Page 66 of Kingmakers, Year One

I don’t mean to stare, but I’m frozen in place, never having seen anything so brutal.

Hedeon jerks his shirt back down, glowering at me.

I whip around quickly, trying to pretend like I didn’t see, though we both know I did.

“What?” Leo says.

“Nothing.” I shake my head.

My stomach is churning. Those aren’t the scars of an accident or injury.

Someone did that to him.

Even though Leo’sin most of my classes, our schedules don’t entirely align.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have International Banking while Leo and Ares take Torture Techniques. Most of the rest of the students in my banking class are Accountants.

I don’t mind—I like the Accountants. They’re focused and methodical. Not a bunch of aggressive meatheads like the Enforcers, or sneaky and suspicious like the Spies.

The class is competitive, though. Some of the most brilliant kids in our year are Accountants. It’s been a struggle to even stay in the top twenty percent.

If I want the head spot I’ll have to beat out Dean Yenin. He’s in this class too, though thankfully not with his henchman Bram. He sits two rows behind me, where I can feel his eyes boring into my back, especially if I’ve just answered a question correctly.

I’ve tried to avoid speaking to him since the changing room incident. He seems perfectly content to avoid me, too, though I’ve caught him glaring at me more than once.

I don’t know if he hates me because I’m best friends with Leo, or if he knows that my father helped Sebastian Gallo secure his hold on the Chicago territory contested by the Bratva.

My dad wasn’t directly involved in the killing of Dean’s grandfather or the mutilation of his father, but he did murder some of the Yenins’ men, and there’s plenty of bad blood to go around.

I wish we could put the whole thing behind us. It’s a twenty-year old feud, and no one has clean hands.

Leo enjoys conflict and competition. I just want to be left alone to get my work done in peace.

I’m not sure what Dean wants. I haven’t seen him picking fights and causing trouble as much as his roommate, but he certainly surrounds himself with bullies and assholes. And I don’t think he’s smiled once since we got here.

Not that I’d usually judge someone for that. I’m not too free with smiles, either.

Today we’re learning about offshore accounts.

Professor Graves is up at the blackboard going on about shell corporations. He’s the same professor who was hollering at Miles on the first day of classes, (rightfully so), but luckily he hasn’t seemed to remember that I was present for the theft of hisvery last pen. Or at least, he hasn’t been any ruder to me than to anyone else in our class.

I’m taking notes by hand, filling my fourth notebook of the semester. I write down most of what the professor says, but I also like to draw. Right now I’m making a diagram of tax havens, shaped like Russian nesting dolls. Even though it’s not really necessary, I’m decorating each of the dolls with a little headscarf and a floral-patterned apron.

“Non-profit entities can be useful as an extra layer of insulation,” the professor says. “A private foundation can then own a corporation, adding another diversion to your tax-evasion schematic.”

We’re up on the third floor of the Keep, which means the sky outside the window is full of large, heavy clouds steering through the wind like barges on water. No sunshine today—just a slate gray sky and those clouds, dark on their underbellies with unshed rain. The air is fresh with geosmin.

I draw rain clouds over my nesting dolls.

“For this assignment, I’ll be splitting you into pairs,” the professor says.

I look up sharply. I wasn’t paying attention to the details of the assignment, and he hasn’t written them on the blackboard.

“Wilson and Paulie,” the professor says, looking around the room. “Kyrie and Nelson. Anna and Dean.”

My stomach clenches up. I throw an involuntary glance in Dean’s direction.

He looks just as annoyed as I am. But he doesn’t hesitate in scooping up his books and coming to join me at my table.

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