Page 20 of Kingmakers, Year One

He has a team of men who work under him. He’s subservient to only two men at the Moscow high table.

And of course, like any criminal, he has enemies.

But it wasn’t his enemies who did this to him.

It was family.

All his deepest wounds have come from the people he loved.

He loved my mother once. Maybe he even loved me.

Not anymore.

He looks at me with his one good eye and that milky orb.

I used to think that my father’s dual appearance represented the good and evil inside of him. The days when he was kind and brought me gingerbread, and the days that he raged and threw my mother’s decorations against the wall, smashing everything inside the house.

Now I think there is no devil and angel inside of people.

There’s only the appearance of good, and then what people actually are: weak and flawed. Destined to hurt you in the end.

My father looks at my boxing trunks.

“You fought today?”

I nod.

“Did you win?”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” my father mimics me. “You are arrogant.”

“It’s not arrogance if it’s true. I’ve never been beaten.”

My father snorts softly. “I sounded like you once. Stupidity must be universal at that age.”

His good eye flits down to the toe of my shoe, where the junkie’s blood makes a dark stain on the dingy canvas.

“Your blood or his?” he says.

“Neither. Someone tried to rob me on the way home.”

My father nods without interest in hearing more. “They didn’t know who your father was.”

He’s not bragging, just making a simple statement of fact. No one would attack the son of a Bratva on purpose.

He shoves something across the desk toward me. An envelope: heavy, expensive, and slate gray in color.

“What’s that?”

“Open it.”

I crack the wax seal keeping the flap closed and slip out the dual sheets of stationery, skimming down the ornate script.

“I was accepted,” I say.

“Danyl Kuznetsov recommended you.”

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