Right now, however, we’re in a hell of a fight.
He doesn’t want me going to Kingmakers.
It’s not the first fight we’ve had, but it’s the most vicious.
It’s not like the time I broke the ankle of his favorite horse, or the time he said I ought to stay a virgin until I was married and I laughed in his face and told him that ship had already sailed.
This time, it seems that we’re both ready to defend this particular hill until all else is a flaming ruin.
“I told you, I won’t discuss it again!” he roars at me, storming around the oak-slab table in the huge farmhouse kitchen.
I’m leaned back in my chair, arms crossed, feet propped up on the table to annoy him.
“It doesn’t need any more discussion,” I say. “Because I’m going.”
“Good luck getting on the ship without my fingerprint on that contract!” he growls, disdainfully flinging down the handwritten list of rules and regulations to attend Kingmakers.
I leap to my feet, knocking my chair backward on the flagstone floor.
“Enjoy growing old and decrepit all alone without me if you won’t!” I holler back at him.
“Where do you think you’re going to go?” he snorts, folding his cable-like arms across his broad chest.
“Anywhere you’re not! You can’t keep me a prisoner here!” I shout.
“You’re not a prisoner! You’ve got a hundred acres of land, horses, dune buggies, a private plane in which I’ve taken you all over the goddamned world! You’re spoiled,” he says, in a disgusted tone.
“And you’re a coward! You’ve gotten as paranoid as an old woman—why shouldn’t I go to school, the same school you went to yourself?”
Stepan Pavluk comes into the kitchen, then makes an about-face so abrupt that he must have given himself whiplash. He hustles back out again, not wanting to get in the middle of another epic row between me and my father.
Too late—Dad already saw him.
He shouts, “Get back here, Stepan. Explain to Nix why it’s the worst possible time for her to go swanning off to school all on her own with no bodyguards and no security whatsoever.”
Stepan winces, looking back and forth between my father’s furious face and mine. He’s only a bookkeeper, though a damn good one. He prefers the silence of pen and paper to the smashed dishes and hurled insults that are surely about to erupt between my father and me.
“Nix,” he says carefully, “with your father’s deal with the Princes and Romeros, and his expansion of—”
“Don’t tell me it’s not a good time,” I hiss at my father, completely ignoring Stepan. “It’s never a good time. When will it be the right time for me to go to college? When exactly are you planning to retire?”
“When I’m dead,” he barks.
“Exactly! So either I’m going to school, or I guess I’ll have to fucking kill you!” I yell.
Stepan is trying to sneak away again. This time my father lets him go, distracted by this new outrage coming out of my mouth.
“You think that’s funny, girl?” he snarls. “I’d cut out a soldier’s tongue if he said that to me.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers,” I remind him. “I know you forget that sometimes.”
This is how we fight—with wild accusations and savage personal attacks. In an hour we might eat a bowl of ice cream together, but right now we want to strangle each other.
That’s what happens when you grow up in a family of two, always together, no time or space apart.
Which I know will be his next point of attack.
Sure enough, the very next thing out of his mouth is, “If something were to happen to you on that island where I can’t protect you, your mother would never forgive—”
“Oh, don’t bring her into this!” I shout. “First of all, you know damn well she wanted me to get an education. And second, she doesn’t get a vote because she doesn’t exist anymore.”
Now my dad is really pissed. He raises one thick finger and points it right in my face, warning me.
“Don’t,” he snarls.
He likes to think my mother is waiting for him in his version of Valhalla.
I take a deep breath, trying to bring us back to sanity before we both say something we regret—worse than the usual things.
“You know she would want me to go to school,” I say quietly. “And you know if she were in my position . . . nothing and no one would stop her from going to Kingmakers.”
This is the best way to appeal to him. To remind him that my mother was just as stubborn and adventurous as I am, and he loved her for it.
I can see the war taking place inside of him—his inability to counter my point, battling with his overprotective impulses, and his absolute abhorrence at the idea of letting me out of his sight. Not to mention his refusal to ever back down or admit when he’s wrong.
His face is almost as red as his beard, his fists balled up like Christmas hams.
It’s now or never. School starts in a week.
Pushing hard one last time, I say, “The whole damn island is only eight miles across. You’ll know exactly where I am the whole time. You might as well have me in a snow globe in your pocket. It’s the safest place on earth, isn’t it?”
“Rocco Prince was killed there only a year ago!” my father barks.
“Dieter Prince isn’t you. Nobody would lay a finger on your daughter.” I grin. “Even when I want them to.”
My father snorts. He’s well aware that my dating opportunities have been as dismal as the rest of my social life, and it’s his fault.
Making him laugh is the second-best way to get what I want.
The best way is straight up begging.
“Please, Dad,” I say. “I want to go to school. I want to be normal, for once in my life. Or normal-adjacent, at least.”
He sighs, his massive shoulders dropping an inch. “I’ll think about it,” he says.
I heroically resist the urge to jump up and down.
“Thank you, Dad!”
“I said I’ll think about it!” he reminds me.
“I know,” I say, righting the kitchen chair and stepping up on the seat so I can kiss him on the cheek.
We both know that means I’m going.
3
Nix
Freshman students board the ship to Kingmakers from the port in Dubrovnik, the first week of September.
I hadn’t realized we were supposed to put on our uniforms already, so I come down to the dock dressed in my usual tank top, cargo pants, and combat boots. My father’s men outfit themselves from the same military warehouse that supplies the Spetsnaz, and I’ll admit, that’s where I do most of my shopping. It’s all top-quality tactical materials, in consistent sizes. I like to be comfortable.
I’m not looking forward to wearing the uniforms, and I sure as fuck have no intention of putting on one of those plaid skirts. I bought the boy’s trousers instead.
I’m not trying to be a boy. Not trying to “be the son my father never had” or whatever the fuck. I just want to be able to run around and sit any way I like without worrying about my underwear showing.