Kingmakers, Graduation

10. Adrik

10

ADRIK

3 MONTHS LATER

I ’ve come to Cannon Beach, ostensibly to visit my uncle and cousins, but really to see Sabrina.

We’ve kept in touch over the summer.

She’s been working with her father and brother during the day, at night rebuilding a vintage Indian motorcycle with her mother.

She sent me photos of the bike, and one or two of herself, though not the kind of pictures I’d request if I had my way …

I’m kicking myself for not filming any part of our three days together. I’d give a kidney to be able to watch Sabrina’s breathtaking body participating in those activities at which she is so phenomenally talented. I’ve run through my own memories so many times that I hardly know if I can believe them anymore. They seem dream-like and too fantastical to possibly be real.

After our trip, I went through withdrawal .

My first two weeks back in Moscow were miserable. I snapped at Jasper and Vlad, drank too much, and felt bored of my own plans, the ones I’d been formulating before I ever went to Dubrovnik.

Then Sabrina sent me the first picture of herself. Nothing sexy or posed—in fact, she was dressed in a steel-blue coverall and work boots, grease up to her elbows, and a smear across one cheek. She was crouched down at the wheel of the bike, working a wrench, her forearm taut and tendons standing out on the back of her hand. She glanced back over her shoulder, probably as someone called her name—that’s when the photo was taken.

The fact that she sent me this picture over any other pleased me in a way I can hardly explain. It was a photo of her in her favorite place, doing what she loves. She sent me a picture of the real Sabrina — which is who I most want to know.

And yes, I have jerked off to that picture, though it isn’t a nude. Because that’s how attracted I am to this girl. That’s how badly I want her. I’m more aroused by a candid shot of her than the raunchiest porn.

The flight to America felt like it took years. We flew commercial. Even though we had those Delta One seats where you can lay down entirely in an enclosed pod like you’re having an MRI taken, I still couldn’t sleep a minute. I wanted to see Sabrina with a hunger that kept me awake all through the night.

We had been texting more and more frequently.

She kept me updated on her activities and I told her how I’d found a house for me and the Wolfpack, a base of operations to begin our business in Moscow .

Sabrina pretended only a casual level of interest, but her questions were probing enough for me to assume that she hadn’t forgotten my offer, nor entirely dismissed it.

We each have our excuse for this visit.

She’s here to see Nix, her old roommate. Nix is living in a mansion on the cliffs above a cold northern beach, the mansion that now houses my Uncle Ivan and his wife, my cousins Rafe and Freya, and several of my uncle’s men.

My own mother and father have come along with me, and also my brother Kade. To have the Petrov family whole again is so deeply satisfying that we’ve taken every opportunity to visit.

I’m relieved to see Ivan and Sloane looking something like themselves again. Though Ivan was the one trapped in a windowless cell in the bottom of a mine, the physical toll on his wife was almost as severe. She grew thin and worn with every day that passed, until she became a shadow of herself. If Ivan had died before we found him, she might have died, too—by her own hand, or by the kind of medical accident that really is no mystery at all if one understands the effects of stress on the body.

Rafe is also himself once more, in the sense that I can call him by his name and acknowledge him as my cousin.

The lies we had to tell to protect our family have cost us all.

The High Table hasn’t forgotten that we concealed my uncle’s capture from the Bratva. They pretend that they would have helped us, but we know the form their “help” would have taken—they would have descended on us like hyenas, ripping apart the carcass of our empire and dividing it amongst themselves. Putting Sloane under house arrest for her own “protection.” Impedi ng my father from paying the monthly ransom that kept Ivan alive.

The Bratva are friends of convenience. As in any animal pack, if the dominant male can’t fight off his challengers, he’s soon deposed. He cannot rule in absentia.

Ivan’s empire was already fracturing as he shifted his focus to his holdings in America. Sloane was first to recognize the vast potential of the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado. Before the legislation had even passed, she and Ivan bought up land for farming and prime real estate for dispensaries. The money that poured in was a blessing and a curse, because it made them rich beyond measure, but also attracted the attention of old enemies.

Parted from Russia for three years, it seems my uncle has no desire to return. He’s made his home here on the West Coast, gifting the monastery in St. Petersburg to my father. Now my father is Pakhan of St. Petersburg, subordinate no longer.

I could stay at the monastery with him. But to my mind, St. Petersburg is for the younger brother. Kade can inherit when my father retires. Moscow is the prize.

Moscow has never been controlled by one man. At best, it’s been divided in four portions, with the Markovs taking the largest share. Currently, a dozen bosses vie for power in the vacuum created by my father’s absence and the death of several key players.

It’s all up for grabs. And I want it all.

I’m not arrogant enough to think I can do it alone.

I’ve already assembled my Wolfpack, hand-picked and trained by me alone. Sabrina is the last piece .

It might seem like madness to bring a woman in the mix, but I can see the equation in its entirety, the fulness of what we need to succeed. Sabrina is crucial. She’s the seasoning on the steak. The ingredient that no one else possesses.

I don’t need more men created in my image.

I need something different.

