Page 61 of Kingmakers, Graduation

There’s enough dissimilarity in the style of suits and casual wear, amplified by the incomprehensible announcements over the loudspeakers and the Cyrillic signs, to remind me that I’m very much in a foreign country.

Eastern Europeans have their own characteristics—high cheekbones, narrow eyes, strong jaws, broad noses. Seeing Adrik next to his countrymen seems to emphasize the dark exoticism of his looks. He’s never looked more brutish, or more Russian.

I’m all nerves and anticipation. I wish I could read the signs—I’ll have to learn. I like learning new things.

“Where do we go first?” I ask Adrik, once we’ve retrieved our bags.

“Home. I want you to meet my brothers.”

This is the part of the adventure that concerns me most. Adrik lives with five other men. I know his actual brother Kade and we get on well. But Kade is headed back to Kingmakers today. The five I’ll be meeting are strangers to me. I’ll have to learn to work with them, integrating into an already tightly bonded group.

I understand group dynamics well enough to assume that there’s already heavy competition for Adrik’s favor. As the only woman—and presumably the only one fucking him—I can expect a certain level of animosity.

I don’t enjoy frat-house fervor. Ilsa had to put up with it constantly in the Gatehouse. She didn’t seem to mind it as much as I would. She’s not as fastidious about hygiene, and she has a brash humor that served her well. She’s as likely to pull a prank or start a brawl as anyone.

Besides, she’s an actual gold-star lesbian who’s never even kissed a man. The constant flirtation lobbed at her in her first year died off when the guys finally accepted her adamant disinterest.

My situation is a little more complicated.

I don’t have to wait until we arrive at the house Adrik jokingly calls “the Den”—one of his Wolfpack is waiting for us at the curb, leaning out the open windowsill of a black SUV. I can deduce his name from the forearm and fist propped up against his jaw, tattoos of skeletal bones superimposed on the flesh—this is Jasper Webb.

He graduated before I ever came to Kingmakers, but my cousins described him in detail. He was an enemy to Miles and something of a friend to Leo. I don’t know what that makes the two of us.

“Take the front seat,” Adrik says, throwing our suitcases in the trunk.

He doesn’t want us both in the back with Jasper as chauffeur, nor does he want to relegate me to the backseat alone.

Adrik is cognizant of small social cues. Without any obvious effort, he’s the oil that keeps the gears running smoothly when people come together.

Jasper turns his cool gaze on me. His unblinking eyes, pale and reptilian, offer no welcome. Grim skeleton tattoos run from his fingernails up the backs of his hands, his arms and his shoulders, across his chest and up his neck to his chin, visible through the thin material of his white shirt. If I could see through his jeans, I’d guess they run down his legs as well. Jasper doesn’t look like a man who does things by halves.

The sides of his head are shaved, his shock of dark red hair falling down on the right side. His flesh is bone-white, his mouth thin and unsmiling.

“Sabrina,” I say, holding out my hand.

With Adrik watching, he has to shake hands.

He squeezes hard. I squeeze back harder, holding his eye with none of the placating smiles women are taught to offer.

“Jasper,” he says.

I could say,I know,but I don’t. I don’t care what he thinks of my cousins or of me. I’ll forge my own relationships here, on my own terms. None of us are at Kingmakers anymore.

“Good to have you back,” Jasper says to Adrik, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror before directing his attention to driving.

I notice Jasper doesn’t use any term of address with Adrik—notPakhanor Boss orKrestniy Otets.

“It’s good to be back, brother,” Adrik says, leaning forward to clap Jasper on the shoulder. “We’ll talk tonight—I’ve been making plans in my absence.”

I feel the frisson of excitement on Jasper’s bare skin, though he only nods.

I’m lit with the same excitement myself. It’s impossible not to be affected by Adrik’s voice, deep and clear and confident. The Churchills and the Washingtons of the world have always had this quality—to stir the hearts of men when they speak.

As we pull onto the main roads of Moscow, I note the broadness of the avenues. The main artery of Kutuzovsky spans ten lanes across. Still,the streets are clogged with cars, each red light interminable. In the midst of all this congestion, a black town car with a howling siren speeds down the highway in the opposite direction, forcing the cars to edge out of its way as it careens past.

“Was that a cop?” I ask.

Adrik laughs. “A politician—top-ranking officials don’t have to obey the traffic rules. They can speed all they like, drive on the wrong side of the road, cut off an ambulance or a fire truck … You better run for office, Jasper, or we’ll never get anywhere.”

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