Previous Chapter (7) - Jolene | First Chapter - Camila
The drizzle was not a storm, but a persistent, weeping mist that clung to the world like a cold shroud. It turned the manicured grounds of the Kowalski estate into a landscape of shadows and slick, bruised-looking stone.
Karol Wójcik stood beneath the shelter of the massive stone portico, a sentinel of perfect, unyielding composure. Above him, the rain collected on the slate roof, gathering in heavy, trembling droplets along the eaves before surrendering to gravity. They fell with a rhythmic tap-hiss-tap onto the granite steps and the pristine white gravel of the driveway, a metronome counting down the seconds of a decaying hope.
The damp cold seeped through the fine wool of his tailored overcoat, but Karol gave no sign that he felt it. His posture was immaculate, his back straight, his hands clasped loosely behind him. To the world, he was an extension of his employer, a reflection of the manor's stoic, impenetrable dignity. But beneath the placid surface, his patience had worn down to a razor-thin wire.
He scanned the long, winding driveway that stretched nearly two hundred meters to the main gate. It was a white ribbon of wet gravel cutting through the ancient oaks, currently empty.
For a little over six months, this had been the ritual: waiting for reports from the man named Derringer.
Reports about Elena, daughter of Mr. Kowalski, who went to the United States to study at Cornell. Last we heard from her, she went to Brooklyn to meet some friends and then disappeared.
Mr. Kowalski ordered Karol to find her. Karol in turn hired a promising sounding private investigator, Jack Derringer. Jack promised he would send reports as soon as he had any news. And for six months, those reports had been exercises in frustration. Vague emails. Short phone calls filled with hesitation and caveats. Derringer claimed to be "on the right path," claimed he needed "just a little more time to be sure."
Inside the manor, the mood had curdled from worry into suspicion. Mr. Kowalski, usually a man of infinite strategic patience, had begun to voice what Karol had suspected for weeks: that John Derringer was not a careful investigator, but an incompetent one. A washed-up ex-cop clinging to a wealthy family's grief like a parasite, trading vague updates for a steady paycheck.
Yesterday, the dam had broken. Mr. Kowalski had snapped. The order had been given, absolute and icy: Derringer was summoned to the manor in Kraków. He was to bring everything. Every file, every lead, every scrap of raw data. If he had been wasting their time while Elena suffered, he would be destroyed.
Karol tightened his jaw, watching the empty road. He prepared his face, schooling his features into the neutral mask of professional service. He would not let the charlatan see his disdain.
Then, two pinpricks of light appeared in the far distance, cutting a weak swathe through the rain-soaked darkness at the gate. The headlights grew steadily brighter, sweeping across the wet trunks of the oaks as the car navigated the long approach.
The vehicle arrived with a silent, confident whisper. It was the estate’s black Mercedes S-Class, sent to collect the detective from the airport. It glided to a perfect halt under the portico, the tires crunching softly on the gravel.
The estate driver, a young man in a peaked cap, exited and opened the rear passenger door.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a man emerged from the plush leather interior, and Karol’s suspicion hardened into disgust.
John Derringer looked like a man who had been dragged backward through hell. His trench coat was rumpled and stained with dark splotches that might have been oil or old blood. His face was gaunt, grey-skinned, and his eyes were hollowed-out pits of exhaustion and what Karol immediately identified as the smell of cheap, stale whiskey.
But it was his hand that drew Karol’s eye. On the back of his right hand was a jagged, angry scab, red and weeping at the edges, as if he had punched a mirror and simply let it heal on its own. It was ugly, careless—a physical manifestation of the man’s chaotic incompetence.
Derringer blinked against the soft light of the portico, squinting at the imposing facade and then at the statue-like figure waiting for him.
"Mr. Wo…" Derringer began, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that seemed to catch on the syllables. He winced, rubbing his throat. "Wój… ah, Christ. Forget it. You're Karol, right?"
Karol stepped forward, his expression a fortress of polite ice. "Indeed, sir. Wójcik. But 'Karol' is sufficient. Welcome to the manor."
He reached for Derringer's damp coat. "Allow me."
Derringer let him take the coat, revealing a suit that had seen better decades, let alone days. But when Karol reached for the battered leather briefcase clutched in Derringer’s scabby hand, the detective jerked it back with a feral intensity.
"No," Derringer rasped, his eyes flashing with something wild and protective. "I keep this."
Karol retracted his hand slowly, noting the tremor in the detective's grip. Drunk, he thought. Or gripping onto his last paycheck.
"As you wish, this way, sir." Karol said. "Mr. Kowalski is expecting you. And I must warn you, his patience is at an end."
He guided Derringer through the massive oak doors and into the grand entrance hall. The air inside was warm and still, smelling of beeswax and old money, a stark contrast to the man walking beside him. Karol led him past the grand staircase toward the heavy, dark wood doors of the library.
Karol stopped, his hand on the brass handle. He turned to Derringer.
"He wants the truth, Mr. Derringer," Karol said, his voice lowering to a warning whisper. "No more delays. No more 'hunches.' If you have wasted our time..."
"I haven't wasted a second," Derringer interrupted, his voice hollow. He looked at the door with a terrifying kind of dread. "I wish I had. God, I wish things were different."
Karol frowned, the first crack in his assessment appearing. Before he could analyze the comment, he opened the door.
The library was a cavern of shadows. Mr. Kowalski sat behind his desk, illuminated by a single green lamp. He looked up as they entered, his face a mask of stone, ready to dissect the failure he expected to walk through the door.
Karol stopped and looked at Mr. Kowalski. "Mr. Derringer, sir."
Kowalski stared at the detective. He didn't offer a greeting. "The briefcase," he commanded, his voice rough. "Put it on the desk. Every file. Now."
Derringer stepped forward, placing the battered case on the mahogany. He didn't open it. He just looked at Mr. Kowalski.
"Sir," Derringer said. "Before you look... you need to know. The police won't touch this. I tried a contact in Vice. They know the group. They're scared of them, warned me to bury what I had. The press is a dead end; these people have eyes and ears all over Brooklyn."
