Sevastyan
Sevastyan stared out the window of the plane.
Halfway across the Atlantic and still his mother’s touch, the feeling of her ass on his lap, the way her fingers lingered on his collar and sleeves were crawling across his skin.
Two full showers and throwing away the clothes he’d been wearing were not enough to get rid of it.
He had her attention now, and perhaps even her respect, but he was a man.
Not even being her son was going to save him.
He’d planned for many things, but her lust had never crossed his mind.
He’d been her prince, her obedient sycophant, her whipping boy, but . . . never the object of her lust.
He’d played the role he knew would work, the fawning and the loyalty, but never considered this one last boundary of propriety would fall.
He couldn’t even close his eyes. It was just a window with clouds above endless ocean blue and yet he felt like he was staring down the eyes of his enemy, even in the white noise of the plane engines and several hundred souls breathing inside recycled air.
Bring me Anton’s head.
She hadn’t been joking. This was his one and only possible betrayal and she wanted to set it right.
Despite everything else he’d given her: His virginity at fifteen to an older woman in service of one of her schemes.
His childhood friends never lasting more than a year or two as she moved him from school to school.
The very sound of his voice changed to match the classes in which she wanted him to move.
Russia is mother and mother is Russia. Those words had protected him over the years.
He had always been able to make himself believe one side or the other, his gateway to lying to her with impunity.
A touchstone between them, it meant different things to each of them.
To her, it was an oath placing her on the throne of his existence as if she were Catherine the Great, the progenitor of culture and power.
And to him Russia evoked long tracks of forest and empty land, covered in snow and wrapped in cold like her heart.
There was a world within the country of his birth that was rich and vibrant, with a history and culture worthy of pride, and yet that was not the Russia he knew.
His mother Russia was Raska, and Raska was the Russia that had him by the throat.
Without her hands, he might have fallen through the cracks into a normal life, never noticed by the Merchari, disappearing into the millions in the great cities, a fatherless son, supported by a government pension until he was of age, and then left to carve his own way.
She was the one who had crafted him, used him, and paraded him.
Sold him, even, to the Yadro itself as part of her tithe.
That one act had settled the noose of the entire organization firmly around his neck, and yet it had also bought him an edge of freedom from her direct command.
She no longer owned his time and his body because she had sold him for power as clearly as Lisa had been sold to Alexi.
Now she was coming back for one last piece of his soul. The instant she sniffed out a bit of new potential in him, she’d come for it.
He closed his eyes, finally, against the vision. Not playing the token she’d placed on the table was more dangerous than taking it. The price of saving Gang Junseo’s life was climbing higher with every day. And yet Gang was only the ignition point. It had always been coming to this.
This or something worse.
This or failure. This or coming to the end of his life never having kept his oath, never having taken down the Merchari, never having forged Rei’s freedom, or his own.