Someone who challenges me. Someone with their own mind and their own ideas. Someone shaped in an entirely separate world.

This is my vision, and I’m here to make it a reality.

When I see her in the flesh, everything I planned to say evaporates from my mind, leaving me speechless.

She’s standing next to Nix and Rafe, wearing an old pair of denim shorts and a flannel shirt, barefooted. So radiant in the summer sunshine that she could almost blind me.

I feel my mother glance from Sabrina to me, intuiting the connection between us, or else tipped off by my brother.

Sabrina likewise sweeps her eyes across my family. I’m pleased to see that she’s robbed of a fraction of her usual cheek, enough that she introduces herself politely to my parents and gives Kade a surprisingly civil, “Good to see you again.”

When her eyes meet mine, she says nothing at all. Her face reddens and her chest rises and falls a little too quickly beneath the flannel shirt.

I’m wondering if she’s afflicted with the same thickness in her throat and the same pounding heart that seems to have attacked me without warning. Everything is quiet on the outside, while inside is chaos and confusion .

“Hello, Sabrina.”

“Hello, Adrik.”

That low voice operates on me like Pavlov’s bell. I’m sweating, salivating, and a host of other reactions that I’d rather not experience with my mother two feet away from me.

What the fuck is happening?

You’d think I was sixteen again.

You’d think I’d never seen a woman before.

“Did you have a good flight?” Nix pipes up, her voice high and strained.

If anyone is more uncomfortable than me in this moment, it’s Nix Moroz. Her father was the one who imprisoned Ivan. While Ivan and Sloane have obviously forgiven her, she’s not as certain of her reception with the rest of us.

I couldn’t give two shits who she’s related to.

If Ivan doesn’t mind his son sleeping with the enemy, far be it from me to raise a fuss about it. What better revenge for Rafe than to cut Marko’s throat and steal his daughter? Sounds like justice to me.

Apparently my mother feels the same, because she immediately replies, “It was lovely, thank you. Are you Nix? I’ve heard so much about you from Kade!”

My mother is kindhearted. In this instance she probably feels especially charitable—her own father was a sadistic piece of shit who threw her mother out a window. So she knows a little something about family drama .

“She hasn’t heard ‘so much’ about you,” Kade assures Nix. “Just a normal amount. Sabrina, on the other hand …”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sabrina says, coloring.

“He’s only teasing,” my mother says, putting her arms companionably around both girls’ waists. “We’re indebted to you both for the assistance you gave our family.”

“I don’t know about that.” Nix winces.

“We’re all here now,” my mother says firmly. “That’s what matters.”

She heads inside the house with Nix and Sabrina, my father following along behind her at a slower pace, burdened by several suitcases.

“I’ll take those.” I heft the two largest. “You help, too, you lazy shit,” I say to Kade.

“I’ve got ‘em,” Rafe says, taking the other two suitcases.

He’s lingering behind on purpose.

Sure enough, as soon as my father and Kade are a few steps ahead, he shoots me a sly look and mutters, “How was Dubrovnik?”

Not knowing what Sabrina told them, I respond with “Sunny.”

Rafe snorts. “Alright. Keep your secrets.”

“Don’t quote that fucking movie at me.”

Since we were kids, Rafe has honed in with unerring precision on the most irritating lines from every film we’ve watched together, then deployed them relentlessly.

“What movie?” he says innocently .

“I liked you better when you were depressed,” I tell him.

“Then you shouldn’t have brought Dad home, should you? Next time, think ahead.”

“Don’t think ‘cause we’re the same height now I won’t beat the shit out of you.”

Rafe cocks an eyebrow at me.

“Same height? I’ve got an inch on you at least.”

“Just fucking try me,” I snarl. “It was a long flight. I’m dying for some exercise.”

“No thanks,” Rafe says. “I got enough of that at Kingmakers.”

I sigh. “Those were the days. You were always sure of knocking someone out in the course of a week.”

“Sometimes several people.”

“Almost makes me miss it.”

“Don’t worry—I’m sure there’ll be plenty of opportunities for mayhem in Moscow.”

“He’s not going there for mayhem,” my father calls back over his shoulder. He’s got the ears of a bat—always has.

“ ‘ Konechno net, otets,” I say. Of course not, Father. “I’ll follow all your orders to the letter. Just like you did at my age.”

Fully cognizant of his own bad behavior, my father turns around and fixes me with a steely stare.

“Now is not the time for levity, boys. We have many more enemies than friends. Especially in Moscow. ”

“I know. There’s a lot of people trying to kill us,” I say. And then, so quietly that not even my father can hear, I mutter to Rafe, “And some of us keep fucking those people.”

Struggling to keep a straight face, Rafe whispers back, “ Nix was never trying to kill us. Just her dad.”

“Well, give her time … she doesn’t know you as well as I do.”

Rafe grins. “When has a Petrov married someone safe?”

My gaze fixes on Sabrina, stepping through the front doors of the mansion.

She pauses, looking back over her shoulder. In the gloom of the house, her face is in shadow, her eyes glinting like a jungle cat.

“Who the fuck wants to be safe?” I say.

