Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
LUKA
Orton shows up at my penthouse looking upset. I lead him in, gesturing to a couch.
“You better be standing for this,” he says.
“What’s up?”
“There’s a nasty little rumor going around. Somebody’s saying that you’re not a true Zogaj.”
Not a true Zogaj. Orton lets the words sit between us, scowling all the while.
“Any idea who?”
“No.”
I shrug. “People say all kinds of shit.”
“They’re saying you’re not a true Zogaj ,” Orton repeats gravely. “We need to shut this down. It’s heresy.”
“I’m more interested in whoever did the Tucumayo job,” I say.
He follows me to the kitchen where I fix us both a black coffee with a splash of raki, an Albanian liquor of grapes and anise. Raki purists get mad when you put it in coffee, but Orton and I, we’d put it in anything over the years.
“I did get one possible lead on the hitters.”
“Tell me. ”
We discuss Orton’s lead. It’s a good one. He’s a gifted investigator.
“But the true-blood bullshit—to suggest you’re a bastard!” Orton will not let it go. “Maybe that’s who’s behind the rumor, whoever did the Tucumayo job.”
“If it is...” I shrug. “Can’t make a man sorry twice.”
“ You can,” he says. “You can make a man sorry twice. I’ve seen it.”
I go to the window and gaze out over the grimy rooftops. We were both seventeen by the time we got out of Tucumayo, and I definitely made a lot of people sorry.
“I find that trying to make a man sorry twice is the same as one very long sorry,” I say.
Orton doesn’t think it’s funny.
“The bloodline thing,” I add. “If they had proof, they’d show it.”
Orton comes to stand next to me. “The proof cannot exist. It’s not possible.” This he says like a command.
“It’s not impossible —” I say.
“No! It is impossible because there’s no question. You’re a true blood, end of story.”
I say nothing. Orton is invested in my having a pure clan bloodline because he’s invested in being my knight. That is his destiny—knight to a true kyre . It’s a thing with him.
If I weren’t true blood, he might be the first to kill me. It’s just how he rolls.
Lucky for me, nobody’s getting my DNA. I took this throne from my brother—or the man who everyone assumes is my brother—and I’m keeping it until I’m done with it.
Same with Edie. I’ll keep her as long as I want, which will hopefully sink in with her.
“Do I look like a man who doesn’t know a true Zogaj?” Orton grits out. “Do I look like a man who’d follow a fake? Your brother’s a liar, that’s all. He lied when he said you weren’t a true blood. ”
Orton was much more upset than I was about my brother saying I wasn’t a true-blooded Zogaj.
Personally, I don’t give a shit about my bloodline, being that I hate my family. I hated them before they sent me to Tucumayo, and I definitely hated them once I was there.
“A father doesn’t send his son to a place like Tucumayo for no reason,” I remind Orton because I’m the kind of man who likes to call things what they are.
Orton sniffs. “The reason they sent you away was because of the prophecy. They were afraid it would come true. And it did, didn’t it? You killed the kyre and took the throne.”
“Most kyres get killed.”
Orton harumphs, which means he’ll hear nothing more of it.
And he really would kill me if I was a false kyre and not a true blood. For nearly two decades, we’ve been risking our lives for each other, but it’s some supposed strand of DNA deep in my cells that keeps him loyal to me.
That goes for half the men I’m leading now.
The rest follow me from fear.
“I took the throne, and I’m keeping it, DNA or not. Tell me about tomorrow,” I say.
Orton tells me how he’ll be terrorizing a few of the people who might give us the details we need. Then we’ll find the men we’re hunting, and it will be done.
I’d just assumed I was a true Zogaj until that day out on the boat last month.
In those last bloody moments, my brother, Alteo, said I was a bastard and that my father paid a crone to deliver the prophecy that I’d kill him so that nobody would question why he sent his son away. He said my father didn’t want people to know his wife had strayed.
Alteo’s words could be true. Deep down, it makes sense.
But it’s not like anybody’s digging up bodies and running DNA tests. Orton gets to believe I’m a true blood, and I get to believe I might not be my hated father’s son.
“It’s a fucking death wish,” Orton says because he really can’t leave it. “Whoever it is, they want to die because you’ll come for them for saying that.”
I look over the Hudson, following a tugboat making its way down the murky waters, waiting for Orton to say what I know he’ll say. He doesn’t disappoint.
“ With every prick, the spider’s web tightens, thorn for thorn, blood for blood .”
I nod. This is an Albanian vengeance saying that Orton repeats every chance he gets.
He wants to believe—he really, really wants to.
Sometimes, the things a man wants are no good, but still, he wants them.