Page 36 of Malevolent King

“This is only the beginning. We’ll be back later,” one of them grunted.

I decided to call them Idiot One and Idiot Two.

“When Silvio gets his hands on you, you’ll wish your brother had killed you instead of giving you to us.”

Silvio De Sanctis. The man who’d bet and lost Sofia to me. I’d waited a long time to have an excuse to end the motherfucker. It looked like soon I’d get one.

Idiot One kicked me again, and Idiot Two laughed. I’d skin them alive before I put them out of their misery, I decided, as I fell to the side on the concrete, banging my head sharply. Another kick to the head sent me spinning right back down the rabbit hole into the darkness.

* * *

Age 19

Since I’d movedto Brooklyn to learn about the family business and met my half-brother, I’d never been so distracted. Since Irina had died, I hadn’t felt anything other than anger toward another person in my life. From my brother, Kirill, a fellow student in my father’s bloodstained altar of learning in a salty warehouse in Brighton Beach, to the man himself. I learned quickly that being the loose cannon gave me an edge. People inevitably underestimated me, and I liked that advantage. I didn’t want anyone to see beneath the psychotic clown mask I donned to survive bratva business. Well, I hadn’t before. Until her. Sofia De Sanctis.

She was different. She was a distraction. I should forget her.

Instead, I watched her.

I found myself outside her school again, watching her walking down the stairs in her little schoolgirl uniform, her black hair blowing around her shoulders. Her bodyguard lurched after her. He was lucky he hadn’t so much as glanced at her ass as she leaned her petite body into a bulletproof SUV and placed her heavy bookbag into it. If he’d had, he’d have lost his eyes.

Sofia De Sanctis was mine.

It had been two weeks since I’d cornered her in the gym. That had been risky. We could have easily been found there, and Viktor wouldn’t take kindly to the Italian mob in New York declaring war on the bratva. Still, I hadn’t been able to stop myself. The lure of her was like a fucking siren call. It had only gotten worse now that I’d tasted her. I could still remember the feeling of her skin against mine, her teeth on my lip, her shaking, trembling token resistance.

I was a man possessed, fated to follow her, watching from a distance until I could work out how I was going to take her and how I would keep her.

I tailed them downtown to an expensive shopping area. Sofia and her friend went into a designer store while her useless bodyguard stayed outside the door. I was about to make my move, heading toward the back entrance, when another car arrived. Silvio got out and straightened his suit over his rotund stomach before heading into the store. He left his bodyguards outside as well.

Dark anticipation rolled over me. I’d been waiting to teach that fucker a lesson, and now, my time had come.

I looped around the building, climbing up a service entry and hopping onto the back fire exit of the adjacent building to clear the wall around the back of the store. The fire exit was propped open with a chair. People were fools about security. That much was a universal truth. Like cancer, people thought that random acts of violence were things that only happened to other people, those poor unfortunate people on the news, but never to them. Everyone thought they were invincible until they met someone who taught them otherwise. I’d been a prolific teacher in my short time on earth.

Slipping in the door, I moved down the stark white hall, a specter in black with murder on his mind.

One of the changing rooms was occupied. As I peered around the corner of the hall, Silvio approached it.

He rapped loudly with his knuckles, like whoever was inside might be hard of hearing. Either that, or he was just that obnoxious.

“Sofia, let me in. We have to talk,” he said in a tone that he must have felt was full of authority.

He puffed up his chest, trying to look important. Fucking loser.

“I’m just changing,” Sofia’s voice floated out of the room.

“It’s fine, just let me in,” Silvio blustered.

Anger flourished in my veins at his words. The motherfucker.

I could feel her hesitation, but then the door opened. Of course it did. Sofia De Sanctis was a good little girl, except for me, it seemed. Good. I liked that. Thrashing in my arms, she’d shown her real self for a moment, and there wasn’t anything obliging or well-behaved about her. I wasn’t interested in her act. I wanted the real her, the one she hid away to survive her patriarchal family.

Silvio barged inside and closed the door behind him.

“Have you heard anything from Nikolai Chernov?” Silvio asked his cousin.Their voices were easy to make out.

I waited for her response, mildly curious if she would rat me out for our brief encounter in the gym.

“No, nothing. Why?” she asked after a moment.

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