Kowalski’s eyes narrowed. "So you come to tell me you have failed?"
"No," Derringer whispered. "I came to tell you I found her. But... I was trying to buy time to find a way to get her out before you... before you had to hear what kind of place she is in."
He clicked the latches of the briefcase.
Mr. Kowalski looked at Karol. "Wait outside."
Karol bowed and retreated, pulling the heavy door shut. He resumed his post in the hall, but his mind was racing. The look in Derringer's eyes had not been the evasive look of a con man. It was the haunted look of a witness.
He stood his post in the silent hall. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty.
Then, the latch thunked.
The library door creaked open. Mr. Kowalski stood silhouetted in the doorway. He didn't speak; he just motioned with a slight tilt of his head for Karol to enter.
Karol stepped back into the library. The atmosphere had shifted from tension to something brittle and dangerous. Derringer was slumped in the heavy leather armchair, looking utterly hollowed out. The briefcase sat open on the floor.
Mr. Kowalski was standing by the tall, dark windows, his back to the room.
"Karol," Mr. Kowalski said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Mr. Derringer has finally provided… a comprehensive report." He paused, taking a shaky breath. "He was trying to spare us, it seems. To protect a father’s heart."
He turned from the window. His face was a mask of cold, controlled devastation.
"But I cannot operate on protection. I need facts. This report... it includes a great deal of supporting footage." He gestured vaguely to the external drive sitting on the desk. "Visual evidence."
He turned fully now, his face ravaged by a conflict between a father's desperate need to see the suffering his child is facing, to share in it, and a man's fear of what that sight might do to him.
"I told Mr. Derringer I intended to view every second of it," Kowalski said, his voice straining. "That I needed to see what my daughter is enduring." He swallowed hard. "Mr. Derringer... strongly advised against it. He said... he said some things cannot be unseen."
He looked at Karol, a silent, heartbreaking plea in his eyes. He was asking his most loyal servant to step onto the landmine first.
"Review the tapes, Karol. You have always been stronger than me in these matters. Review all of it. And then... tell me truly if what is on those drives is something a father should ever look upon."
Karol gave a short, sharp nod. "Of course, sir."
He moved to Derringer's side. The detective looked up at him, a flicker of gratitude in his exhausted eyes. Karol helped the man to his feet; his legs were unsteady, and he leaned on Karol for a moment for support. Karol took his arm, guiding the exhausted detective out of the library and down the long, silent corridor towards the warmth and light of the kitchens.
He handed Derringer over to the care of the house cook, Krystyna, a stout, motherly woman whose shocked expression at the state of the man was quickly hidden by a mask of professional concern. She sat him down at the heavy wooden table and began bustling about, her movements a comforting, domestic anchor in a world that had come loose from its moorings.
Karol did not linger. He did not go to his own quarters to steel himself. He retreated from the kitchen, his steps swift and silent, not back to the main library, but to the small, private study that adjoined it. It was his own sanctuary, a place of ledgers and household accounts.
Tonight, it would become a viewing room for hell.
Karol closed the door, the soft click of the latch sealing him inside. He moved to the small mahogany desk, the one he used for managing the estate's accounts. On it sat a modern, high-end laptop, its silver case gleaming under the soft light of a desk lamp. Next to it sat a small, black external hard drive, connected by a single USB cable—the physical vessel of Derringer's report.
He sat down, the leather of his chair creaking softly in the silence. He stared at the hard drive for a long moment, a black, featureless brick that contained the story of the last six months of Elena's life. He took a deep breath, his composure a thin, brittle shell over a core of pure dread.
He moved the mouse, waking the computer from its sleep. The screen glowed to life. Karol inserted the drive and waited. A window appeared on the desktop, displaying a simple file folder. The label was stark, clinical.
KOWALSKI, E. - CASE FILE. DERRINGER.
His hand trembled, just slightly, as he double-clicked the folder.
It opened to reveal a nightmare of organization. The folder was filled with dozens of sub-folders, an archive of agony. There were text documents labeled 'Timelines', 'Financials', 'Persons of Interest'. There were image folders labeled 'Surveillance', 'Location'.
And then there was the folder that made his breath catch in his throat.
VIDEO EVIDENCE.
He clicked on it. The sheer volume was staggering. There were at least fifty video files, each with a cryptic, horrifying name. 'Endurance Test 4'. 'Blonde Session 2'. 'Solo - Brushwork'. 'The Reporter's Debut'.
He scanned the list, his eyes searching for the one name that mattered. He found it near the top. The file was dated a little over six months ago. The label was simple, and all the more terrifying for it.
Elena - Ingress.
Ingress. The beginning. The entry point.
Karol’s hand felt unnaturally heavy as he moved the cursor over the file icon. He steeled himself, his jaw tight. He double-clicked.
The video player opened, the screen instantly filled with a jarringly high-quality image. The setting was an industrial space, but the lighting was professional, theatrical. In the center was a modified medical table.
And then they brought her in.
It was Elena, but not the Elena he knew. She was wild, her hair a mess, her clothes—the simple jeans and sweater she'd been wearing when she disappeared—were torn at the knee. She was fighting, a feral, cornered animal, spitting curses as a mountain of a man—Knuckles, Derringer’s report had called him—manhandled her towards the table.
The audio spiked, raw and distorted.
"Get off me! GET YOUR FILTHY FUCKING HANDS OFF ME!"
Karol flinched as if struck. That was her voice. Raw, furious, and terrified.
He watched, paralyzed, as they forced her onto the table. The restraints were applied with a brutal, practiced efficiency. Heavy leather cuffs were cinched around her wrists and ankles, locking her down. She was secured. Helpless.
The mountain of a man moved to the foot of the table. He grabbed her left foot, yanked off her simple flat shoe, and tossed it aside. He lowered his face to her bare foot, his nose hovering over her toes, and took a long, audible sniff.
Elena shrieked, a sound that was half-disgust, half-terror.
"YOU SICK FUCK!"
The man just let out a low, guttural chuckle. Then, he did something worse. He extended his tongue, a thick, wet muscle, and dragged it in a slow, obscene stripe from her heel to the base of her toes.
