Page 20 of Kingmakers, Year Four

Same bold set to the shoulders, same stride. Same bluish cast to her fair skin that seems to make the coarse, wild hair burn all the brighter by comparison.

Those features are scorched in my memory as the most abhorrent, the most revolting.

The hatred surprises me. I’ve spent so much time in frustration and waiting that I forgot I could still feel anger this acutely.

It’s a good thing.

Because it’s finally time to take action.

I’ve been waiting three years and two months for this moment. Searching, planning, scheming.

Not all predators hunt in the open. The zone-tailed hawk looks exactly like a turkey vulture. It will even fly among a flock of turkey vultures, wheeling and circling like one of their brothers. And then, at a time known only to itself, it will break from formation, attacking one of its former fellows as its prey.

That’s how I have to think of myself now.

I’ve spent three years pretending to be Ares—calm, kind, patient. Humble.

At first it was easy. After all, I know Ares better than anyone. His family’s farm abutted our summer house in Poseidonia, our land next to their land with no fence in between. Ares and I grew up together, sailing around Syros in his father’s skiff, feeding his fainting goats, our younger siblings playing hide and seek in the vineyards.

Our fathers were friends, and our mothers too. His father loved to read, just like mine. They used to trade books from their libraries, my father’s biographies for Galen Cirillo’s military histories.

Galen Cirillo was a gentle and intelligent man. He’d think for a long time before speaking. Devoted to his wife and children.

Though the Cirillos are one of the oldest mafia families, Helio Cirillo gave up all his ties to crime when he married Ares’ grandmother. Ares’ father likewise lived a simple life—sometimes poor, but always happy.

The night we were attacked by the Malina, Galen woke to the sound of gunfire. He took his hunting rifle down from the wall, running across the fields toward our house.

I don’t know exactly what happened next. Only what my uncle Dominik found three days later: two of Marko Moroz’s men with 7 mm Remington bullets in their skulls. And Galen lying dead in our dining room with his throat cut. I think he was trying to get upstairs to help us.

The Cirillos want revenge for that night just as badly as I do.

Ares wrote to Kingmakers, requesting acceptance for the fall, as is his right as heir of one of the ten founding families.

No one here knows him by sight. The Cirillos are too small, too insignificant. I doubt Marko Moroz even knows that he killed Galen—if he noticed him at all, he might have thought he was our gardener.

But he was our friend. Our ally.

He will be avenged, as will my father.

I took Ares’ place on the ship to Kingmakers. I wore his clothes. Carried his backpack. We look alike—our parents used to joke that we were meant to be brothers. The only brother either of us had.

No one recognized me. I’d been living in America where my father was capitalizing on the legalization of marijuana, opening massive dispensaries in Oregon, Colorado, and Nevada. I hadn’t been back to St. Petersburg in years.

The very first night in Dubrovnik, Bram Van Der Berg and Valon Hoxha mocked me for my shabby belongings and my weak family name, never realizing that they were speaking to the son of the most powerful Bratva boss in Russia.

I swallowed the taunts. I took the abuse. And I listened—constantly listened for any information on Marko Moroz.

I boarded the ship. I came to this island under my new identity. When class started, I hid my skills. I pretended to be quiet, studious, focused. I pretended to be uninterested in girls or dating. All the while looking for the information I needed.

I’ve played my part well. No one has ever guessed that I’m not actually Ares Cirillo—that the real Ares has been living in secret in one of my family’s properties in Nevada. He’s been managing our Las Vegas dispensary, taking in almost a million dollars a day in cash, cash that we desperately need to keep the high table off our asses so they don’t suspect that my father is not actually running the business anymore.

If those sharks scented blood in the water . . . they’d rip us to shreds. St. Petersburg is too tempting a prize to expect loyalty from the Bratva.

I hid in plain sight, and I gathered crumbs of information while searching for that one crucial document that we hope is here at Kingmakers.

I never expected it to take this long. I never thought I’d still be here, three years later.

But I am here.

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