Vera the Mistress - стр. 10
Perst was a real gypsy of the hottest blood. Already at ten, he slaughtered a young man (in the Soviet and post-Soviet criminal world criminals like Perst called such people “friars”) in the market place.
When he was sixteen went to collect his tribe, in other words, organized a criminal group in the South of Moscow City. Perst was about fifty (although no one knew how old he really was) when he took the eighteen-year-old Dana, who was his last and favorite wife.
As soon as Ara was born, Perst proclaimed her to be the only recognized and legitimate daughter to receive all movable and immovable property after his death.
The times were dashing, and there were many young and zealous candidates for his throne. Traitors were punished by the King, who himself sentenced them to death, and the sentence was immediately carried out. But in their place came new leaders who demanded a greater share in the drugs selling and decentralizing the influence over the Moscow beggars who, in their turn, brought a lot of cash in the common fund. The new heads of his armies tried to create their own brothels for the clients who came from all over the world.
The King feared every day that he would die, leaving little Ara alone to be devoured and torn to pieces by the hungry wolves of the pack. He could trust to only one person, his Deputy, Sul Kaisarov, the leader of the Gypsy mafia who instructed him to take her abroad to the United States.
"Sul, you are responsible for Ara with your head, and if something happens to her, none of your family is going to stay alive. You know me.
– Yes, my King, I understand – Sul was always stingy with words, so he only adjusted his holster with a gun.
"The documents are ready. According to them, you are the father of Ara, she is only five, but she knows everything and understands why I am sending her overseas.
– Yes, Master.
"I'll let you know when things quiet down here." But for the next ten years you are not going to come back here. It will be rather hot here.
Sul sniffed. He left his sworn father and boss at such a difficult time to babysit a girl in a distant country, which he saw only in pictures. Everything was ready Ara’s coming to the US: citizenship, house, medical insurance and a place in a private school. Sul was supposed to control the American branch of the King's people.
At parting Perst embraced Sul, whom he loved as his own son. For a long time he looked into Arina's night-black eyes, stroked the raven hair, and called her Dana.
"Daddy, I'm Ara.