Chapter 3
THREE
KAI
You want something done right, I guess you gotta do it yourself. Story of my fucking life.
I can't sleep. I haven't been sleeping, probably because every time I close my eyes, I see Alexei Moroslav's face with blood streaming over its lips and his long eyelashes fluttering and going still.
Fuck. And there it is again. I flop over in bed and scrub my face. Such a badass, I think. Such a badass I always thought I was. Can't even handle one little cold-blooded murder.
So I've barely slept. I am a shell of a human. Save for one marathon 14-hour session as soon as we were back from Russia—I’m sorry, Finland—where I woke up and genuinely thought I might have died briefly, I have hardly rested my brain at all.
Now it's Monday morning, and my bed's empty except for me.
Far from ideal, but I'm not about to make anyone sleep with anyone they don't want to, and that goes double for the girl I murdered a Russian to protect.
She never wants to touch me again, then that's her prerogative.
It'd suck, but I'm down that bad, I guess. I'd accept my fate for what it is.
And yet. At the very least, if Gwenna were here, it would give me something to do when it's 4 a.m. ticking to 5 ticking to 6 and finally 7. Something that's not just tossing and turning in my own rumpled bed sheets.
Something other than what I know I need to do, because apparently no one else has done it.
Go to Luther's office.
I give up and peel myself out of bed.
It's sunny, at least, even if it's cold, and I squint as I half walk, half skate across the icy sheen of campus, the weak morning sunlight somehow turning razor sharp when it glances off the snow.
Beautiful Easter Monday, I think. Cold enough to freeze your nose hairs.
There's no class today: last day of spring break, religious holiday and all that.
There are a few people milling about the campus, coming back from trips, or just getting some fresh air after seven solid days on campus, trapped indoors by inhospitable weather, so I don't look too out of place on my way to Luther's.
Not that I don't have a right to be there. Foster son. Absolutely nothing suspicious. All the also-ran, second-best shit went down behind closed doors.
I swiped the key from King's coat pocket. The massive door opens easily. I step in quick, before I lose my nerve, and the instant I do, I'm hit with a rippling, almost deliberating wave of discomfort, like being sent to the principal's office crossed with a combat flashback.
Because the last time I was here—
I walk across the floor like an automaton, but my eyes see it without wanting to see it.
The stain. Drops of blood in the carpet.
My blood.
I clench a fist, clench my jaw, and keep going.
My boots are leaving dirty snow tracks the luxurious Oriental plush, and for a minute I consider doing something really destructive, like standing on his desk and pissing on the damn thing, just because, but I think better of it.
I'm not going to leave any more bodily fluids behind than necessary.
Instead, I make a beeline for the filing cabinet behind the desk.
There are photos on the shelves and cabinets, not many, and nothing candid or casual, but some.
Kingston at Y10, Kingston at Y12. Trophies, medallions, smiles just restrained enough to avoid being called grins--nobody likes a gloater, after all.
There's a framed one of Luther and Mallory, actually, which surprises me, and none of Morgan, which surprises me a little more.
Because there is one of me.
Just one. Kingston's in it too, of course. But there we are, one and two on the podium. The first and only time I'd ever beaten him after Luther took me in.
Another wave of something hits me, not discomfort, but...astonishment. Pride. Disbelief. I touch a finger to the beveled black edge of the frame, as if I need to confirm this thing is actually real, despite the fact that I was literally there when it happened.
I was so fucking proud. You can see it in my face.
And King...
All at once, the warmth blasts out of me.
Of course. Of course this isn't some keepsake of Luther's to memorialize what a good job his foster son did. This isn't here to make me look good. This is here to make Kingston feel bad. To say, look what you let happen, look who you let beat you, be better, do better.
I slam the photo down on the cabinet.
After that, I'm done with memory lane. I rip open the file drawers and flick through folders, stuffing anything that looks half-relevant under my arm.
Purchase orders, tournament results, fucking utility bills and tax assessments for Camlann House and the condo in Sarrasford and the place in New York and the flat in Paris and. ..
