At the hotel – Pleszów village, Nowa Huta district – Kraków, Poland.
— "Do you really want to break me?"
His voice was tight.
— "No, never… but please, help me. Just this time. My son…"
A short silence, then a trembling voice:
— "I warned you last time not to drag me into anything else… You know I rely on him for so much, he's my right hand. Damn it, I don't care what he brings to this country or to Europe, I just see him as a trusted partner. I don't want you tainting me with your actions, Father."
— "I know… I'm sorry. But you don't have to hand him over yourself. Just… just lead him to them."
Rafal slammed the phone shut, muttering:
— "Damn it… does he really have to crawl toward that position like this? And what about the latter… why is he getting himself into this?"
He returned to the main hall, where several local men had gathered. Faces were tense; most were there under threat. In the corner, Kazimir watched everyone with cold eyes, a sly smile masking endless calculations.
Rafal's conversation with his father hadn't been simple. The matter was far more complex. Kazimir was at the heart of it all.
Kazimir was no ordinary criminal; his name was heavy on Europol's lists, accused of spying for the Russians and tied to a string of violent crimes across Europe. Still, he worked independently with the mafia and had been recruited since his days in a juvenile prison.
As for Arek Kowalski, Rafal's father, his filth was more straightforward:
A man known for betrayal, he had left the mafia after laundering vast sums of money, then leapt into politics on a wave of dirty face-washing. Now he wanted his son to deliver Kazimir, to use him as an electoral bargaining chip—because Kazimir trusted only him, because he was the only one he met regularly.
But that was no coincidence. Kazimir had chosen Rafal deliberately, knowing he was untouchable, able to move freely, without oversight, without suspicion.
*****Not far away, in the heart of the village, the night was swallowing everything. The narrow, winding alleys were steeped in darkness that crept slowly, like a hungry beast searching for its prey. The voices of drunkards shattered into the void, echoing off the walls of shuttered houses, deepening the place's desolation and chill.
Syzmon, the boy who had set out determined to take revenge, walking with steady steps, now seemed to have lost all confidence. He was a prisoner of fear gnawing at his heart. He gripped the gun tightly with a trembling hand, trying to hold on to his resolve, but it crumbled with every step. What face would emerge from the darkness? And what fate awaited him?
Suddenly, he sensed a shadow moving behind him. He froze, his breath cutting short until he was almost choking. He felt danger coil around him like a rope tightening around his neck, and an inner voice whispered: If someone catches me, they won't spare me — everything will be over… especially while I'm carrying a gun.
There was no choice but to flee. He had to return to the orphanage, confront Magda, and wrench the truth from her with this gun. Searching for Zuzanna in a village like this would be like diving into a bottomless sea.
He sprinted through the alleys, his footsteps striking the ground in a panicked rhythm, the cold biting at his face, as if he were racing the night before it swallowed him whole.
***In that place of the neighboring city،
In the corner of the bed, Karina sat, her legs folded beneath her, her chin resting on her knees. Her eyes were fixed on emptiness, her ears catching the slightest movement, the faintest whisper. The silence was so dense she felt it pressing against her bones.
She had not yet grasped what was happening when the stillness was pierced by the sound of hurried footsteps. They struck the ground in an unsteady rhythm, carrying something she could not name. A slow coldness crept toward her limbs until the footsteps stopped in front of her.
She lifted her head. Bill was standing there. Only then did she breathe deeply, a slow sigh escaping her chest.
— "What's going on here?" he said with a fleeting smile, then gestured with his hand: "Time to leave… but before that, there's one more thing. The gun you took… do you have it with you?"
She shook her head in denial.
— He said, "No matter."
She moved to climb down from the bed, then stopped abruptly. She whispered:
— "I'm sorry… I gave it to a friend in the orphanage, so he could protect his sister… the same girl you rescued at the shopping center."
His expression changed. He sat beside her, and his voice took on a new weight, as though witnessing a memory.
— "That's a mistake. Didn't you think he might hurt himself? Or maybe kill an innocent person by accident?"
