Page 20 of Wayward

“There are ways to make him believe you, though.”

I was missing something.

“Pasha, I mean. He could be made to understand your father’s true heart, to see his real face, not the one he shows.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know,” he began, “if you fight Grigory Lenkov, Pasha wouldn’t be hurt. He’s insulated, yes? That’s how your father planned it all out.”

Fight? That made no sense. I would be dead the second my father realized I was actually alive. He might even put the bullet in me himself.

He tipped his head, waiting for me to catch up.

“Are you all right, old man?”

He shook his head. “You know what I’m saying.”

But I didn’t. “I can’t fight my father. I’m outgunned and outmanned. And you already said he drained all my accounts, so I have no resources—”

“Lev, the others, and again, your father, would be buried if you fought, but they did the same to you. Remember, your father gave the order to kill you, and the others saw it done.”

And it hit me suddenly, what he really meant. The fighting he was suggesting I do was not about taking up arms and spilling blood. He was speaking of a betrayal that would be on the same level of what had been done to me. He was talking about the Federal Bureau of Investigation, about the people who’d been hunting all of us for years.

“No, I’ll just end up spending the rest of my very short life in jail with them.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve killed people too,” I reminded him. “I’m not innocent.”

“I agree, but still, there are worse.”

He meant my father.

“I’ll just go,” I countered.

He squinted at me, and it wasn’t a good look for him. Sava had a deeply lined face that showed both how hard he lived and how often he laughed. It was a face full of history. But when he narrowed his eyes, his face scrunched up like a giant peach pit. “You could never go. We both know that. You have to make them pay. It’s how you’re made.”

I did have vengeance in my blood. I came by it naturally.

“You’re worried Pasha will be hurt if you go to the Feds, but really, we both know he will not. He’s been sheltered, insulated, nothing traces back to him.”

“Yes, but—”

“And you could have that say, Maks. Make that a stipulation of you becoming a witness.”

“You have to be joking.”

He arched an eyebrow in answer.

God.

The FBI.

It was funny to think about how long I’d been on their radar and how equally many times I’d slipped through their fingers. The thing was, I had a scary sixth sense that told me when I was being played. I only trusted my closest friends.

And look how that had turned out.

“You could make things safe for Pasha and then burn the house down,” he said with a wicked grin.