his wrists and forced a thin, mocking smile. “Look at you,” he rasped. “Perfect. Ruthless. Exactly what I built.”
I stared at him.
“I created you,” he went on, voice rough but steady. “Without me, you’d be nothing.”
A humorless laugh left my throat. “You turned a child into a weapon and you want gratitude?”
His eyes flashed. “Without me you’d be some drunk in a factory, rotting in obscurity.”
“Maybe,” I said, stepping closer. “But my sister would still have her childhood.” I leaned in, voice low. “I’ll take the factory.”
His mouth tightened. “You owe me.”
“Oh, I know,” I replied calmly, letting my hand rest at my waist as I stepped closer, close enough for him to feel the weight of me looming over him. “That’s why I’m here. To settle the debt.”
That’s when something shifted in his face.
“Wait,” he said quickly, the edge finally cracking. “Wait. It wasn’t just me. There were others—”
I tilted my head slightly, studying him. “Pathetic. At least die with a shred of spine.”
“I’m not lying! I didn’t touch her! I was just part of the chain—I didn’t know—”
His words tripped over themselves. He was sobbing now.
“Please. Please. I have money—I can give you whatever you want. You don’t have to do this. Let me go. You can disappear, I’ll never come after you—”
I threw my head back and laughed. “You’ll be too dead to come after me. But don’t worry—I’ll find a way to drag your soul back for round two.”
“I’ll disappear then—I’ll leave the country—I’ll fake my death—I’ll do anything. Anything. Please. Don’t kill me…”
I just stared.
He was weeping now—openly, pathetically. The kind of weeping that strips a man of dignity. His nose ran. His voice cracked. He blubbered like a child caught stealing.
“I didn’t know—I didn’t mean to—”
I crouched again, the photo held between two fingers.
“Look at her. Last face you’ll ever see.”
His eyes locked on it and I saw the horror.
Then I braced my hands.
And drove both thumbs into his eyes.
He screamed, shrill and animal, twisting in the ropes as blood and fluid poured down his face. The sockets buckled. The soft wet pop beneath my thumbs was almost beautiful in its finality.
He thrashed, the restraints creaking beneath him. I held him steady against the table, grinding the delicate orbital bones into pulp.
His body convulsed. Spasmed. He wailed so loud it cut the air.
I didn’t stop.
Not until the screaming turned to gurgling. Not until his body slumped like meat and there was nothing left to see with.
I stood, shaking, heart hammering in my chest.
His head lolled sideways on the table, blood dripping steadily from the pulp that used to be his eyes. He was unconscious now—his body slumped, breathing shallow. Good. He’d wake again. I’d make sure of it.
I stepped away, grabbing the bottle of water on the nearby desk and splashing it in his face.
He sputtered, flinched, whimpered like a beaten dog coming back to awareness.
“Not yet,” I murmured. “You don’t get to die that easy.”
I reached for my blade—long, thin, and still clean. That wouldn’t last.
His arm was exposed, the sleeve rolled up from earlier. And there it was—his precious bratva tattoo. The eight-pointed star. That fucking symbol of power, of loyalty, of everything he thought made him untouchable.
“You don’t deserve to carry this,” I muttered.
I pressed the tip of the blade into the skin just outside the ink, and began to cut.
Layer by layer, I carved the skin away—carefully removing the entire patch with surgical precision. He screamed again, jerking hard against the ropes, but it only made me cut deeper.
He passed out.
Again.
When I was done, I held the piece of skin up between my fingers. The ink was still clear. Clean lines. Expensive work.
I know it’s sick. I’m keeping it.
Not as a trophy. As a message.
A reminder to anyone who thinks they can step into my world without consequences.
I walked to the desk, opened the drawers one by one until I found a nylon bag tucked beneath paperwork. I slid the skin inside carefully, sealed it, and pressed the air out.
Then I slapped him across the face. Poured more water. Pressed my thumb into the raw flesh where the tattoo used to be.
He woke up screaming.
I kept going.
Because this wasn’t just about vengeance. This wasn’t pleasure—it was rage. A fury that had lived in me for too long, buried beneath years of pretending, of surviving. Every cut I made came from the part of me that remembered.
I thought of Mila—barely tall enough to reach the counter, standing on a chair with flour dusting her cheeks, grinning as she tried to crack an egg like Mom. I thought of how she always reached for my hand when she got tired, curling up beside me like I was the safest place in the world.
I thought of my mother—her slow decline after Mila vanished. How she stopped eating. How she started talking to empty rooms.
I thought of my father—how he drowned himself in liquor and silence, then lashed out at me like I was the reason she was gone, like I was the ghost he couldn’t drink away.
I was nine. And the day she vanished, I buried my childhood in that sandbox with her. No more innocence. No more safety. He turned my world to ash, so I rose from it burning. I didn’t grow up—I weaponized. Every scar he gave me became a blade I forged to cut him down.
So no—this wasn’t about bloodlust. This was about bringing him into the hell he created for us. About handing him every second of what he gave. About making sure he felt it, down to the last fraying nerve.
The next hour was a blur of pain and blood. Every time he lost consciousness, I dragged him back. I gave him time between waves—just enough to think it might be over, only to lean in and tell him this was only the beginning.