Karol’s stomach churned.
"Tasty," the man murmured, his voice a wet rumble.
Elena let out a high, thin squeal of pure revulsion, her body arching off the table as she tried to yank her foot away from the disgusting, intimate violation. The leather strap held her fast.
At that moment, a second man, shorter and leaner in a cheap, shiny suit—Slick—slid into the frame at her other foot. He grinned at the camera, then at Elena's horrified face. He repeated the action, licking her right sole with a theatrical flourish.
And then, before she could even process the humiliation, they began.
Both men attacked at once. Knuckles’ thick, brutish fingers dug into her left arch with the force of a blacksmith's grip, his knuckles white with the strain as he kneaded her sensitive flesh, while Slick’s nimble, spidery digits skittered across her right foot, a blur of movement.
The torment was immediate and absolute. Elena’s body convulsed. Her shrieks of disgust and rage were hijacked, strangled in her throat and twisted into something else entirely.
She erupted into laughter. A horrible, breathless, full-bodied torrent of laughter that wasn't born of joy, but of pure, inescapable sensory overload.
Karol sat frozen in his chair, a silent witness, watching the girl he had helped raise be systematically, sadistically dismantled.
Karol’s composure, the mask he had worn for a lifetime, finally shattered.
A single, silent tear broke free from his eye and traced a hot, slow path down his cheek. He didn't wipe it away. He stared at the screen, his face a stone carving of grief, the single tear a crack in the granite.
He couldn't watch this. Not like this. Not in real-time.
Karol’s hand, shaking with a mixture of rage and revulsion, moved to the mouse. He clicked the mute button, silencing the horrible sound of Elena's forced, hysterical laughter. The silence in the small study was suddenly deafening, a vacuum that made the visual horror on the screen even more intense.
His eyes drifted down to the timeline bar at the bottom of the video player. He had assumed, naively, that this was a clip. A ten-minute snippet of brutality.
He saw the total runtime.
02:14:45
The blood drained from Karol’s face. He stopped breathing.
Two hours.
Over two hours of continuous, unbroken torment.
The realization hit him like a physical blow to the chest, staggering him in his seat. The sheer scale of the suffering was incomprehensible. How could a human body endure that? How could a human mind surmount that kind of sustained sensory assault without shattering? The minutes on the screen weren't just time; they were an eternity of agony. Every second represented a scream he couldn't hear, a convulsion he had to witness.
He stared at the numbers, horror struck, his mind struggling to process the cruelty required to inflict two hours of this on a young woman.
He couldn't watch it all. Not in real-time. It would break him.
With a trembling hand, he grabbed the timeline slider. He dragged it forward. The video accelerated into a silent, frantic ballet of cruelty. The two hours of the recording blurred into a minute of flickering, nightmarish stills. He saw flashes of tools—brushes, feathers, strange metal implements. He saw the thugs moving up and down her body, their hands a blur of motion over her feet, her flanks, her ribs, her armpits. It was relentless. Methodical. Industrial.
He watched Elena's face in fast-forward. The defiant rage melted into panicked pleading, then into a slack-jawed, tear-streaked mask of pure exhaustion, her body twitching and jerking like a marionette whose strings were being pulled by madmen.
Near the end of the timeline, he saw a change in the frenetic pattern. The smaller man, Slick, stepped back, out of the frame. The larger man, Knuckles, moved from her feet to stand beside the table. Then, he fell to his knees and then prone.
Karol’s eyes narrowed. This was different. He released the mouse, and the video snapped back to normal speed. He moved the cursor back a few seconds, unmuting the audio just as the scene began.
The sound that returned was not laughter. It was the harsh, ragged sound of Elena gasping for air, her breath coming in wet, hitching sobs. Knuckles was standing beside her, his pants open, his erect but pitifully small penis exposed in the harsh studio light.
"Just a little break," Knuckles was grunting, his voice thick with arousal. "A reward for being such a good sport." He was trying to guide her shackled right hand towards his groin.
Elena looked from his exposed cock up to the man's leering eyes and back down. A flicker of her old, defiant spirit, the one Karol knew so well, ignited in her exhausted eyes. A small, contemptuous snicker escaped her lips.
"Is that it?" she sneered, the words a perfect, devastating insult.
Knuckles’ face, which had been a mask of lust, instantly contorted with rage and humiliation.
From off-screen, Slick’s voice called out, "She's got a mouth on her, Knucks! Maybe she don't need a break!" The smaller man moved back into the frame, his hands extended, ready to attack her armpits again.
Knuckles didn't even look at him. He grabbed Elena's wrist, forcing her hand around his cock with a brutal, punishing grip.
"If you want a break from the tickling," he growled, his face inches from hers, "then you wipe that look off your face and get to work."
Elena's hand began to move, jerking with the little movement her cuff allowed. He put his hands behind his head, leaning back with a self-satisfied grunt as he called out over his shoulder to his accomplice. "Hey, Slick, she's not half bad. You wanna—"
With a sudden, violent spasm of strength, Elena locked her wrist, her fingers becoming a rigid vise. Using the flat of her palm as a pivot point against the base of his shaft, she snapped her hand sharply to the side—a devastating, focused wrench that put all the force of the motion into a single, brutal, lateral tear.
A wet, tearing click—the sound of the erect tissue tearing itself against the resistance of the outer sheath—ripped through the study speakers.
Knuckles' sentence died in his throat. His entire body went rigid. His eyes bulged, and the leering grin was replaced by a rictus of pure, unadulterated agony.
A high-pitched, feminine squeal of pain tore from his throat as he collapsed forward, onto his knees and then prone onto the floor, clutching his crotch with both hands, his legs kicking.
Karol’s grief-stricken face, stained with a single tear, broke. A fierce, predatory smile stretched across his lips. He was a man watching a warrior he had helped raise land a devastating blow against a monster.
"That's my girl," he whispered, his voice a low, proud growl. "You always were a fighter."
