"THEY'RE AT THE DUMP... I LIVE WITH THEM!" A poor little boy told the millionaire. What he saw next made him feel sick...

The interrogation suites beneath the General Prosecutor's Office were sterile, soundproofed chambers carved from reinforced concrete. The air was thick with the bitter smell of cheap instant coffee and fear.

Dr. Roman Sidorov broke first.

Within forty-five minutes of being stripped of his medical license and faced with charges of aggravated kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, and high treason, the coroner was singing like a canary. Viktor stood in the observation booth beside Andriy, watching through the one-way glass as Sidorov sobbed onto a legal pad, writing out names, dates, offshore bank accounts, and safehouse locations.

"It was seven hundred and fifty thousand euros," Viktor said, reading from the preliminary transcript handed to him by a detective. "Deposited into an account in Nicosia under Sidorov’s wife's name. Vadim Chernov provided the unidentified bodies—two homeless children killed in an industrial train collision in Poltava three days before the manor fire. Sidorov swapped the dental files, burned the bodies beyond visual recognition, and delivered the sealed urns to you."

Andriy stared at his own reflection in the darkened glass. His knuckles were bone-white as he gripped the metal counter. "And the girls? Where were they kept?"

"A subterranean basement under an abandoned cold-storage facility owned by Chernov Logistics near the river docks," Viktor replied, his voice grim. "Vadim kept them sedated for the first three months. The plan was originally to smuggle them out of the country on a container ship to an illegal adoption ring in South America—anything to keep them alive just long enough until Sofia’s trust passed the six-month probate review without legal dispute."

"Why did they throw them away?" Andriy choked out. "Why the dump?"

"Because three weeks ago, you hired an independent international auditor to review Sofia's trust documents before signing the final transfer," Viktor said softly. "Elena panicked. She thought the auditors would track the movement of the trust's initial liquidation. Vadim realized keeping two children alive with guards was a paper trail. A hitman named Boris was ordered to execute them and dissolve the evidence in acid."

Andriy closed his eyes, his breath hitching. A wave of violent vertigo washed over him.

"What stopped him?"

"Boris got cold feet. Or maybe a shred of a soul," Viktor said, tapping a file. "We picked Boris up at the border crossing two hours ago trying to enter Moldova. During his field confession, he said he couldn't pull the trigger on two little girls holding hands. He drove them out to the freight tracks, cut their bonds, and told them to run into the dark. He figured the cold would do the work for him so his conscience could stay clean. That's when Taras found them."

*Taras.*

A street orphan with nothing to his name but a torn jacket, a dugout in a landfill, and a heart large enough to shelter two dying angels when the entire gilded world had thrown them away.

"Where is Vadim?" Andriy asked.

"Vadim isn't speaking," Viktor said with a dark scowl. "His high-priced corporate defense lawyers have already arrived. They're claiming psychological coercion from foreign corporate rivals, trying to stall for bail."

Andriy pushed himself away from the glass. "He won't get bail. The Prosecutor General is an old friend of my father. Viktor... take me back to the clinic. I don't care about the trials. I don't care about the press. I need to be with my children."

As Andriy walked out of the police headquarters, the cold night air hit his face. The snow had begun to fall—large, pure white flakes drifting down from the black heavens, coating the grime of the city in a clean, quiet blanket.