40. THE GAME
THE GAME
Andhra Pradesh, India
When a king is born, he is talked about for a lifetime. When he dies, he is forgotten as soon as the new one takes the throne.
For some time, the diamond trade had been buzzing about Drasko Mawr.
He had abandoned the idea of a free-spirited life. Now that he didn’t have anything to lose, he seized the reins of Mawr Industries, proving that neither Alfred nor Uriah had ever been as brilliant as him.
He handled negotiations, traveled Europe, went to America. When he ran into the Wollendorf brothers, he was polite and businesslike but saw through their sly friendliness every time.
“Let them think they are smarter,” Uriah said, getting weaker by the day, staying by Drasko’s side but letting him handle most of the business.
Another trip to London was overdue. This time, Drasko had an agenda.
He had “his people” now, many of them. They spread rumors and fed the newspapers the information that Drasko wanted to give them.
He posed for pictures with high society, the Duke of Trent, and the like.
He visited the most reputable auction houses in Europe and arranged showcases of the wonders of the Mawr jewels.
He commissioned the construction of a tower, adjacent to the Mawr Building, and built a room at the top for himself.
The small space with the windows all around was where he occasionally spent his nights, watching the city with murky lights under industrial fog.
In his tower of solitude, he smoked, drank, and thought about the future.
He would stay there until dawn, watching the rising sun shed the pink hues of its first light, drowning the city in orange-pink haze. His city.
He spent his first winter in London, fascinated with the snow. For hours, he stood on his tower’s observation deck, smiling under the steel-cold wind, his face lifted to the sky as he let the snowflakes melt on his skin.
He thought of little jaan , wished he could’ve shown her the first snow, just like he had once promised.
The thought painfully tugged at his heart.
Drasko tried to locate the doctor who had treated her and found out that the man had died in a gruesome accident. The last hope to talk to the person who knew what had happened on that night years ago was lost.
He gathered info on everyone he was concerned about, including the Mawrs.
He kept files on people of interest, found dirt on the Wollendorfs, and made friends with the members of Parliament.
He traveled across the world, did favors and salvaged reputations, made powerful friends, and made notes of who his enemies could be in the future.
And he made sure that the wealthy never forgot whose diamonds adorned their necks and wrists, their wealth trickling into his pockets.
He partied with Elias. He acquired a paramour, then another.
Then a house, then several, then invested in land.
He acquired steamships and bought a small factory that was going to build vehicles powered by fuel.
He donated to schools and built a craftsman building in the East End that trained people for his new businesses.
He smiled and shook hands with the titled but preferred to dine and drink in the dingiest parts of the city.
Where people didn’t know him and didn’t care.
Where he didn’t have to wear a mask. Where the darker shade of his skin fit better than his immaculate suit.
Where once in a while he found incredible characters, cornered by poor circumstances and at the end of their rope, or the brilliant minds drinking their lives away, or those who dreamed of a new life yet couldn’t afford the hope.
Just like he had been once.
And Drasko gave them opportunities.
That was how, one night, he found Tripp, an Irish lad in so much gambling debt that he wrote a goodbye note to his impoverished family and stopped at a tavern for one last drink before ending his life.
One drink turned into four, bought by Drasko.
A year later, Drasko didn’t have a more loyal man than his Irish bodyguard.
Not all Drasko’s deals were well-calculated.
He bought the Grand Marquis on Baker Street. Bought it on a whim, because some pretty little thing had dared to send a blow to his male pride.
Grace Sommerville.
Ah, she had changed the city for Drasko. In fact, everything changed the first time he met her.
She was a piano virtuoso, sixteen, who, for years, had stunned England with her musical skills.
The first time he heard her play, in 1887, he couldn’t take his eyes off her on stage. In a concert hall with hundreds of people, she was a marvel—pretty, talented, and so very arrogant.
The next day, he saw her in a company of adults on Piccadilly. A pretty face. Flowers in her hat. The dress perfectly hugging her doll figure.
Fascinated, he didn’t mean to stalk her, only wanted to see more of her. So he followed the company to the Grand Marquis restaurant on Baker Street and took up a table several feet away.