He grabbed the mouse, rewound the last ten seconds, and watched it again. The sneer. The insult. The wet, tearing snap of the tissue. The squeal of agony from the mountain of a man. It was a small victory in a war that was already lost, but it was a victory nonetheless. It was proof that even in the depths of hell, Elena was still Elena. She was still fighting.
But the triumph was short-lived.
On the screen, Knuckles was stumbling back to his feet. He wasn't holding his crotch anymore. His face was an apocalyptic mask of pure, unrestrained rage. The humiliation, the excruciating pain, had shattered his professional sadism and unleashed the wild, feral beast beneath.
The sick game was over. This was no longer about a show. This was about vengeance.
"You fucking BITCH!" he roared, his voice a distorted, animalistic bellow.
He lunged at the table. He didn't reach for a brush or a feather. He balled his massive hand into a fist the size of a cinder block and began to beat her.
It was not a controlled punishment. It was a flurry of uncontrolled, desperate violence. He swung wildly, his fists crashing into her ribs, her stomach, her shoulders—anywhere he could land a blow that wouldn't leave a visible mark on her face for the cameras.
Elena’s body jerked with each impact, her gasps of pain lost under the storm of Knuckles’ rage-fueled curses.
"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU! YOU HEAR ME?! I'LL TEAR YOU APART!"
He was completely out of control, a rabid dog savaging its prey. Slick, the other man, tried to intervene, grabbing Knuckles' shoulder. "Knucks, hey! Not the merchandise! Frank'll have your hide!"
Knuckles threw him off with a backhand, sending the smaller man staggering. He turned back to Elena, spitting and screaming, his fists a blur until, finally, her body went limp. One final, brutal punch to her side, and her head lolled, her consciousness mercifully surrendering to the blackness.
She was out.
Knuckles stood there, panting, his chest heaving, his face slick with sweat. He looked down at the unconscious, battered girl on the table.
Karol watched the screen, his brief, savage smile now gone, replaced by a cold, hard mask of fury. He had seen enough. More than enough.
He reached out and closed the video player. The screen went dark.
The study was silent again. But the silence was different now. It wasn't the silence of dread. It was the silence of a promise being forged in the fires of righteous hatred.
He knew what he had to tell Mr. Kowalski. He would not have to see this. But he would need to know that his daughter was still a fighter. And that she was fighting a battle she could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to lose.
Karol stood up from the desk, his movements stiff, as if his joints had rusted in place while he watched the video. He walked out of the small study, closing the door softly behind him, sealing the horrors he’d just witnessed inside.
He re-entered the main library.
Mr. Kowalski had returned to his desk. He hadn’t touched his drink. He was sitting perfectly still, his hands clasped on the polished mahogany, his gaze fixed on the door, waiting.
He didn't have to ask the question. He didn't have to say a word. He just looked up at Karol, his eyes a maelstrom of fear and desperate hope.
And Karol, the man who had served him flawlessly for thirty years, the man whose face was a trained, impenetrable mask of professional calm, met his gaze.
Karol did not have to speak. His face, the face he had meticulously schooled into neutrality, had betrayed him. The grief was too profound, the horror too raw. The single, dried tear track on his cheek was a scar. The cold, shattered grief in his eyes, combined with the new, hard glint of murderous rage, told his master the whole, unspeakable truth.
Mr. Kowalski’s composure, the iron-clad control he had maintained for more than six agonizing months, finally broke.
It was not a cry. It was not a sob. It was a roar. A primal, guttural sound of pure anguish and fury that tore itself from the deepest parts of his soul, echoing off the leather-bound books and the high, vaulted ceiling.
He shot to his feet, his chair screeching back on the hardwood floor. He grabbed the heavy crystal tumbler of bourbon from his desk.
With another guttural yell, he hurled the glass.
It sailed across the room and smashed against a priceless, antique shelving unit filled with first editions. The sound of the shattering glass was sharp and violent, a physical manifestation of his breaking heart. Shards of crystal sprayed through the air, and amber whiskey streamed down the spines of the leather-bound books like tears of blood.
Mr. Kowalski stood there, panting, his chest heaving, his fists clenched at his sides. He was trembling, not with grief, but with rage. The father who had been praying for his daughter’s safe return was gone. In his place stood a man who now prayed for vengeance.
He turned to Karol, his eyes blazing, and unleashed a roar that shook the very foundations of the room.
"GET MY DAUGHTER OUT OF THERE! I DON’T CARE WHAT IT COSTS! I DON’T CARE WHAT LAWS YOU HAVE TO BREAK! I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO BURN TO THE GROUND! JUST DO IT!"
The command hung in the air, echoing off the mahogany walls like a gunshot.
Karol did not flinch. He did not look away. This was the order he had been waiting over six months to receive. He gave a single, sharp nod—the ultimate affirmation of loyalty, the final seal on a covenant of blood and retribution.
He turned without a word and retreated from the library, leaving his master to the ruins of his grief. Karol’s steps were no longer those of a servant. They were the measured, purposeful steps of an executioner.
He returned to the small study, the place where he had borne witness to the horror.
Karol sat back down at the desk. The grief and horror were still there, but they had been compressed, forged by the heat of Mr. Kowalski’s command into a cold, hard weapon. He minimized Derringer's files and opened a secure, encrypted application.
It was a digital black book, a list of ghosts and specialists that governments disavowed and decent men pretended didn't exist. He didn't need to browse. He knew exactly who he needed.
He navigated to the alpha entry.
'KEYSTONE' - Ex-US Navy SEAL. Team Assembler / Infiltration / High-Value Target Neutralization. Current Status: Active.
Karol stared at the name. Keystone. A legend who didn't just undertake missions—he built bespoke teams of other ghosts to execute them with lethal precision. This was the man who could walk through the gates of hell and salt the earth behind him.
The chapter of investigation was closed. The chapter of vengeance was about to begin.
Karol reached for the secure satellite phone beside the desk. His face was a mask of cold, absolute resolve. He entered the encrypted authorization code and pressed the call button next to the name 'Keystone'.
Karol Wójcik was no longer a butler. He was an angel of death, and he was about to recruit his horsemen.
