Page 21 of Wayward

“I don’t know why you’re smiling,” I groused at him. “You’re in the house too.”

He scoffed. “No one has any record of me doing anything with your family. As far as the Feds know, I’m just a private citizen.”

“Don’t be deluded. The FBI knows you’re ex-FSB. If Interpol knows, they know.”

Quick shrug. “What people know and what they can prove are two very different things. And you’re not going to testify against me, so why would anyone care?”

I scoffed. “I see. You’re saying, why would anyone go looking for small fish when I can give up the whale.”

Instant scowl. “You know whales are not fish, don’t you?”

“For fuck’s sake, Sava, I—”

His laughter shut me up, and when he leaned forward to put his hand on my cheek and give me a quick pat, I stopped sputtering. “Listen, if you testify against your father, your father gives them the others who are big like him. They don’t care about me, or Lev, or whoever else. If your father is done, everything he built goes away. That hurts the others who betrayed you. It puts them out on their own.”

“Yeah, but what about Vanya and Nara and—”

“Pasha will be their safety net, and the Feds will be watching him carefully afterward, but really, that’s okay because he’s clean. He has nothing to hide.”

It was true.

“And imagine how liberating that will be for him. He can condemn your father, rage publicly over losing you, and people will rally to his side. It’s perfect for him.”

It would make him an even bigger celebrity than he was now.

“We both know you’re a fighter, Maks, not a runner.”

He knew me far better than I thought he did.

“You can’t just leave and let your father win. You can’t leave Pasha here without your protection, or Vanya, or Nara.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, needing to get my bearings.

“Even me you worry about.”

I nodded, because my voice had gone out on me.

“There’s only one way to make sure we’re all taken care of forever.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“Also,” he added, and I looked at him through my barely cracked lids. “You can take out Constantine before he does any more damage.”

Once, a visiting ballerina from Moscow had turned down the advances of Constantine’s oldest. She had acid thrown in her face the following night. He had ordered the carnage like it was nothing. He was casually savage, and if I could do anything to stop him or my father, it was the only choice to be made.

A day later, I walked into the FBI headquarters on Roosevelt Road, went to the desk, told the woman there who I was, and then staggered to the lobby to sit down. I wasn’t feeling all that great. I had started running a fever in the night, and Sava was even more pleased that I was seeking intervention from the Feds. He was concerned that perhaps his doctor was not as good as he thought.

“You’re killing me,” I told him when I opened the door of the stolen car he would return as soon as he dropped me off.

“Hopefully not,” he quipped, squeezing my shoulder.

Once I was standing on the sidewalk, he surprised me by getting out and coming around the car to hug me.

“Thank you,” I said, holding the tears in, swallowing down the pain of parting. Once he was gone, that was it. He was my last tie to my old life.

“You’re welcome, Maks,” he said, smiling at me, water welling in his own eyes as he eased back. “Be good now. This is a second chance. Live.”

“I will,” I promised him.