Page 34 of Prior Claim
Sevastyan grimaced and said nothing. Most of the money on that card had come from selling the clothes given to him by a certain bored and lonely mother of one of his British classmates. The fact that she liked ripping his own clothes off him during their trysts had contributed to why she had bought him so many.
Anton picked up the card. “I can’t take all your money.”
“That’s one account. Out of many.”
Anton nodded. Then he dropped the card on the table again. “So, we’re just not going to talk about your mother putting a gun to your head?”
“What’s there to talk about?”
“Has she done that before?”
Sevastyan studied his father. How did one explain that you just got accustomed to crazy? “No.”
“Why are you okay?”
Sevastyan stood and walked toward the window. He looked through the curtain and played with the fastenings. “I’m alive, aren’t I? Raska is Raska. You should worry about yourself.”
“I’m worried about you.”
Sevastyan adjusted the chair and started going through his bag. “I survive. I always do.”
“She should be stopped.”
“Then kill her.” Sevastyan looked up. “That’s the only way.”
Anton paused, then shook his head. “They should all go down. Her. Mikhail. This Merchari shit. That’s the only way we’ll be safe.”
“Who’s we?”
“You. Me. Collin and Alice. Anastasia.”
Sevastyan forced himself to stay relaxed, despite the mention of Anton’s American wife and children.
Anton drank more of the water. Sevastyan watched his father’s throat work, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down until he emptied the bottle. There was a rift in the space between them. Anton was somewhere else and Sevastyan was standing on the edge of the land, watching him drift further and further away.
“We have to get their trust, figure out their structure, gather evidence, find out who in government is covering for them. Russia is a civilized country.”
“Russia is Russia,” Sevastyan retorted. What did his father not understand about that? No country was particularly civilized. Some of them just had fancier toilets and more doors.
“Russia is what we make her.” Anton looked across the bed at Sevastyan. “You saved me today.”
Sevastyan shrugged.
“That’s how I know you’re not like the rest of them. You’re not ruined, not yet.”
Why does it sound like I’m a breath away from being ruined? “I’m your son,” Sevastyan said.
“But is she your mother?” Anton lifted his chin as if he were really asking: “Who are you loyal to?”
Sevastyan adjusted the zipper on his bag. “Let’s just hope your other son has a better mother. Because Raska . . .” Sevastyan shot his father a sardonic look, “was one fuck I’d rather you had missed.”
“Raska was an arranged fuck I couldn’t refuse.” Anton crumpled up the bottle. “That’s what we’ll do, then. Gain their trust, unravel their network. Find out how deep the corruption goes. Eliminate.”
Sevastyan’s world tilted sideways without moving a centimeter. “You want to fight the Merchari?”
“We have to.” Anton nodded emphatically. “It’s our duty.”
“It’s Raska.”
