“I wouldn’t mind it,” I say. “I like numbers. I’m an Heir, though.”
“Me too,” Sabrina says easily. Then, continuing her survey of the students, she adds, “That kid over there, I’ve seen him before, he’s from one of the Italian families in New York, but I can’t remember which one. Oh, and there’s the rest of my cousins!”
She waves to a boy with dark, curly hair and a friendly grin, who’s pushing his way through the crowd of students to join us. Right behind him follows a pretty brunette girl with delicate coloring and a reserved expression.
“There you are!” the boy says to Sabrina, puffing slightly.
“There I am!” she laughs. “Where the hell have you two been? I thought you were gonna meet me at the airport?”
“We missed the flight,” he winces. “It was my fault. Got pulled over—might have been speeding a bit ‘cause I was late picking Cara up from her house. Almost missed the boat too, quite honestly. They re-routed us through Madrid and then Bern. With the layovers, we only arrived an hour ago.”
Sure enough, both Caleb and Cara look rumpled and sleep-exhausted.
Cara seems to accept her cousin’s fuck-up with equanimity. Serenely, she says, “We made it, though.”
Caleb is less gracious. “Thanks for NOT waiting for us on the dock!” he accuses Sabrina.
Sabrina laughs carelessly. “How was I supposed to know what happened to you? I left my phone at home, remember? No cellphones on the island. I wasn’t about to miss the boat out of solidarity.”
“Anyway,” Cara says to me, interrupting the pleasant bickering, “I’m Cara Wilk. This is Caleb Griffin.”
“You know Sabrina?” Caleb asks me.
“For about ten minutes,” I say. “I’m Nix Moroz.”
I think I see a strange expression pass over Caleb’s face, but he smooths it away as quickly as it came.
“Nice to meet you,” he says.
“What division will you guys be in?” I ask them.
“Enforcer,” Caleb says. “My brother Mi—I’ve got an older brother who’s Heir.”
“I’ll be with the Accountants,” Cara says.
“She’s actually a writer, though,” Sabrina says.
“Oh, really?” I say, curiosity piqued.
“I’m a last-minute addition to Kingmakers,” Cara says. “I’d planned to go to normal college. Take literature courses and all that. But then I thought . . . learning about the world might be more useful than studying writing.” She smiles. “Or maybe I just couldn’t stand the thought of pretending to understand Beowulf yet again.”
“I came last minute as well,” I say. “My dad didn’t want me here.”
“Why’s that?” Caleb asks, eyeing me closely.
“He’s overprotective,” I say. “Or I dunno, maybe it’s the right amount of protective, considering the kind of things that go on in our world. But it feels like I’m in a box with a lid. And I just . . . want to know what it’s like to walk around without somebody watching me every minute of the day.”
“I don’t know if you came to the right place for freedom,” Sabrina says, casting a glance around at all the uniformed students. “You saw the list of rules they sent us for this place.”
“Don’t pretend like you intend to follow any of them,” Caleb snorts.
“Oh shut the fuck up, you kettle-calling pot.” Sabrina tosses her dark hair back over her shoulder. “Neither will you.”
Since the cousins obviously have the scoop on Kingmakers, I pepper them with questions they’re happy to answer.
Caleb tells us that he’s most excited to compete in the Quartum Bellum, the annual challenge where all four years of students are pitted against one another for supremacy.
“What kind of challenges?” I ask him.
Caleb shrugs. “It’s different every year. There’s no sports at Kingmakers, so that’s it in terms of athletics. I mean, other than Combat training and all that shit.”
“I dunno how I’m going to do in the classes,” I say. “I didn’t go to a normal high school; I had a tutor.”
“Who learns anything in high school?” Sabrina says airily. “Besides, the classes here are completely different. It won’t matter if you passed trigonometry or not.”
That cheers me up a little. Even as I see another boy standing against the mast of the ship giving me an absolutely filthy glare. Some of my fellow students are pretty damned unfriendly.
Well, I don’t need a million friends—one or two would be more than I had before.
Sabrina and Caleb are talking about the motorcycle Sabrina has been fixing up with her mom, which will belong to her alone if they can ever get it running.
“You know, when you buy them new, they already work,” Caleb teases her.
“They don’t make the Indian Four anymore,” Sabrina says, rolling her eyes at his ignorance. “That’s pretty much the whole point.”
Meanwhile, the boy at the mast has been joined by a couple of friends. They’re all looking over at me, muttering.
I try to ignore them.
“You like fixing cars?” I ask Sabrina.
“Not as much as bikes,” she says. “The Indian Four has this upside-down engine and it—”
The three boys interrupt her, pushing between Sabrina and me.
“Podyvit’sya, khto tse.” Look who it is, the biggest one says in Ukrainian.
He was the one leaned up against the mast, the one watching me the longest. He has a heavy, sullen-looking face, a shaved head, and earrings in both ears.
His friends—one skinny and heavily tattooed, the other handsome in a sloppy, unshaven sort of way—are both leering at me like they know me.
“Khto vy, chort zabyray?” I demand. Who the hell are you?
“Are you serious?” the big one says, looking at his friends and laughing derisively.
Sabrina is watching in confusion, but Cara seems to have understood at least part of what was said. She asks the boys, “Well? Are you going to answer the question?”
The skinny one sneers at me. “He’s your cousin, you dumb shit.”
“I don’t have any cousins,” I scoff.
“Second cousin, then. Same fuckin’ difference,” the scruffy one says.
“You really don’t know who I am?” the big one says, dark eyes narrowed. “You don’t know the Lomachenkos?”
“You’re Odessa Mafia . . .” I say slowly.
I am, of course, aware that a chapter of the Ukrainian Mafia operates out of Brighton Beach in New York. I knew my father had dealings with them at times, but I didn’t know that we were blood-related—if this idiot’s even telling the truth.
“Estas Lomachenko,” he says, puffing up his chest. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Marko doesn’t want to remember what he did to my brother.”
I’ve never heard of Estas or his brother, but I don’t like what he’s insinuating. And I definitely don’t like the sneering way he says my father’s name. No fucking way would he have the balls to call my dad “Marko” to his face.