Chapter 4
Four
Journal Entry
Twelve years old
Sound echoes around the expansive training room when my body slams into the mat with a resounding thud.
Smirking like an asshole, Aleksei offers me a hand up. “That’s three,” he says, keeping a tally of how many times he’s knocked me flat on my ass.
Smacking his proffered hand away, I get to my feet. “There won’t be a fourth.”
Aleksei laughs like what I just said is the funniest thing in the world, but then his entire demeanor changes. “We’ll see.”
Getting into a fighter’s stance, Aleksei rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, then signals for me to come at him.
As soon as my arm extends with a right jab, he hooks his foot around my ankle and uses my arm as a fulcrum to twist my body.
All the breath gets knocked out of me when my back hits the mat. Hard.
Goddammit!
Aleksei drops onto my chest and presses his knee into my neck. “Tap out.”
My lungs burn with a desperate need for oxygen when he increases the pressure. “No,” I croak.
He rolls off me, then tosses me a bottle of water when I sit up. “You’re off your game today.”
“Fuck you,” I reply, and he smiles.
“You signal your move when you drop your left shoulder,” Pyotr says from the other side of the room.
I give him a good-humored middle finger while guzzling water to ease the hellfire burning in my throat. I’m sure I’ll have a visible round bruise on my neck by tonight.
“Didn’t know you’d be crashing today.”
Pyotr shrugs at Aleksei’s comment. “In the neighborhood.”
Which means he had his driver bring him here.
“I’m going to take a shower. I’ve had enough of kicking your ass for one day,” Aleksei says and taps fists with Pyotr on his way out.
I watch my twin leave, and Pyotr must see the concern on my face.
“What?”
“Nothing.” But it’s a lie. I pick up the towel from the floor and wipe the sweat from my forehead to hide my worry.
The change in Aleksei over the last year is noticeable, even more so lately.
There’s a darkness there that never existed before.
He’s harder, less empathetic. The light behind his eyes is dimmer.
He gets into fights constantly. He enjoys hurting people.
And it makes me wonder if evil can be hardwired into DNA and genetically passed down from parent to child.
I never told Aleksei that Francesco Amato was our father.
Maybe it’s time I should. Or maybe telling him will do more harm than good.
After the gala last year, I confronted Mama about Francesco.
I wasn’t prepared for the gruesome truth of what he did to her.
Despite the horror he inflicted, Mama never once thought of terminating the pregnancy.
How can she look at us every day and not see him?
How can she love us knowing what we are?
Mama told me it didn’t matter how we came to exist. She loved us, full stop. We were hers, and that was all that mattered. That’s how fucking big my mother’s heart is. She deserves so much better than the shitty life she’s been given.
Out of habit, I walk over to the chessboard sitting on the game table and move the black onyx rook to capture a gold pawn.
It’s the same game I’ve been playing for three years.
I’m allowed one move a day. Father says that men who conquer the world do so through strategy and patience.
He tells me that people are the pawns maneuvering across a chessboard, easily manipulated.
That life is merely a game, where whomever has the power has the control, moving each chess piece in a carefully crafted stratagem to get what they want.
In our world, the Society is the chessboard, the men on the Council the players, and the world outside their pawns. One day, I’ll be the opponent sitting on the other side of the board from them, playing the game. But I’ll play it my way, not father’s and not theirs.
Pyotr glides a finger over the ornately carved king. “You haven’t said anything about Switzerland.”
Once they turn twelve and pass their initiation, it’s customary for male children of the Council to attend an exclusive boarding school in Geneva. Aleksei and I fit one of the two of those criteria, but that hasn’t stopped Father from trying to get us enrolled.
“Because it’s not happening.” Thank God. At least I won’t have to see Tristan and his two sidekicks every day anymore since they’ll be in Geneva for the next six years.
Pyotr looks relieved. “Cool.”
“I want to go to Stanton Prep.”
Similarly to the boys, once they turn twelve, female children of the Council are expected to go to a private all-girls’ school in Connecticut.
Why they do it that way, split the boys from the girls, who the hell knows?
But since those stupid, antiquated rules don’t apply to me, I hope I can convince Father to let me go to Stanton Preparatory, so I can be near Aoife—but he doesn’t need to know my reasoning.
Pyotr’s green eyes flare. “Thanks for the head’s up, jackass.”
He and I have been joined at the hip since we were four. Pyotr is the only genuine friend I have. He’s also not Society but given our Russian roots and our families’ blood ties, he’s as much my brother as Aleksei is.
Sometimes I’m envious of Pyotr. He may be the son of the head of the Petrov bratva, but he gets to live a normal life.
Well, not exactly normal, but Drako Petrov doesn’t compel his son to do anything.
Pyotr has a voice in his family. He gets a say about what he wants or doesn’t want, a privilege I will never know.
People who have free will and the power to choose will never understand the despair of what it feels like to not have either.
“Do you think Nikolai will even let you go to a regular school?” Pyotr asks, his question denoting the doom and gloom of my idea.