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
My eyes go wide. The folder is thinner than I would've guessed, given how much loot there is to distribute. Maybe one or two pages inside. But I guess it doesn't take that many words to say "split it between my perfect beloved son and my materialistic witch of a second wife."
Well, jackpot, I think bitterly, and I'm about to bang the drawer shut when one last thing catches my eye. An accordion file, the kind that wraps closed with string. No label, just an icon embossed in gold.
A cross and two swords.
The Consistory. They who need no introduction. Presumably this is it: the top-secret correspondence Luther sends by telegraph or carrier pigeon or whatever those crusty French fucks think is inefficient enough to be morally square with God.
I grit my teeth and take it, too.
I barely get one knock at King's room before he opens the door, fully dressed even though it's maybe 8:30 a.m, like an absolute psychopath.
"Hey," I say, holding up the sheaf of papers. "Can I come in?"
"Sure." Kingston nods and steps out of the way. Unlike my room, there's actually multiple clean spaces to sit down. So, of course, I decide to sit on his bed and drop all the papers everywhere just to make a mess. Call me petty, but I like the effect.
Kingston stays standing, arms folded, and stares down at the goods. Then he looks up at me. And in the split second he does, I realize something.
He's waiting. Waiting for me.
It's such a strange reversal of the natural order of things that it actually catches me off guard for a second.
"Okay." I breathe out. "So, the equipment stuff," I say, shuffling those papers into relative order.
"It's easy enough. I have a record of all the purchase orders we've made for the club here, so if you want to just double-check those, make sure I'm not putting in anything we don't need, I can get all this in.
" I glance down at the inventory, scratching the back of my head.
"Pretty sure the Leon Paul stuff's going to be on back order, but we can get the Negrini in as soon as they have the measurements, and I don't know how you feel about it, but I'll pay extra for next-day air because I don't give a shit, so--"
"Okay," Kingston interrupts. He removes those papers and tidies them into a stack that he puts on his desk. "What else?"
I blow out a breath again. "Well, there's his...bank accounts and stuff. Assets. Real estate holdings." I push those toward him. "Nothing that would surprise you. I'm presuming it mostly goes to Mallory, so, you know, good for her. And probably some to you, of course."
"Some?" Kingston says, picking up the narrow LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT folder and extracting the two pages inside. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know," I admit. "I didn't read it."
Hypocritical as shit of me to give him grief for not getting any of this underway, and I can't even complete the job myself.
But that's the thing about my bastard of a foster father.
Even after everything, even after the fact that I'm 99% sure that he engineered my bio mom's death just so he could manufacture me into an orphan and scoop me up for his own purposes, even though I'm 100% sure that he would have stabbed his own son through the fucking chest to stop us getting on that plane if Kingston hadn't been faster, I still don't want to see it in black and white.
The fact that he never considered me as a son and never would.
The fact that everything's for Kingston and nothing is for me.
The fact that I am too fucked up to be trusted with any amount of power, money, or responsibility.
"A trust," I hear Kingston say. “It's all going to a trust."
"What?" I say absently. I've been chewing on my piercing again. It's going to make my lip chapped as fuck. I force myself to stop.
"It's all going to a trust," Kingston says again. He proffers the piece of paper. “With the Consistory as beneficiary.”
"What?" I grab it away from him. Scan down the paragraphs. A bunch of legalese, Roman numerals, whereases and therefores and all that stuff. But I scan down. He's right.
I don't believe it, honestly. I read it several times just to make sure.
"He left it all to them," I say.
Kingston's voice is wooden. "It appears so."
I don't know why that's what does it. Why hearing Kingston sound so flat, so nothing, is what gets my blood absolutely boiling. But I look down at the page again and I am suddenly, intensely, furious.
Not for me. I knew I wasn't getting one red cent out of that bastard. But his own son--
"Jesus Christ," I mutter. I look up at Kingston, trying to read anything in his face. Anything at all. But there's nothing. Just a tight jaw and a middle-distance stare.
You're all he has now, Kai.
Mallory may be a gold-digging airhead, but she wasn't wrong about that.
"I'm named as executor," Kingston says, suddenly reading again. His voice is mechanical--more mechanical than usual, and that's saying something. "For the estate." He looks at me. "Is that right?"