Next Chapter (9) - Paolo
The drizzle was not a storm, but a persistent, weeping mist that clung to the world like a cold shroud. It turned the manicured grounds of the Kowalski estate into a landscape of shadows and slick, bruised-looking stone.
Karol Wójcik stood beneath the shelter of the massive stone portico, a sentinel of perfect, unyielding composure. Above him, the rain collected on the slate roof, gathering in heavy, trembling droplets along the eaves before surrendering to gravity. They fell with a rhythmic tap-hiss-tap onto the granite steps and the pristine white gravel of the driveway, a metronome counting down the seconds of a decaying hope.
The damp cold seeped through the fine wool of his tailored overcoat, but Karol gave no sign that he felt it. His posture was immaculate, his back straight, his hands clasped loosely behind him. To the world, he was an extension of his employer, a reflection of the manor's stoic, impenetrable dignity. But beneath the placid surface, his patience had worn down to a razor-thin wire.
He scanned the long, winding driveway that stretched nearly two hundred meters to the main gate. It was a white ribbon of wet gravel cutting through the ancient oaks, currently empty.
For a little over six months, this had been the ritual: waiting for reports from the man named Derringer.
Reports about Elena, daughter of Mr. Kowalski, who went to the United States to study at Cornell. Last we heard from her, she went to Brooklyn to meet some friends and then disappeared.
Mr. Kowalski ordered Karol to find her. Karol in turn hired a promising sounding private investigator, Jack Derringer. Jack promised he would send reports as soon as he had any news. And for six months, those reports had been exercises in frustration. Vague emails. Short phone calls filled with hesitation and caveats. Derringer claimed to be "on the right path," claimed he needed "just a little more time to be sure."
Inside the manor, the mood had curdled from worry into suspicion. Mr. Kowalski, usually a man of infinite strategic patience, had begun to voice what Karol had suspected for weeks: that John Derringer was not a careful investigator, but an incompetent one. A washed-up ex-cop clinging to a wealthy family's grief like a parasite, trading vague updates for a steady paycheck.
Yesterday, the dam had broken. Mr. Kowalski had snapped. The order had been given, absolute and icy: Derringer was summoned to the manor in Kraków. He was to bring everything. Every file, every lead, every scrap of raw data. If he had been wasting their time while Elena suffered, he would be destroyed.
Karol tightened his jaw, watching the empty road. He prepared his face, schooling his features into the neutral mask of professional service. He would not let the charlatan see his disdain.
Then, two pinpricks of light appeared in the far distance, cutting a weak swathe through the rain-soaked darkness at the gate. The headlights grew steadily brighter, sweeping across the wet trunks of the oaks as the car navigated the long approach.
The vehicle arrived with a silent, confident whisper. It was the estate’s black Mercedes S-Class, sent to collect the detective from the airport. It glided to a perfect halt under the portico, the tires crunching softly on the gravel.
The estate driver, a young man in a peaked cap, exited and opened the rear passenger door.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a man emerged from the plush leather interior, and Karol’s suspicion hardened into disgust.
John Derringer looked like a man who had been dragged backward through hell. His trench coat was rumpled and stained with dark splotches that might have been oil or old blood. His face was gaunt, grey-skinned, and his eyes were hollowed-out pits of exhaustion and what Karol immediately identified as the smell of cheap, stale whiskey.
But it was his hand that drew Karol’s eye. On the back of his right hand was a jagged, angry scab, red and weeping at the edges, as if he had punched a mirror and simply let it heal on its own. It was ugly, careless—a physical manifestation of the man’s chaotic incompetence.
Derringer blinked against the soft light of the portico, squinting at the imposing facade and then at the statue-like figure waiting for him.
"Mr. Wo…" Derringer began, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that seemed to catch on the syllables. He winced, rubbing his throat. "Wój… ah, Christ. Forget it. You're Karol, right?"
Karol stepped forward, his expression a fortress of polite ice. "Indeed, sir. Wójcik. But 'Karol' is sufficient. Welcome to the manor."
He reached for Derringer's damp coat. "Allow me."
Derringer let him take the coat, revealing a suit that had seen better decades, let alone days. But when Karol reached for the battered leather briefcase clutched in Derringer’s scabby hand, the detective jerked it back with a feral intensity.
"No," Derringer rasped, his eyes flashing with something wild and protective. "I keep this."
Karol retracted his hand slowly, noting the tremor in the detective's grip. Drunk, he thought. Or gripping onto his last paycheck.
"As you wish, this way, sir." Karol said. "Mr. Kowalski is expecting you. And I must warn you, his patience is at an end."
He guided Derringer through the massive oak doors and into the grand entrance hall. The air inside was warm and still, smelling of beeswax and old money, a stark contrast to the man walking beside him. Karol led him past the grand staircase toward the heavy, dark wood doors of the library.
Karol stopped, his hand on the brass handle. He turned to Derringer.
"He wants the truth, Mr. Derringer," Karol said, his voice lowering to a warning whisper. "No more delays. No more 'hunches.' If you have wasted our time..."
"I haven't wasted a second," Derringer interrupted, his voice hollow. He looked at the door with a terrifying kind of dread. "I wish I had. God, I wish things were different."
Karol frowned, the first crack in his assessment appearing. Before he could analyze the comment, he opened the door.
The library was a cavern of shadows. Mr. Kowalski sat behind his desk, illuminated by a single green lamp. He looked up as they entered, his face a mask of stone, ready to dissect the failure he expected to walk through the door.
Karol stopped and looked at Mr. Kowalski. "Mr. Derringer, sir."
Kowalski stared at the detective. He didn't offer a greeting. "The briefcase," he commanded, his voice rough. "Put it on the desk. Every file. Now."
Derringer stepped forward, placing the battered case on the mahogany. He didn't open it. He just looked at Mr. Kowalski.
"Sir," Derringer said. "Before you look... you need to know. The police won't touch this. I tried a contact in Vice. They know the group. They're scared of them, warned me to bury what I had. The press is a dead end; these people have eyes and ears all over Brooklyn."
