Lost save files

[Torokin]

Yeah, I lost my save files. I've had this reoccurring issue where the game freezes for a few seconds when I try to save, but it always unfreezes after those seconds. Not this time though.

I was away in Catun with a whole inventory of hashish, selling the stuff. As I was about to go in I made a backup save file in case things were to go south. The game froze, as per usual, and the save button seemed to do nothing. I waited, the game started, no more issues. The "game saved" thing never came up though but I thought nothing of it.
When I went into the store to sell my stuff the game froze again, hard this time. Nothing moved. Sounds looped. I couldn't move the mouse pointer. After about 2 minutes or so of waiting the game started, said "Save completed" (from the one I saved earlier that never appeared), and the game just crashed to desktop.

Now, this has happened before. It's nothing new, 4-5 times I've dealt with this. I restarted the game came to the menu and the "Continue" button is just... gone. Reduced to atoms. Weird, right? So I click "Load game" instead. Nothing. Not a single save file left. All gone. 127 hours of grinding deleted. I even went into the Steam folder where the save files live but that file was as empty as the one in game.

I tried verifying the game on Steam without any luck. No one seems to know about this bug on the Discord either.
I genuinely don't know what to do. Halp pls.
/Torokin