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“How magnanimous.”
“I’m serious.” Kir leans forward, elbows on the table. “I can make this go away. You know I can.”
“What I know,” Lukas says, “is that you didn’t arrange all this just so you could wipe it all away and curry a favor from me, son. You’re smarter than that. You did it for a reason.”
Slowly, Kir nods. “I did.”
Lukas smiles sardonically. Playing along, he says, “Well? We’re all ears.”
I could swear Kir’s gaze darts up to the camera for just a second. Then, crossing one knee over the other, he says, “I want you to ask me for help. Just this once, I want you to say those fucking words, Father.”
It’s quiet. I wonder again if the feed has cut out, because both men are as still as statues. Then Lukas leans forward and props up his elbows on his knees.
“You want me tobeg.”
“Beg, ask, what’s the fucking difference?” spits Kir. “Just admit, for once in your fucking life, that youneedsomeone. You can’t do everything alone. Even the great Lukas Lazarev makes mistakes.”
“I won’t make this one,” Lukas replies softly.
Kir’s frustration is more than obvious. His hands keep flexing and unflexing in his lap, and one knee has begun to piston up and down. “How many lives are you going to ruin before you swallow your fucking pride, huh? Mom’s? Mine? Now, Rae’s, too?”
A muscle ticks in Lukas’s jaw. The first crack in his composure. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says at last.
“Who knows better than me?” Kir laughs. “I’ve spent my entire life watching you do this. You find something beautiful, something pure, and you convince yourself you can have it without ruining it.” He shakes his head slowly. “You can’t. You never could. Mom proved that.”
A beat passes. Then Lukas says, “No.”
Kir’s brow furrows like he’s misheard. “What?”
“No,” Lukas repeats.
“No to what?”
“I don’t want your assistance, son. I’ll stay here. It’s time.”
“You don’t—” Kir stops. He’s confused, a man who was so sure he had the winning hand until he found out he was playing a different game entirely. “What the hell do you mean, you don’t want out? I’m offering you a way out of this, you stubborn old bastard. I’m giving you exactly what you need!”
Lukas doesn’t flinch or reply. His hands are still calmly laced in his lap.
“Is this pride?” Kir demands. “Is that what this is? Some kind of—some kind of damn martyr complex? You’d rather rot in here than admit you need my help?”
“It’s not pride.”
“Then what? Stubbornness? Spite? Pick your fucking word, Dad!”
Lukas exhales slowly. “I’m done running from her memory, Kirill.”
Kir surges to his feet, sending his chair screeching backward across the concrete floor. “Don’t feed me that bullshit! You never loved Mom,” he rasps. “And you never loved me.” He braces his hands on the table and leans in close. “What about her, though, hm? Do you love Rae?”
The silence that follows is the longest of my life. I’m not breathing. I don’t think my heart is beating. Everything has narrowed down to that grainy screen, to the silver-haired man sitting so still in that squalid little room.
Lukas rises to his feet. “No.”
I reel back in my seat as if he’d reached through the screen and slapped me across the face. No? But… but he told me he loved me. We just spent a week doing nothingbutloving each other. I… I reached back into my past and relived the worst night of my life for him, I gave up everything for him, and he… he…
“She was a distraction,” he says. “Nothing more.”
I can’t feel my hands. I can’t feel anything. The room has gone gray at the edges, sound muffled like I’m underwater.