Kowalski’s eyes narrowed. "So you come to tell me you have failed?"
"No," Derringer whispered. "I came to tell you I found her. But... I was trying to buy time to find a way to get her out before you... before you had to hear what kind of place she is in."
He clicked the latches of the briefcase.
Mr. Kowalski looked at Karol. "Wait outside."
Karol bowed and retreated, pulling the heavy door shut. He resumed his post in the hall, but his mind was racing. The look in Derringer's eyes had not been the evasive look of a con man. It was the haunted look of a witness.
He stood his post in the silent hall. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty.
Then, the latch thunked.
The library door creaked open. Mr. Kowalski stood silhouetted in the doorway. He didn't speak; he just motioned with a slight tilt of his head for Karol to enter.
Karol stepped back into the library. The atmosphere had shifted from tension to something brittle and dangerous. Derringer was slumped in the heavy leather armchair, looking utterly hollowed out. The briefcase sat open on the floor.
Mr. Kowalski was standing by the tall, dark windows, his back to the room.
"Karol," Mr. Kowalski said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Mr. Derringer has finally provided… a comprehensive report." He paused, taking a shaky breath. "He was trying to spare us, it seems. To protect a father’s heart."
He turned from the window. His face was a mask of cold, controlled devastation.
"But I cannot operate on protection. I need facts. This report... it includes a great deal of supporting footage." He gestured vaguely to the external drive sitting on the desk. "Visual evidence."
He turned fully now, his face ravaged by a conflict between a father's desperate need to see the suffering his child is facing, to share in it, and a man's fear of what that sight might do to him.
"I told Mr. Derringer I intended to view every second of it," Kowalski said, his voice straining. "That I needed to see what my daughter is enduring." He swallowed hard. "Mr. Derringer... strongly advised against it. He said... he said some things cannot be unseen."
He looked at Karol, a silent, heartbreaking plea in his eyes. He was asking his most loyal servant to step onto the landmine first.
"Review the tapes, Karol. You have always been stronger than me in these matters. Review all of it. And then... tell me truly if what is on those drives is something a father should ever look upon."
Karol gave a short, sharp nod. "Of course, sir."
He moved to Derringer's side. The detective looked up at him, a flicker of gratitude in his exhausted eyes. Karol helped the man to his feet; his legs were unsteady, and he leaned on Karol for a moment for support. Karol took his arm, guiding the exhausted detective out of the library and down the long, silent corridor towards the warmth and light of the kitchens.
He handed Derringer over to the care of the house cook, Krystyna, a stout, motherly woman whose shocked expression at the state of the man was quickly hidden by a mask of professional concern. She sat him down at the heavy wooden table and began bustling about, her movements a comforting, domestic anchor in a world that had come loose from its moorings.
Karol did not linger. He did not go to his own quarters to steel himself. He retreated from the kitchen, his steps swift and silent, not back to the main library, but to the small, private study that adjoined it. It was his own sanctuary, a place of ledgers and household accounts.
Tonight, it would become a viewing room for hell.
Karol closed the door, the soft click of the latch sealing him inside. He moved to the small mahogany desk, the one he used for managing the estate's accounts. On it sat a modern, high-end laptop, its silver case gleaming under the soft light of a desk lamp. Next to it sat a small, black external hard drive, connected by a single USB cable—the physical vessel of Derringer's report.
He sat down, the leather of his chair creaking softly in the silence. He stared at the hard drive for a long moment, a black, featureless brick that contained the story of the last six months of Elena's life. He took a deep breath, his composure a thin, brittle shell over a core of pure dread.
He moved the mouse, waking the computer from its sleep. The screen glowed to life. Karol inserted the drive and waited. A window appeared on the desktop, displaying a simple file folder. The label was stark, clinical.
KOWALSKI, E. - CASE FILE. DERRINGER.
His hand trembled, just slightly, as he double-clicked the folder.
It opened to reveal a nightmare of organization. The folder was filled with dozens of sub-folders, an archive of agony. There were text documents labeled 'Timelines', 'Financials', 'Persons of Interest'. There were image folders labeled 'Surveillance', 'Location'.
And then there was the folder that made his breath catch in his throat.
VIDEO EVIDENCE.
He clicked on it. The sheer volume was staggering. There were at least fifty video files, each with a cryptic, horrifying name. 'Endurance Test 4'. 'Blonde Session 2'. 'Solo - Brushwork'. 'The Reporter's Debut'.
He scanned the list, his eyes searching for the one name that mattered. He found it near the top. The file was dated a little over six months ago. The label was simple, and all the more terrifying for it.
Elena - Ingress.
Ingress. The beginning. The entry point.
Karol’s hand felt unnaturally heavy as he moved the cursor over the file icon. He steeled himself, his jaw tight. He double-clicked.
The video player opened, the screen instantly filled with a jarringly high-quality image. The setting was an industrial space, but the lighting was professional, theatrical. In the center was a modified medical table.
And then they brought her in.
It was Elena, but not the Elena he knew. She was wild, her hair a mess, her clothes—the simple jeans and sweater she'd been wearing when she disappeared—were torn at the knee. She was fighting, a feral, cornered animal, spitting curses as a mountain of a man—Knuckles, Derringer’s report had called him—manhandled her towards the table.
The audio spiked, raw and distorted.
"Get off me! GET YOUR FILTHY FUCKING HANDS OFF ME!"
Karol flinched as if struck. That was her voice. Raw, furious, and terrified.
He watched, paralyzed, as they forced her onto the table. The restraints were applied with a brutal, practiced efficiency. Heavy leather cuffs were cinched around her wrists and ankles, locking her down. She was secured. Helpless.
The mountain of a man moved to the foot of the table. He grabbed her left foot, yanked off her simple flat shoe, and tossed it aside. He lowered his face to her bare foot, his nose hovering over her toes, and took a long, audible sniff.
Elena shrieked, a sound that was half-disgust, half-terror.
"YOU SICK FUCK!"
The man just let out a low, guttural chuckle. Then, he did something worse. He extended his tongue, a thick, wet muscle, and dragged it in a slow, obscene stripe from her heel to the base of her toes.
