Page 55 of Kingmakers, Year One

“Why do you come to school if you’re determined to antagonize the teachers and never learn anything?” Anna asks Miles.

“Oh, I learn things,” Miles replies. “Just not what they’re teaching.”

I ask him, “What does that professor teach?”

“Finance,” Miles says. “You’ll probably have him, too. Luckily neither of you has the last name Griffin, so he won’t hold it against you.”

I’m not so sure about that. But on the other hand, I doubt Miles is the only student causing trouble at Kingmakers.

Speaking of which . . .

“I saw Dean Yenin,” I tell Miles.

“Oh yeah?” he says, without much interest.

“He’s just as big an asshole as you’d expect.”

Miles shrugs. “Assholes and psychopaths. That’s half the kids at this place.”

“The rest of them don’t have a grudge against us.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Miles says. “Anyway, I don’t care about any grudge. So our grandfathers wanted to kill each other—who gives a fuck. We never met either of them.”

Actually, Miles is the only one of us whodidmeet Papa Enzo, even if he was just a baby at the time. Plus he still has his other grandfather Fergus Griffin, while both of mine are dead. Maybe that’s why he acts like it doesn’t matter. Or maybe Miles truly doesn’t give a fuck about anything.

I’ve never been quite as close to Miles as to Anna. Not only because he’s a year older than us, but because he’s the only kid I know who slightly intimidates me. He’s so fucking reckless. If there’s a rule, he wants to break it deliberately, just to see what happens. There’s no line for him. Nothing he won’t do.

He reminds me of my Uncle Nero, who can be pretty fucking scary.

Actually, most of my relatives are scary in one way or another. Uncle Dante is the size of a buffalo and could break your back with two fingers. I’ve heard rumors of what my own father had to do to secure his position as Don. Even my Aunt Aida—Miles’s mom—has this streak of wildness you wouldn’t expect from a politician’s wife with three kids. On a trip to Hawaii I saw her dive off a sixty-foot cliff into the ocean, laughing like a maniac, with no idea what was in the water below.

In a way it comforts me, knowing they all share that streak of madness that bubbles up in me sometimes.

But it scares me, too, because it feels like we’re race cars careening around on a track, barely clinging to our sense of control.

At Preston Heights, I was surrounded by a bunch of Camrys and Fiats. Now I’m at Kingmakers with a whole lot of other revved-up racers. And in the mass of Ferraris and Maseratis, it seems impossible that none of us will collide, bursting spectacularly into flame.

Miles and Ozzy join Anna, Ares, and me for lunch in the dining hall. The tables are packed with students.

Miles points out some of the kids from families we know—people I’ve met before, or just heard of in passing.

“That’s Calvin Caccia over there,” Miles says, nodding in the direction of a surly-looking boy with a massive diamond stud in one ear, shoveling down a plate of fresh-made pasta as quickly as possible. “He’s a Junior, heir to one of the Five Families in New York.”

Next to Calvin sits a reedy, bespectacled boy who’s talking in his friend’s ear a mile a minute.

“That’s Damari Ragusa,” Miles says. “He doesn’t look like much, but he’s got a half-dozen siblings at this school, and they’re all connected with the Italian families in Palermo and New York.“

“I think I met his brother on the boat over,” I say.

“Matteo?” Miles is already ahead of me. “Yeah, he’s the baby of the family. Probably an Accountant like the rest of them.”

“Who’s that over there?” Ares asks, pointing to a table of well-groomed students. They’ve got uniforms on like the rest of us, but there’s an undefinable air of style and wealth about them. It helps that half of them are blond and extremely good-looking.

“That’s Jules and Claire Turgenev, Neve and Ilsa Markov, Louis Faucheux, and Coraline Paquet,” Miles lists them offwithout hesitation. “The Markov sisters are from Moscow, and the Turgenevs are Paris Bratva.”

“Siblings?” Ares asks.

Jules and Claire Turgenev certainly look alike—both have the same ash-blond hair and eyes of a peculiar smoky green. They look more like poets than mafiosos—Jules’s hair is long and sun-streaked, and he wears a cross dangling from one ear. Claire has a dreamy expression and clear evidence of paint under her fingernails.

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