“She’s fine. The dose of sleeping pills was small; he didn’t get to finish what he started. They’re bringing her around now.”
Stepan felt his legs give way. He leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath.
Artem was led away. Stepan followed slowly, holding onto the railing. His legs wouldn’t obey.
An ambulance was in the parking garage. Medics were bustling around it. Stepan saw a stretcher, an IV drip, an oxygen mask. He waited. The minutes stretched like hours. Finally, one of the medics approached him.
“Are you the father?”
“Yes.”
“She’s conscious. She wants to see you.”
Stepan rushed to the ambulance. Daria was sitting on the stretcher—pale, with disheveled hair, but alive. Alive.
“Dad.” She tried to stand, but a nurse gently held her back.
Stepan hugged his daughter. Tightly, like he hadn’t since she was a child.
“Forgive me,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. From the very beginning.”
“Shh, sweetheart. It’s okay. It’s all over.”
Artem was led past in handcuffs. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His face was gray, empty. The mask had finally slipped off, and there was nothing underneath. Emptiness. A black, bottomless void.
Daria lifted her head and looked him in the eyes.
“I loved you,” she said quietly. “For real. And you? You’re not even human.”
Artem said nothing. He was led away.
The trial took place six months later. By then, the investigation had uncovered two more victims. Women who had died under strange circumstances several years before Olga. The total number of murders reached five. There might have been others, but they couldn’t be proven.
Zhanna testified. She was tried as an accomplice, but her cooperation with the investigation was taken into account. Three years probation. She left the courtroom having aged ten years, but with something new in her eyes. Perhaps the hope of redemption.
Nikolai Gritsenko attended every session. In his wheelchair, with a lifeless gaze, but when the verdict was announced, he cried. For the first time in two years.
Artem, whose real name turned out to be Igor Volkov, was sentenced to life in prison. As he was led away, he never once looked back. Not at the judge, not at the victims’ families, not at Daria, who sat in the front row, squeezing her mother’s hand.
After the trial, Stepan went out onto the courthouse steps and lit a cigarette. His first in six months—he had quit after that evening in Artem’s apartment. The doctors said his heart couldn’t take it. But today, today was an exception.
“Dad,” Daria followed him out. “How are you?”
“I’m okay. And you?”
She paused.
“I don’t know. I feel like I should be relieved. But I just feel… empty.”
“That will pass.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. In time, it will pass. You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
Daria leaned against his shoulder.
“Thank you, Dad. For everything.”
“Nothing to thank me for. I just did what I had to do.”
“No. You did more. Much more.”
They stood on the steps, father and daughter, and watched the sun set. The sunset was beautiful. Almost as beautiful as the one they had seen twenty years ago, when little Dasha first asked, “Dad, why is the sky red?”
“Because the day is ending,” he had answered then. “And the night is beginning.”
“And then?”
