Epilogue 1
They buried her two days later. A quiet ceremony.
No speeches. Just a few of my men standing at a distance, heads bowed, hands folded like they knew nothing they said would matter.
Valeria stood off to the side in dark shades, swaying gently, already detached, already slipping back into whatever poison she could find to kill the pain.
She’d lost her best friend. So I couldn’t really blame her.
But I was also too numb to care, too numb to try to pull her out of it.
Kira’s mother cried the way only someone who has already lost too much can cry—from the stomach, from the bones. And I stood there with Anton in the crook of my arm, his tiny face slack with sleep, unaware that his mother was being lowered into the earth just meters away.
I didn’t speak. Didn’t cry. Didn’t look away from the coffin until the last shovel of dirt hit the lid with a dull thud, like a final insult.
I was so hollow I wondered if my soul had slipped out when I wasn’t looking.
What remained felt like the old me—the one from before she ever walked into my life. The one made of anger and ash.
She was supposed to live. She was supposed to raise our child, to grow old with me. To be free. To be mine.
But death doesn’t care about what you’re owed. It comes when it wants, and it leaves you with ruin. And me? I should have known better. I should have known that fate doesn’t give second chances to men like me. That whatever miracle had placed her in my arms would rip her away with equal cruelty.
I should have sent her away the first night she came to my apartment. I should have killed that nurse when I killed the judge. Hell, I shouldn’t have taken the job at all. If I hadn’t followed orders like a good little monster, maybe she’d still be breathing.
Her death is mine to carry. Every version of it.
I thought about ending my own life more than once. But every time I touched the barrel, something stopped me. Not hope. Rage.
So I leaned into it.
I started taking jobs again, more than I could handle.
Stopped sending my men and started going myself.
I followed every trail that smelled like guilt, every bastard who had ever believed I’d forgotten.
Blood became purpose again. I was doing what I was born for—the only thing I had ever done right.
Looking at Anton was like being gutted with a smile.
He had her eyes. Her mouth. The way he curled into sleep like he trusted the world to hold him.
Some nights I just sat and stared, thinking about the time we had together, those impossible months when I believed I could be a father. A partner. A man.
Irina took care of him. She bathed him, sang to him, tucked him in.
She did everything a mother should, because I couldn’t.
I came home blood-soaked, reeking of vodka, and she looked at me like she was seeing a ghost. Or worse, a memory.
I must have reminded her of her husband in the worst ways. The guilt twisted in me like a knife.
And then, one night, I knew. I knew I couldn’t stay.
Being near him meant destroying him. That was my legacy—ruin. My mother lost herself when my sister vanished. My father didn’t die—but his soul did. And Kira... Kira ended up in a grave. If I stayed, Anton would follow. So I made the hardest decision of my life.
I left.
Anton gummed at my pinkie with the fierce concentration of a child who didn’t understand goodbye. I met the green of his eyes and found Kira there, alive in the only way she had left. I kissed his head—soft, warm, innocent—and walked away before I changed my mind.
I erased them from everything. Changed their documents. Gave them new names, new lives, new bloodlines. Wiped every trace of Sokolov from their records. No one would ever find them.
No one would ever know that Anton was my son.
He would never carry my name, never wear my sins.
He wouldn’t grow up learning to fight, to lie, to kill.
He’d learn math and soccer and how to tie his shoes.
He’d ride bikes instead of armored cars.
I made sure he’d never be dragged into my world of shadows.
That was my curse. He would never inherit it.
And when he asked about his father, Irina would tell him what I told her to: he was no one. Just a man who gave him life and then disappeared.
The world chose violence long before I ever touched a blade. I was just the product of it—a weapon given breath. But now... now it would bleed on my terms.
I didn’t become the Reaper after Kira’s death. I returned to him. The one I was always meant to be. Cold. Calculated. Dead-eyed and efficient. She had softened something in me, cracked open a door to the light.
When she died, the door slammed shut. And I welded it closed.
They thought they knew how far I could go. They didn’t. Grief sharpens brutality like a blade against bone.
The nurse who murdered her—they called her insane. Sent her to an institution instead of prison. Said she’d lost her mind after her son was taken. I understood that kind of grief. My mother had drowned in it.
But if you think I spared her because of that—because she reminded me of the woman who birthed me—then you’ve understood nothing about who I am.
She took everything from me.
And I made sure she understood what that meant before she died.
They ruled it an accident. Of course they did. But she knew. The second my men laid hands on her, she knew.
There was nothing clean about what came next.
Power never is. Whatever thoughts I once had about stepping back while Kira lived—about finding someone to take my place—had been buried with her.
I cleaned house. Names were crossed off.
Deals restructured. Enemies erased. I brought order to Ukraine, kept the filth of trafficking at bay, and made it known that anyone who dared step into the shadows behind my back wouldn’t live long enough to regret it.
Not out of redemption—don’t insult me—I was beyond that. But if I could use what I had to keep even one child safe from the monsters I once served, then maybe this cursed life of mine wouldn’t be entirely wasted.
And Mila... Mila I stayed away from. I had already buried one woman I loved. I wouldn’t do it again. She deserved to live—not just survive, but live. Even if it meant never knowing me. Especially if it meant never knowing me.
I was forged into this life long before I knew what choices were.
Love tried to save me. And for a moment, it almost did.
But I was the Reaper before I had a name, and I’ll be him until the last breath leaves my lungs.