I gazed at Sevastyan’s face, searching. “If I don’t call you in a week . . .” I trailed off. Then what? Notify the embassy? What hope would they have against the Red Mafiya? “I will call you in a week.”
“Just be careful, babe,” Jess said. “Oh, and tell the unicorn that if anything happens to you, I will skull-f**k him, ’kay? How do you say ‘desecrate his motherfucking corpse’ in Russki?”
Sevastyan tapped his watch.
“Gotta go, message received—and stay safe yourself.” Hanging up, I turned to him. “It’s morning in Russia. Why don’t you give me your boss’s number, so I can explain some things to him?” Customer service in your organization requires a complete overhaul. “Share some of my thoughts.”
“Kovalev’s in a congress.” At my nonplussed look, Sevastyan explained, “It’s like a summit meeting for vory.”
“Don’t you think my going to Russia will just magnify this problem?”
“We have men there, safeguards in place. Your father’s compound is a fortress.”
A mafiya compound? I could just see it: some gray and dingy Soviet-era monolith. Inside, the décor would be a riot of gaudy knickknacks, selected on the basis not of taste, but of price. And Kovalev . . . I pictured a hulking brute in a tracksuit, wearing so many thick gold chains that his neck looked like a ring toss. He probably kept white tigers and had a diamond-encrusted toilet.
Ugh. I frowned at Sevastyan. “Forcing me back there wasn’t always the plan?”
He shook his head.
“So if those bad guys hadn’t headed to the States, would you have kept spying on me from afar?”
“I would have remained in place—protecting you—until your father could travel here to meet you.”
“If you were my sole bodyguard, when did you sleep?”
“While you were in class or at work. When I knew you’d be around others for a while.” That meant he’d gotten even fewer hours than I had. He cocked his head. “I can sleep when I’m dead, no?”
Exactly what I’d thought. “This is a lot for Kovalev to put on your shoulders.” I couldn’t imagine a task like that—having another person’s life in my hands.
“I would do anything he asked me.”
“Is devotion like that common in your . . . organization?”
“He’s been a father to me since I was young. I owe him my life,” Sevastyan said in a tone that told me he would not be unpacking that comment.
“Then in a way, you’re like my much, much older brother.”
Another scowl from the Russian. He didn’t like that remark at all. “I’m only seven or so years older than you are.”
I waved that information away. “And my mother . . . ?”
“I must let Kovalev explain that. It’s not my story to tell.”
“At least tell me if she’s alive.”
I might’ve seen a flicker of pity in Sevastyan’s eyes. I assumed the worst, grief hitting me like a swift stab to my heart. All these years of wondering . . . Now it seemed that I’d never meet her, never speak to her.
Stemming tears, I asked, “Do I have any siblings?”
“None.”
“Grandparents?” Mom and Dad had been older when they’d adopted me, and my grandparents had passed away over my childhood.
He shook his head. “Only your father and a distant cousin you’ll meet.” He rose, then crossed to a marble counter in the middle of the sitting area. With the push of a button, a panel retracted to reveal a stocked wet bar with a full range of bar and stemware. He poured two drinks into cut-crystal glasses. A vodka rocks for himself—and a chilled Sprite for me?
“No warm milk?” I accepted the glass and drank, surly because it tasted so good.
Returning to his seat, he ran a finger around the edge of his glass, but he hadn’t taken a sip. Just as his drink at the bar had been untouched. “I don’t have your preferred tequila.”