Page 23 of Kingmakers, Year Four

It’s messing with my head.

I don’t understand how the man I love and respect more than anyone can be known as a monster.

“What did he do, exactly?” I demand of Sabrina, after yet another class where one of my fellow students hissed at me like a medieval villager warding off a demon.

“I don’t really know anything about it,” Sabrina says, keeping her steady pace across the commons as we walk from the Armory to the Keep.

Her tone is light, but I can’t help feeling that she’s lying. She doesn’t want to get into it. She’s willing to be my friend, but she wants nothing to do with my father and his sordid history.

It’s infuriating, feeling like everyone around me knows more about my own family than I do. Feeling like everyone is in on the secret but me.

I suppose I could ask Estas Lomachenko. He seems to think his family was wronged by mine. He’s certainly spreading that story to the very few people who weren’t already prejudiced against me.

And I’ll admit, it looks pretty fucking bad that I don’t have friends or allies even amongst the other Ukrainians. At Kingmakers, most of the cliques revolve around mafia groups: the New York Italians stick together, likewise the Taiwan Triads, and the Dublin Irish.

I have no friends from my father’s Malina. In fact, none of his men are allowed to marry or have children. Their loyalty is to him alone.

I’m starting to realize how odd that is compared to other mafia groups that center around family.

This is what really has me twisted up in a pretzel: my father told me that he didn’t want me coming to Kingmakers because it wasn’t safe. He said he had too many enemies.

Well, that fucking much was true. But I think the real issue is that he didn’t want me to know what everyone says about him: that he’s a snake, a backstabber. That he has no honor.

I tell myself it can’t be true.

After all, there’s bad blood between plenty of families. Grudges and feuds are as common as Swiss bank accounts amongst the mafia.

Still, I can’t shake this nagging feeling that my father hasn’t been completely open with me.

I’m his heir, his only child.

I thought I was his protégé. I thought he trusted me.

Now I worry that he only viewed me as a kid, feeding me the Disney version of his life and business.

My paradigm is cracking. It feels like my skull is splitting apart.

My only release is exercise.

Thank god we’re allowed to leave the campus grounds whenever we want. I’ve been tramping all over the island when class is done.

It makes me feel less alone to hike the paths along the cliffs or to run through the forest trails in the cool green shade of the river bottoms. There I’m surrounded by birds, butterflies, rabbits, and squirrels. Even the occasional deer.

I feel alive when I’m surrounded by living things.

Some people think that hunters don’t like animals—nothing could be further from the truth. I seemyselfas an animal. I only kill like a bear or a panther would do—to eat.

I run around like a wild thing until I’m scratched and filthy, until the sky is dark. Only then do I come back to Kingmakers, to the confinement of stone walls and cold stares.

I sleep like the dead, because I’m exhausted in body and brain.

Our classes are incredibly difficult. The Heirs are expected to learn most of what the students in the other divisions will know—everything from bribery and extortion to interrogation and foreign investment. After all, we’re the ones who have to run the whole operation. We can’t manage our people if we don’t know what they’re doing.

I thought I understood my father’s business. He’s taken me to every one of his properties. Every strip club, every casino, every safehouse, every warehouse. I know all his men, not just the inner circle who live on our compound.

Still, the complexity of criminal enterprise is only now becoming apparent to me in the endless lectures, charts, and textbooks meted out by our professors.

I’m drowning in work and classes have just started. I’m dreading exam season even more—thank god my father doesn’t particularly care about my grades, unlike the draconian parents who call every week to grill their children on their scores.

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