Page 39 of Kingmakers, Year Two

He considers this. “You’re Zoe’s sister?”

I nod.

“She’s an Heir,” he tells Claire. “Zoe is, I mean.”

“Zoe Romero . . .” Claire muses, trying to think if she knows my sister. “Oh, she’s the gorgeous tall one with the dark hair and the green eyes. The one who’s always carrying around an armful of books.”

“Yes,” I say, pleased by the connection. I’m always proud when anyone knows Zoe—proud to be associated with her.

“What a waste,” Claire sighs.

“What do you mean?” I demand, the hairs prickling on the back of my neck. As much as I like Claire Turgenev already, I won’t let anyone criticize my sister.

“No offense to either of you,” Claire says, in her clear, enchanting voice. “It’s just such a shame that a beautiful girl like that has to marry Rocco Prince. I’m sure you agree that he’s repugnant.”

She looks across the dining hall to the distant table where Rocco sits with his coterie of thugs, including the two that crashed my breakfast with Zoe.

Rocco radiates a dark energy. It simultaneously separates him from the boys around him yet binds them to his side like magnets. No girls sit at his table. In fact, nobody who isn’t part of his gang sits at any of the surrounding tables, creating a vacant halo all around him.

“What do you know about Rocco?” I ask Claire quietly.

Jules gives her a sharp look, like he doesn’t think she should answer. Sadie likewise turns her attention on her food, disengaging herself from the conversation.

But Claire answers, without hesitation, “I know what everyone knows. That he’s not a criminal . . . he’s a killer.”

“What do you mean?” I say, trying to swallow.

“Some of us have murdered when we had to,” Claire says, in her calm, hypnotic voice. “And most of us will kill in the future. Very few mafiosos make it to the grave with lily-white hands. But only a few of us enjoy it.”

I stare across the dining hall at Rocco, at his pale face and his fever-bright eyes. He’s not touching his food, either. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him eat. He seems to prefer to use the time to watch everyone around him.

As if he can feel the scrutiny, he slowly raises his gaze to meet mine.

I drop my eyes at once, face flaming.

“He went to school for a year with my friend Emilia Browning.” Claire picks up her water glass and takes a sip. “He had a group of friends there similar to the one he has here.Les tyrans.”She searches for the word. “Bullies. Assholes.

“They had a boy who followed them around. A sort of hanger-on. They used him as an errand boy—made him buy cigarettes for them, write their papers, that sort of thing. Then one day the groundskeeper found the boy’s body dumped in the river behind the school. He had been tortured and beaten for hours, the police said. Cigarettes put out on his body. Eardrum punctured with a pencil. Teeth knocked out.”

I feel like I’m going to throw up. With every word Claire speaks, weight settles on my shoulders. Each syllable another brick added to the stack.

“Emilia said that Rocco and his friends bragged of doing it. There was no reason, no provocation. The boy thought they were his friends. There was an investigation, but the boy was no one important, and Rocco and his clique all came from powerful families. Rocco had to switch schools though, because it was so ugly that his parents didn’t want it talked about for long.”

Jules Turgenev makes a disgusted hissing sound. “Savages,” he says, with a flick of his head toward Rocco’s table. “No taste. No feeling.”

I feel very stupid for not recognizing what was happening right in front of my face.

Since the moment our father signed the marriage contract, Zoe has been sinking deeper and deeper into depression. I knew she didn’t like Rocco. But I had no idea what she was actually being forced into.

I got a hint of it that morning at breakfast when I saw him grab her thigh. He’d always been polite, if a little creepy. That was the first time I saw violence between them.

It’s not the fact that he grabbed her that disturbs me. It’s the way he did it: under the table, secretly, so nobody could see. The way his expression never changed for an instant. There was no hint of rage in his voice. He was calm and collected while he hurt my sister.

All of a sudden, Zoe’s absence takes on a new flavor.

I jump up from the table, my tray of food untouched.

“I’ve got to go,” I mumble.

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