Mama had homeschooled Aleksei and me for kindergarten and first grade, but after months of begging on our behalf, she somehow convinced Father to let us attend private school for second grade.
We got to experience one fleeting week of normalcy before Father pulled us out.
After that, he took over our schooling. It was another way for him to control us.
Authoritarian governments do it all the time.
Control the flow of information and knowledge and teach the things you choose in order to manipulate the masses and brainwash them into believing only what you say.
But that single week, those five amazing days, changed my life forever because I met Aoife.
“I’ll just have to find a way to sway him that it would benefit him and our family status in some way.”
“Does Aleksei know you want to—?”
“No. And you’re not going to say anything to him about it.”
I get a contemplative perusal. Pyotr could always read me like a book. “You want to leave because of her.”
I’m not going to lie to him, so I don’t. “Yes.”
He knows how I feel about Aoife Fitzpatrick, about my obsession with her, and he doesn’t judge me for it.
Besides, my feelings for her don’t give a shit about how young we are.
When you meet your soulmate, you just know.
It’s an internal instinct that surpasses logic or reasoning because it just is.
Pyotr follows me out into the hallway. “You know he’s going to shit a brick if you leave and don’t take him with you.”
That’s what I’m struggling with. I love my brother.
He’s the other half of my soul. And I’m terrified that if I go, I’ll lose him to the darkness that’s trying to consume him.
I feel stuck between my obligation to Aleksei and my desire to have…
more. I want more than the preordained path Father has paved for me. I want revenge.
Index. Middle. Ring. Pinkie.
“You’re doing it again.”
My fingers cease their rhythm, and I let my hand hang loosely at my side as we walk down the hallway toward the grand staircase in the foyer.
“Did you want to take the bikes out?” Pyotr and I like to off-trail at the back of the property on the KTMs.
He slows to check his phone when it vibrates. “I can only stick around for an hour. Some family thing tonight I have to be at.”
“I think you will be interested in what I have to offer.” We stop in unison when we hear a woman’s voice filtering out from Father’s study, but it’s not Mama’s.
The door is slightly ajar, and I quietly venture closer. Peeking through the vertical slit, my obfuscation grows when I discover the last person I’d ever expect standing in front of Father’s desk.
Aoife’s mom.
For a brief second, excitement lights me up. Is she here with her?
Caroline Fitzpatrick’s elegant face burns with fury, her heels rapidly clacking against the polished wood floor as she paces an agitated line back and forth.
“My husband is out of his damn mind if he thinks I will stand by and allow that deranged psychopath anywhere near my daughter.”
The leather executive chair creaks when Father sits forward and rests his elbows on the desktop. “You know there is nothing I can do, Caroline. I have no power or influence with the Council. It’s James’s decision to decide who Aoife marries.”
Marry?
Being nosy, Pyotr pokes his head over mine, eager to eavesdrop. “Who’s getting married?”
“Shut. Up,” I whisper-hiss.
Caroline turns sharply, the sunlight coming through the floor-to-ceiling window turning her light-blonde hair golden. “She can’t be promised to Tristan if she’s already promised to someone else.”
Hearing my half-brother’s name, that he’s the person Aoife will be forced to marry one day, sends a fire of rage shooting through me.
“Who—” Pyotr starts to ask, and I reach up and cover his mouth.
Father steeples his fingers and taps his forefingers together. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
Taking out a manilla envelope from her carry bag, Caroline slaps it down onto the desk. “I already had the papers drafted. All you have to do is sign.”
With a shrewd, calculating gleam in his eyes, he opens the envelope and pulls out the contents, quickly scanning each page.
“You’ve always wanted a seat at the table, Nikolai. This is your way in.”
Father glances up, a sly curve to his lips that wasn’t there before. “Other than your daughter, what does Aleksander get out of it?”
Me? She wants me to marry Aoife? Holy shit.
“Holy shit!” Pyotr parrots my thoughts, but I’m too dumbstruck to tell him to be quiet.
Caroline removes the gold Montblanc pen from its stand and holds it out to Father. “As Aoife’s husband, he will get to rule an empire by her side, and there will be nothing anyone can do to stop it.”
Father slips the pen from her fingers. “James could have you killed for this.”
Caroline fiddles with the pearls on her necklace as she stares out the window. “James would never hurt me.”
“Can you say the same about Francesco?”
Pyotr and I duck out of sight when she twists around. “Just sign the fucking papers,” she snaps.
Lowering into a crouch, I take a chance and peer around the doorjamb again.
Time suspends for one breathless, unbelievable second as I watch Father’s hand scribble out his signature, forever binding me—to her.
To Aoife. The girl who haunts my every thought, whose laughter I can recognize in a crowded ballroom, and whose smile unravels me with its heart-stopping beauty.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears with disbelief and something dangerously close to happiness. Fate has decided to alter my path, and for the first time, my destiny doesn’t feel like a chain shackled around my life, intent on drowning me.
For the first time, I look forward to the future.
Because I know Aoife will be waiting for me at the other end.