Page 4 of Kingmakers, Graduation

The crowded dock gives no hint if Adrik Petrov is waiting.

I tell myself I don’t care either way.

Still, my heart beats a little faster, the sharp scents of diesel and salt seeming to promise thatsomethingexciting will happen today.

I snatch up my backpack, slinging it over my shoulder. I’ve got a change of clothes in there, just in case.

As we queue up to descend the gangplank, Ilsa approaches me, tossing back her mane of black hair, saying in her forthright way, “No hard feelings. Look me up if you’re ever in Moscow.”

She holds out her hand to me, nails blunt and unpolished—something I always appreciated when she slid those fingers inside me.

“Don’t shake my hand, you asshole.” I pull her into a hug.

I rest my cheek against the side of her neck, inhaling the clean scent of soap and fresh laundry laced with gunpowder. Ilsa ranked first in the final Marksmanship exam.

She hugs me back, allowing her hand to rest briefly on my lower back before she lets go of me.

“See ya around, kid,” she says, just to infuriate me.

I smile instead. It’s the closest she’s ever gotten to a term of endearment.

“Good luck,” I tell her.

Ilsa is about to take her position as her sister’s lieutenant, an unheard-of arrangement in the Russian mafia. The Markovs control one of the richest slices of Moscow, or at least they did before the High Table imploded. There’s a civil war amongst the Bratva. Who knows who will take control when the dust settles.

As I descend to the dock, Adrik Petrov is nowhere to be seen.

Probably for the best. I’m sure my mom’s anxious to see me back in Chicago.

I sigh, unexcited for the long flight home, and the even longer summer stretching ahead of me. My dad will run me ragged as he expands his empire all up and down the I-80 corridor.

I suppose it’s my empire, too. I’m his heir, but sometimes I think my little brother Damien is better suited to that role.

The Gallos have gone legitimate. I ought to get my contractor’s license instead of attending Kingmakers. It would certainly make my mom happier.

She worries about me. Everyone does.

They want me safe at home.

Safe is boring. Safe feels like a hundred pounds of steel chains wrapped around my limbs.

Born and raised in Chicago, I’ve barely seen the world. Vacations don’t count—resorts and hotels are playpens for tourists.

I thought Kingmakers would scratch my itch, but it’s just another prison, even more cut off from everything interesting.

Anna doesn’t agree with me.

“I’ll miss Kingmakers,” she sighs, having stepped off the ship for the last time.

“Not me!” Leo replies gleefully.

“Yes you will,” Anna says, confident that she knows Leo better than he knows himself.

A deckhand tosses my suitcase down on the dock so hard it almost bounces into the water.

“HEY!” I holler up at him. “Is that how your mother dropped you on your head?”

He shouts something back at me in Croatian.

---