My hate for Luther surges back threefold, poisonous and cold. How dare he? I think. How dare he do this to his own fucking son?
It's not even just the will. Fuck the will. I mean making him a murderer. Forcing his fucking hand from day one. Forcing King's mom to...
Fuck. I can't even think about it. It’s honestly sick.
And now, now, he's left his son to be the author of his own deprivation. To write to those lunatic religious fanatics in France and inform them that what rightfully should be his—the family fortune that he has definitely suffered enough to have earned—is going to them and their bullshit.
Outwardly, though, I keep my voice even. "What's it say, exactly?"
"It..." Kingston's face is tight as he scans the lines, his eyes moving so fast I'm not sure he's actually reading. He rubs his forehead. "I'm sorry. I'm having some difficulty..." He clenches his fist around the sheet of paper, looks up at me. "Can you just tell me what I need to do?"
His voice is so thin and so taut that I almost miss that he's on the verge of tears.
And that breaks my heart clean in fucking two.
"Nothing," I say. I reach for the paper, and he darts away, but I grab at it faster. "You don't have to do anything, Kingston.”
“What?”
“Just…let me handle this."
He frowns. "Kai, you can’t—”
"I absolutely can," I interrupt. "I'm just as smart as you are, even if you'll never admit it." I smooth the piece of paper over my thigh, hoping I'm right and that I can actually figure out any of this legalistic whatever it is.
"So, what?" Kingston says. "You're going to write to the Consistory and tell them that they've just been awarded one of the largest real estate portfolios in North America?"
I fold the paper in half, then quarters, then give up and shove it in my back pocket.
No, I think. Absolutely not. I won't let that happen.
Out loud, all I say is, "Yeah, I'll figure it out."
Kingston studies me a long moment. All neat and clean in his perfect pressed uniform-like clothes, and me in dirty jeans and a T-shirt I haven't changed in three days.
And I think, briefly, of how in another world, in another life, a guy like him and a guy like me never would have crossed paths--not unless I jacked his Land Rover or he was tasked with buying the coke for his investment firm's Christmas party and I was the dealer's delivery boy.
But here we are.
"Okay." He nods, at last. "I trust your judgment, Kai."
That makes one of us, I think. But I give him a salute. Scoop all the papers back up, even the ones he already stacked on his desk.
"Go eat something," I say, and slam his door after me.
And almost walk straight into Gwenna.
"Sorry," she says. She's got on a giant Caliburn hoodie over these cute little pajama shorts I didn't know she even owned, plus some lumpy, thick wool socks that are two slightly different shades of gray.
Not exactly sexy nightwear. And the only door ajar on this landing is hers.
So she was sleeping alone, too.
"You're good," I murmur. "Ladies first."
I gesture for her to proceed, and she nods, slips down the stairs and away from me. I just stand, watching.
God. I can't believe we almost lost her.
I can't believe they almost killed her.
And as I'm standing there, a sickening thought creeps into my mind.
St. Ignaty's wanted her dead. For their Archmandrite, for the land, for the glory of Mother Russia or whatever.
So…what do the White Brothers want?
I shiver, actually fucking shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the drafty second floor of Camlann House.
Here I was thinking that Luther was just going to rip her away from us and turn her over to the Consistory for them to, I don't know, study, or something? I was so concerned with the taking her away part that I barely thought about the doing something to her part.
But now that I've thought of it, I can't ignore it. And I know one thing for sure.
They can't know. They can't know, they can't find out, not about any of it. About her, about Luther, about anything even remotely out of the ordinary.
They can't know, and I will make sure they never find out.
Suddenly buzzing with energy, I leap up the stairs to my bedroom two at a time and skid into my desk chair at an angle. I rummage around for a good piece of stationery paper and one of those fountain pens.
Funny skill I have, penmanship. Maybe it comes from forging so many letters and excuse notes when I was a kid. Hell, it's probably half the reason I got a TA job in art history. And my French is good enough, with a little Google Translate assistance on my phone.
I snap on my desk lamp, set my jaw, and put the pen to paper.
Chers Monsieurs Frères, I start. My son and I send our well wishes from Caliburn.