Karol’s stomach churned.
"Tasty," the man murmured, his voice a wet rumble.
Elena let out a high, thin squeal of pure revulsion, her body arching off the table as she tried to yank her foot away from the disgusting, intimate violation. The leather strap held her fast.
At that moment, a second man, shorter and leaner in a cheap, shiny suit—Slick—slid into the frame at her other foot. He grinned at the camera, then at Elena's horrified face. He repeated the action, licking her right sole with a theatrical flourish.
And then, before she could even process the humiliation, they began.
Both men attacked at once. Knuckles’ thick, brutish fingers dug into her left arch with the force of a blacksmith's grip, his knuckles white with the strain as he kneaded her sensitive flesh, while Slick’s nimble, spidery digits skittered across her right foot, a blur of movement.
The torment was immediate and absolute. Elena’s body convulsed. Her shrieks of disgust and rage were hijacked, strangled in her throat and twisted into something else entirely.
She erupted into laughter. A horrible, breathless, full-bodied torrent of laughter that wasn't born of joy, but of pure, inescapable sensory overload.
Karol sat frozen in his chair, a silent witness, watching the girl he had helped raise be systematically, sadistically dismantled.
Karol’s composure, the mask he had worn for a lifetime, finally shattered.
A single, silent tear broke free from his eye and traced a hot, slow path down his cheek. He didn't wipe it away. He stared at the screen, his face a stone carving of grief, the single tear a crack in the granite.
He couldn't watch this. Not like this. Not in real-time.
Karol’s hand, shaking with a mixture of rage and revulsion, moved to the mouse. He clicked the mute button, silencing the horrible sound of Elena's forced, hysterical laughter. The silence in the small study was suddenly deafening, a vacuum that made the visual horror on the screen even more intense.
His eyes drifted down to the timeline bar at the bottom of the video player. He had assumed, naively, that this was a clip. A ten-minute snippet of brutality.
He saw the total runtime.
02:14:45
The blood drained from Karol’s face. He stopped breathing.
Two hours.
Over two hours of continuous, unbroken torment.
The realization hit him like a physical blow to the chest, staggering him in his seat. The sheer scale of the suffering was incomprehensible. How could a human body endure that? How could a human mind surmount that kind of sustained sensory assault without shattering? The minutes on the screen weren't just time; they were an eternity of agony. Every second represented a scream he couldn't hear, a convulsion he had to witness.
He stared at the numbers, horror struck, his mind struggling to process the cruelty required to inflict two hours of this on a young woman.
He couldn't watch it all. Not in real-time. It would break him.
With a trembling hand, he grabbed the timeline slider. He dragged it forward. The video accelerated into a silent, frantic ballet of cruelty. The two hours of the recording blurred into a minute of flickering, nightmarish stills. He saw flashes of tools—brushes, feathers, strange metal implements. He saw the thugs moving up and down her body, their hands a blur of motion over her feet, her flanks, her ribs, her armpits. It was relentless. Methodical. Industrial.
He watched Elena's face in fast-forward. The defiant rage melted into panicked pleading, then into a slack-jawed, tear-streaked mask of pure exhaustion, her body twitching and jerking like a marionette whose strings were being pulled by madmen.
Near the end of the timeline, he saw a change in the frenetic pattern. The smaller man, Slick, stepped back, out of the frame. The larger man, Knuckles, moved from her feet to stand beside the table. Then, he fell to his knees and then prone.
Karol’s eyes narrowed. This was different. He released the mouse, and the video snapped back to normal speed. He moved the cursor back a few seconds, unmuting the audio just as the scene began.
The sound that returned was not laughter. It was the harsh, ragged sound of Elena gasping for air, her breath coming in wet, hitching sobs. Knuckles was standing beside her, his pants open, his erect but pitifully small penis exposed in the harsh studio light.
"Just a little break," Knuckles was grunting, his voice thick with arousal. "A reward for being such a good sport." He was trying to guide her shackled right hand towards his groin.
Elena looked from his exposed cock up to the man's leering eyes and back down. A flicker of her old, defiant spirit, the one Karol knew so well, ignited in her exhausted eyes. A small, contemptuous snicker escaped her lips.
"Is that it?" she sneered, the words a perfect, devastating insult.
Knuckles’ face, which had been a mask of lust, instantly contorted with rage and humiliation.
From off-screen, Slick’s voice called out, "She's got a mouth on her, Knucks! Maybe she don't need a break!" The smaller man moved back into the frame, his hands extended, ready to attack her armpits again.
Knuckles didn't even look at him. He grabbed Elena's wrist, forcing her hand around his cock with a brutal, punishing grip.
"If you want a break from the tickling," he growled, his face inches from hers, "then you wipe that look off your face and get to work."
Elena's hand began to move, jerking with the little movement her cuff allowed. He put his hands behind his head, leaning back with a self-satisfied grunt as he called out over his shoulder to his accomplice. "Hey, Slick, she's not half bad. You wanna—"
With a sudden, violent spasm of strength, Elena locked her wrist, her fingers becoming a rigid vise. Using the flat of her palm as a pivot point against the base of his shaft, she snapped her hand sharply to the side—a devastating, focused wrench that put all the force of the motion into a single, brutal, lateral tear.
A wet, tearing click—the sound of the erect tissue tearing itself against the resistance of the outer sheath—ripped through the study speakers.
Knuckles' sentence died in his throat. His entire body went rigid. His eyes bulged, and the leering grin was replaced by a rictus of pure, unadulterated agony.
A high-pitched, feminine squeal of pain tore from his throat as he collapsed forward, onto his knees and then prone onto the floor, clutching his crotch with both hands, his legs kicking.
Karol’s grief-stricken face, stained with a single tear, broke. A fierce, predatory smile stretched across his lips. He was a man watching a warrior he had helped raise land a devastating blow against a monster.
"That's my girl," he whispered, his voice a low, proud growl. "You always were a fighter."