His words fell inside her like a stone into still water. Ripples of worry began to spread, and a current of guilt coiled around her chest. The faces of the children in the orphanage, once bright in her heart, suddenly dimmed, breaking into other images carrying a greater danger. Silence tightened its grip on her until she almost believed that survival could only come by saying nothing.
Bill watched her with a trained eye, reading what was happening inside her with clarity. In his view, no matter how clever she seemed, she was still a child who could be reshaped.
[That day, "I didn't understand why he did it… now, after all these years, I understand it well."]
At last, he smiled and said:
— "It would be better if you didn't mention anything about what happened. Agreed." As if it were their condition for letting her stay.
She had no shoes, so he carried her to the car. She sat in the back seat beside Mikael, who was leaning against the window with closed eyes, yet his features were rigid, tense.
There was no other choice,
Rona, the hunting dog with sharp eyes and a low growl, was not trusted by anyone, even when she was tied. That was why she had been placed in a metal crate at the back of the car, lined with wood shavings and some dry straw. The door was shut tightly, but her nose kept tearing at the air, her eyes never leaving the spot where Karina sat.
Karina glanced once, meeting those hard eyes, and lowered her head immediately. She was not afraid of Rona… as much as she feared what was going on in the head of the man sitting next to her.
Suddenly, Malik broke her distraction.
— "I'm Malik. Do you remember me?" he said in Polish.
She nodded silently.
Bill smiled:
— "So you're trying to win her over."
Malik replied: "… Funny. If you had seen how she used to look at me before… now's the right time to get acquainted again."
The engine began to hum with the tone of a long road, and the car set off.
Her eyes drifted toward the commander sitting beside her. A mature man, with a quiet charm, yet his coldness sent a shiver through her body. Bill caught her gaze and said:
— "Sleep, little one. We have a long road ahead."
Malik handed her a blanket and some food. She hadn't expected sleep to take her so quickly, as if her body had finally found a refuge.
*****At the hotel,after the meeting, the attendees left, weighed down by their oaths. Kazimir was about to leave, but Rafal stopped him:
— "Where to, Kazimir?"
— "Just a simple appointment."
— "It's fine. You can bring anyone to the hotel. Seems like the appointment is important… you haven't stopped looking at your watch."
Kazimir smiled to hide his unease:
— "Sorry… I didn't notice. But fine, I'll try to take care of it over the phone, so I'll have to stay here tonight!?"
— Rafal, pretending: "Tomorrow I have something important, and I want you with me."
— "Alright, one more thing… the shipment is scheduled for tomorrow. I must leave before noon for the Kaliningrad border. I have to receive it myself; there's no room for mistakes this time.
(Pure heroin from Afghanistan, synthetic hallucinogens from China, passing through Central Asia → Russia → Kaliningrad → Poland → the heart of Europe.)"
Kazimir despised the child trade, but was forced to stomach its filth by the nature of his work as a spy.
— "May I leave now?"
— "You may."
He left, muttering a curse under his breath, and his original intention was to head to his crew, believing the mission had been accomplished.
Rafal, meanwhile, was boiling inside. In his mind, chaos raged without pause. His father had set him up in a filthy trap, yet he felt indebted to him.
When his mother had tried to flee with him from his father's past, she was killed by chance in a robbery during her night shift as a home nurse for an elderly man. Rafal, nine years old at the time, was with her and witnessed her death.
Afterward, he was taken and exploited in child trafficking networks, until he ended up working in a landfill.
"They called it the Zone of Silence, in the far south of Podkarpacie province. No electricity, no water. Children digging through mounds of ash for bits of plastic to sell, under the orders of local gangs that never asked their ages, never cared if their hands were sliced open by glass."
His father had searched for him like a madman, taking a bullet and abandoning a major mafia deal to save him. Since then, the debt had been heavier than any conscience.
— "Damn it! Why now?! When I wanted to look away, everything turns upside down?!"
He smashed everything around him, panting:
— It's fine… I'll go on… he's my father......