Page 104 of Essence of Fear

That was fucking hilarious.

A privilege.

Like he wanted them or something.

Pav remembered that going down far differently than they did, clearly. He’d been told he was going to be given the stars, and that was the end of it. This wasn’t something he had been given a choice in. Just like this fucking flight.

“You’re still sour, no?”

Pav scowled at the port window. “I should be looking for her. Not going after your fucking useless father. You don’t need me for that.”

“Wrong.”

“Oh, you think?”

“I like to think I know, actually.”

“Do tell, Kolya.”

The other man sighed and gave Pav a look that said he was just about done with his shit. He very well could be, but Pav simply didn’t have the fuck to give him at the moment. His mind was in too dark of a place to care what someone else thought or wanted.

Unless their name was Viktoria, he didn’t want to know.

Seemed easy enough.

Apparently, not.

“We very well could use you in Russia,” Kolya said.

“So you keep saying. I’ve yet to figure out why.”

“You’re the only person who has a different understanding of Vadim, in a way. A part of me thinks he might even be afraid of you—he created the whole idea and image of Zhatka, didn’t he? He knows what you can do with a little inspiration. It might even … inspire him to behave and tell us what we need to know?”

Yeah, sure.

Pav didn’t care.

He wanted to find Viktoria.

They could handle Vadim at literally any other point in time. It didn’t have to be right now, but because Konstantin panicked after a few hours of Viktoria being missing, his first decision was to put a small army of men—Pav and Kolya included—on a private jet and send them all the fucking way to Russia.

But who was he to say?

Clearly, no one.

“For reference—” Kolya started to say.

“You continue to think I care or want to have a conversation with you, or that I give a damn about why I’m on this plane because someone else told me to be, but surprise, I do not give a fuck, and I don’t want to talk.”

Kolya cleared his throat, and then chuckled. “I didn’t think I would like you … but I’m beginning to, and that’s interesting.”

“Fascinating, really.”

“The attitude is a little much sometimes.”

Pav rolled his eyes and went back to staring out the window. “Just say what you want to say, Kolya, and let me stew in peace.”

“Fine.” The man shifted in his seat, saying, “For reference, he’s not always going to make choices you agree with—Konstantin, I mean. He often does and orders things that make me want to choke the fucking life out of him, but he is the Pakhan. The boss, Pav. That means you shut up, and you do what he wants you to do because he is not the same kind of man our father was as a boss. He is better.”