He grabbed the mouse, rewound the last ten seconds, and watched it again. The sneer. The insult. The wet, tearing snap of the tissue. The squeal of agony from the mountain of a man. It was a small victory in a war that was already lost, but it was a victory nonetheless. It was proof that even in the depths of hell, Elena was still Elena. She was still fighting.
But the triumph was short-lived.
On the screen, Knuckles was stumbling back to his feet. He wasn't holding his crotch anymore. His face was an apocalyptic mask of pure, unrestrained rage. The humiliation, the excruciating pain, had shattered his professional sadism and unleashed the wild, feral beast beneath.
The sick game was over. This was no longer about a show. This was about vengeance.
"You fucking BITCH!" he roared, his voice a distorted, animalistic bellow.
He lunged at the table. He didn't reach for a brush or a feather. He balled his massive hand into a fist the size of a cinder block and began to beat her.
It was not a controlled punishment. It was a flurry of uncontrolled, desperate violence. He swung wildly, his fists crashing into her ribs, her stomach, her shoulders—anywhere he could land a blow that wouldn't leave a visible mark on her face for the cameras.
Elena’s body jerked with each impact, her gasps of pain lost under the storm of Knuckles’ rage-fueled curses.
"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU! YOU HEAR ME?! I'LL TEAR YOU APART!"
He was completely out of control, a rabid dog savaging its prey. Slick, the other man, tried to intervene, grabbing Knuckles' shoulder. "Knucks, hey! Not the merchandise! Frank'll have your hide!"
Knuckles threw him off with a backhand, sending the smaller man staggering. He turned back to Elena, spitting and screaming, his fists a blur until, finally, her body went limp. One final, brutal punch to her side, and her head lolled, her consciousness mercifully surrendering to the blackness.
She was out.
Knuckles stood there, panting, his chest heaving, his face slick with sweat. He looked down at the unconscious, battered girl on the table.
Karol watched the screen, his brief, savage smile now gone, replaced by a cold, hard mask of fury. He had seen enough. More than enough.
He reached out and closed the video player. The screen went dark.
The study was silent again. But the silence was different now. It wasn't the silence of dread. It was the silence of a promise being forged in the fires of righteous hatred.
He knew what he had to tell Mr. Kowalski. He would not have to see this. But he would need to know that his daughter was still a fighter. And that she was fighting a battle she could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to lose.
Karol stood up from the desk, his movements stiff, as if his joints had rusted in place while he watched the video. He walked out of the small study, closing the door softly behind him, sealing the horrors he’d just witnessed inside.
He re-entered the main library.
Mr. Kowalski had returned to his desk. He hadn’t touched his drink. He was sitting perfectly still, his hands clasped on the polished mahogany, his gaze fixed on the door, waiting.
He didn't have to ask the question. He didn't have to say a word. He just looked up at Karol, his eyes a maelstrom of fear and desperate hope.
And Karol, the man who had served him flawlessly for thirty years, the man whose face was a trained, impenetrable mask of professional calm, met his gaze.
Karol did not have to speak. His face, the face he had meticulously schooled into neutrality, had betrayed him. The grief was too profound, the horror too raw. The single, dried tear track on his cheek was a scar. The cold, shattered grief in his eyes, combined with the new, hard glint of murderous rage, told his master the whole, unspeakable truth.
Mr. Kowalski’s composure, the iron-clad control he had maintained for more than six agonizing months, finally broke.
It was not a cry. It was not a sob. It was a roar. A primal, guttural sound of pure anguish and fury that tore itself from the deepest parts of his soul, echoing off the leather-bound books and the high, vaulted ceiling.
He shot to his feet, his chair screeching back on the hardwood floor. He grabbed the heavy crystal tumbler of bourbon from his desk.
With another guttural yell, he hurled the glass.
It sailed across the room and smashed against a priceless, antique shelving unit filled with first editions. The sound of the shattering glass was sharp and violent, a physical manifestation of his breaking heart. Shards of crystal sprayed through the air, and amber whiskey streamed down the spines of the leather-bound books like tears of blood.
Mr. Kowalski stood there, panting, his chest heaving, his fists clenched at his sides. He was trembling, not with grief, but with rage. The father who had been praying for his daughter’s safe return was gone. In his place stood a man who now prayed for vengeance.
He turned to Karol, his eyes blazing, and unleashed a roar that shook the very foundations of the room.
"GET MY DAUGHTER OUT OF THERE! I DON’T CARE WHAT IT COSTS! I DON’T CARE WHAT LAWS YOU HAVE TO BREAK! I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO BURN TO THE GROUND! JUST DO IT!"
The command hung in the air, echoing off the mahogany walls like a gunshot.
Karol did not flinch. He did not look away. This was the order he had been waiting over six months to receive. He gave a single, sharp nod—the ultimate affirmation of loyalty, the final seal on a covenant of blood and retribution.
He turned without a word and retreated from the library, leaving his master to the ruins of his grief. Karol’s steps were no longer those of a servant. They were the measured, purposeful steps of an executioner.
He returned to the small study, the place where he had borne witness to the horror.
Karol sat back down at the desk. The grief and horror were still there, but they had been compressed, forged by the heat of Mr. Kowalski’s command into a cold, hard weapon. He minimized Derringer's files and opened a secure, encrypted application.
It was a digital black book, a list of ghosts and specialists that governments disavowed and decent men pretended didn't exist. He didn't need to browse. He knew exactly who he needed.
He navigated to the alpha entry.
'KEYSTONE' - Ex-US Navy SEAL. Team Assembler / Infiltration / High-Value Target Neutralization. Current Status: Active.
Karol stared at the name. Keystone. A legend who didn't just undertake missions—he built bespoke teams of other ghosts to execute them with lethal precision. This was the man who could walk through the gates of hell and salt the earth behind him.
The chapter of investigation was closed. The chapter of vengeance was about to begin.
Karol reached for the secure satellite phone beside the desk. His face was a mask of cold, absolute resolve. He entered the encrypted authorization code and pressed the call button next to the name 'Keystone'.
Karol Wójcik was no longer a butler. He was an angel of death, and he was about to recruit his horsemen.
Next Chapter (9) - Paolo
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