She noticed him then, peeked from behind her guardian, her pretty eyes sweeping over his face and widening in, yes, horror, Drasko was sure. Her guardian turned her head and cast a condescending look at him.
A minute later, the ma?tre d’ was at Drasko’s table. “I am afraid I have to ask you to leave, sir.”
“To leave?” Drasko scoffed.
“Our important guests would like the company to be more… exclusive.”
Exclusive…
Drasko heard the words perfectly well. It was his tanned skin and starkly dark hair that had perhaps confused the ma?tre d’.
Drasko didn’t know his own roots, though as a street child, he had often been called a gypsy.
Such racial sentiments were common in London.
Yet, in the city where the newspaper headlines screamed the Mawrs’ name, this ma?tre d’ had no idea.
Drasko couldn’t remember the last time someone had so bluntly insulted him.
“I would like to speak to the owner,” he said coldly.
An hour later, he walked out of the restaurant having become the owner of the establishment.
But though triumphant at this little deal, his heart burned with resentment for the young woman who thought low of him.
He started despising London itself, though during every trip, he prolonged his stay. His mind didn’t let go of the young woman. It wasn’t pride, per se, it was his male pride that hurt at the sight of Grace Sommerville despite his admiration for her talent.
Two years later, he was at one of her performances when Elias Bayne introduced them.
“I have heard of you, yes,” Grace Sommerville said with a cold smile, her eyes drifting to Drasko’s scars. “Please, excuse me,” she said hurriedly and moved on to talk to yet another admirer.
And Drasko gritted his teeth.
He was twenty-seven then and knew what women wanted.
He stood tall and led with his assertive gestures that made the most conservative women follow along.
Something about him made women gaze in trepidation and warily adjust their hair.
Women had a flair for scarred men, rich men, and more importantly, powerful ones.
If the biggest monster in the world had the biggest wealth, women would line up to try to charm him.
Turned out that his scars—he’d have enough paramours who told him so—were intriguing, like those of old-time warriors.
Four straight lines stretched in perfect symmetry from his right brow across his cheek and ended at the side of his face.
A dozen more, deeper ones, etched his body, hidden by the fashionable clothes.
“Art,” a rejected marchioness commented behind his back.
“I bet he had it done on purpose. Like those outrageous tattoos that sailors have on their bodies. So distasteful. They say he has one of those drawings all over his back,” she whispered with spite.
This didn’t keep her from sending him flirty gazes throughout the evening, much like many other women.
The Duchess of Trent approached him with poorly concealed eagerness. “Mr. Mawr, when do we get to enjoy the promised wonders of the Mawr treasures?”
She was, of course, hinting at the legend of the Crimson Tear, but was also wondering about the slowly curated through the newspapers rumors that Mawr Diamond Industries was collaborating with the world’s best jewelers to create outstanding examples of jewelry artistry.
Such an exhibition auction was in the making, indeed, and the wealthy were itching to get their hands on the most prized jewels in the world.
Yet, with all this attention, that haughty Grace Sommerville walked away from him every time, without as much as a polite smile.
And Rakshasa on his back hissed in disapproval.
So, Drasko prolonged every stay in London, telling himself that the beautiful pianist had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.
Uriah preferred to stay back home, in India. And that suited Drasko just fine, for he’d developed strong resentment for the man who’d once been his idol.
The one thing Drasko didn’t understand were the words Uriah had said that one night. “A quest, a diamond game, so to speak. And at the center of it all—the Crimson Tear. It’s worth a fortune, and that fortune will be yours, my boy.”
The diamond hadn’t surfaced yet. They rumored it was a legend, perhaps a clever lie created by the Mawrs themselves.
The craftsmen of Golconda, who handled a vast majority of Mawr supplies, had their own tales going on—that the ones in possession of the Crimson Tear always died a gruesome death.
First Alfred’s wife, who had received it as a wedding present.
Then his daughter, who had had it around her neck.
Then Alfred Mawr himself, who had kept in on him. The next victim was soon to come.
The rumors went on and on.
No one had seen the rare diamond yet. But Drasko had. He knew it was real, mused that after years of trusting him with everything, Uriah still hid it, refusing to show it to a single soul.