Page 62 of Mayflower

“It’s yours, Maddy.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

21

RAVEN

Welcome to Ayana’s worst nightmare.

Ayana is in lockdown. You can count the service staff on the fingers of both hands.

Yep, the exclusive resort brimming with luxury has no one to take care of it. Who wants a yacht when you have to clean it yourself but there might be an insurgent passing by on a row boat with a hand-held rocket-launcher that will blow you to pieces?

Ayana residents are like rabbits, hiding in their villas. Despite the weather being perfect, sunny with bright blue skies, the general mood is gloomy. Ayana looks like Eden abandoned by God.

This slice of paradise is getting a taste of what it’s like to be the third world. It learns what can drive mankind to despair. Just like the third world countries have always known. But their loss is a natural one. They are born into it. They adjust to it constantly. That part of the world—yes, that part, that’s what we always called it, not us, them—takes misery as a normal state of being. And that’s what the Change did. It fucked the West not by taking their money and choices but by showing them what life is like outside their gilded walls called democracy. What it feels like to have loss as a permanent state of being. What it’s like to live in a permanent state of war. What it’s like when the government turns oppressive. When the neighbors you’ve been friends with for years turn to savages. When your loved ones make choices that make your skin crawl, and you wonder if you ever truly knew them at all.

Fear is our new reality. At Ayana, it’s almost tangible anywhere but in the Center.

I might be the happiest guy around. Who would’ve thought?

My new reality is Maddy and Sonny, playing house.

Sex, sleep, food, meetings at the Center, movies with Sonny and Maddy, nights with Maddy, mornings with Maddy, everything Maddy, my place, her place. It’s like we are catching up on the days I was missing and getting the happily ever after.

Dinner with Tsariuk, at his villa—yep, that’s happening.

His villa is guarded like the Pentagon, assistants and staff everywhere, an IT team set up in a separate room.

He brought a chef with him, and we are being served steaks and some extravagant mix of vegetables and sauces, Armenian cognac and my favorite special reserve whiskey—Tsariuk is prepared. He, Maddy, and I sit on the back patio by the pool in the glow of lanterns and Italian music.

“Adriano Celentano, my favorite,” he informs me about the name of the performer as we cheer and he downs his shot.

I always wondered what makes ruthless people often have the most sophisticated hobbies—reading, classical music, fine art, ballet. Then I realized that many violent powerful people are worldly, highly intelligent individuals with broad upbringings and tastes. Violence is just another extreme, on a par with their intellect.

I’m not nervous around Tsariuk. He speaks perfect English with a cut-throat accent and only uses Russian to talk to his assistants and personnel. I thought Maddy would give me a lecture before dinner, some sort of guide on what to say and not to say. But she only said, “You’ll like each other.”

She is wearing a strapless blue summer dress with flowers, her hair straightened and slicked back into a high ponytail. She is glowing. And I’m not sure if that’s because I fucked her with care right before we left the house or because she enjoys the three of us at the same table. She can’t stop smiling and looking between her dad and me.

And Tsariuk can’t stop studying me and asking question after question.

“Tell me about yourself,” he says.

“Which part don’t you know yet?” I ask politely.

Maddy sneers.

Tsariuk chuckles, leans back in his chair, drums his fingers on the table as he lets his thoughtful gaze drift over my clothes and pause on the left hand and my missing phalanges. Not sure if his intention is to intimidate me, but I’m pretty sure that after Skiba and Port Mrei, I’m insensitive to threats of any kind.

“Who is Malcolm Wright?” he asks.

I’m sure he did his research and knows, but I play along. “The man who raised me.”

“I thought you grew up in foster care.”

“I’m not talking about childhood.”

“Interesting. How did you get in contact with the South Africans?”

---