It takes an excruciating fourteen minutes of chit-chat to finish greeting every goddamn person I’m here to visit before I can isolate Sabrina from the group.

“We don’t have enough rooms,” Sloane says to me without apology. “You’ll have to bunk with Rafe.”

“That’s fine,” I lift my bag again. “Sabrina can show me the way.”

No one remarks upon my choice of escort, though I catch the twitch of my aunt’s lips that tells me she understands perfectly well what I’m up to.

You have to be pretty fucking sly to get anything past Sloane .

My aunt has always been my favorite relative because she’s blunt and unsentimental, as ruthless as a man and as calculated as myself. She taught me how to shoot in the woods behind the monastery.

“Marksmanship is meditation,” she told me. “You have to clear your mind of everything but the shot. A sniper is a monk. He separates his mind from his body. Cold can’t touch him, nor wind, nor time. He’ll wait three days with no food or water if that’s how long it takes for the target to enter the kill zone. When you pull the trigger, it’s your mind that moves, not your finger.”

“Ivan’s lucky you chose poison and not a rifle when you came for his head.”

Even at ten years old, I already knew the story of how my uncle and aunt first met.

Sloane looked at me, no trace of amusement on her face.

“I would have destroyed all my happiness in moment, without ever knowing what I’d done.”

“Maybe you would have been happy either way.”

“No,” she said, still unsmiling. “I would have been nothing at all.”

I didn’t quite understand her. I didn’t understand what “nothing” meant.

Sabrina leads me up the stairs to Rafe’s room.

I’m close enough to touch her, though I haven’t yet—I’m simply admiring the way her bare calves flex as she ascends the stairs and the pleasing tension in the arches of her bare feet. She bounds up like she’s made of springs, full of restless energy .

I follow after her, the suitcase weightless in my hand.

The moment we’re inside Rafe’s room, I toss it aside and push the door shut.

Sabrina turns to face me, cheeks glowing, lips parted.

Before she can speak, before she can even take a breath, I seize her face in both hands and kiss her like I haven’t seen her in a hundred years. My hands are all over her body, ripping open her shirt, yanking down her shorts, lifting her up and slamming her against the wall without one thought for the noise that might be overheard by the people downstairs.

She’s clawing at me just as eagerly, pulling up my shirt so she can put her bare chest against mine, shoving her hand down the front of my shorts to grip my cock. She lets out a groan when she touches it, desperate to have it inside her.

“Hurry,” she pants in my ear, “I’m fucking dying for you …”

Clothes half on and half off, I thrust inside of her, burying my cock eight inches deep in that soaking wet pussy, already warm, already throbbing for me.

I’m fucking her hard and it’s still not enough. She wraps her arms around my neck, slamming herself up and down on my cock, biting at the side of my neck, panting into my mouth, kissing me so roughly that I taste blood—mine or hers, I really couldn’t give a shit.

There’s no thought of foreplay or drawing this out as long as possible. We’re hurtling headlong toward climax, each of us desperate for relief .

It’s not a race—more like a free-fall. We’re plummeting toward an inevitable conclusion, no more able to stop than we could sprout wings and fly.

Whether she hits it first or I do, I can’t tell. All I know is I’m bursting inside of her, a creature splitting its skin. What will emerge from the carapace I have no idea—I can’t possibly be the same person before and after this.

The pleasure is blinding, the room less than nothing around me. All that exists is Sabrina and whatever I become when I’m with her.

It’s all over in minutes. She collapses against me, no longer able to hold herself up. I have to set her down because I’m shaking, but I won’t let go of her, not for a second.

We look at each other, frightened of this thing between us, over which neither of us has any control.

When she can speak again, Sabrina says, “I needed that.”

“Me too. I thought I knew how bad I wanted it. But it was … more.”

We’re staring at each other, still breathing heavily.

Only minutes have passed, but everything feels different between us. Whatever separation of time and distance existed, we blasted it apart. Sex connects us in a way I’ve never felt before.

“How have you been liking it here?” I ask her.

She’s been staying with my aunt and uncle for three days already.

What I really mean is, How do you like my family?

“Sloane is intense,” Sabrina says. “Ivan too, but I expected that. I knew Sloane as Miss Robin at Kingmakers—she was our librarian. I know her, but I don’t know her—same with Rafe, actually. It’s a little disorienting. Worse for Nix, I’m sure.”

“Sloane is hard to know under any circumstance. Her father was insane. He raised her like a child soldier.”

“Nix told me.” Sabrina nods. “She was a killer for hire?”

“One of the best. Two hundred commissions—only missed once.”

“Ivan.”

“That’s right.”

Sabrina squints at me, slowly buttoning her shirt.

“The Petrovs are forgiving.”

“You know how it is in our world. Everyone is a rival, ally or not. Your only true friends are your family. And the inverse is true—family are friends, whatever they might have been before.”

The last two buttons ripped off and bounced somewhere under the bed. Sabrina ties the bottom of her shirt in a knot instead.

“Family can hurt you. My father was shot seven times at my uncle’s wedding.”

“But not by your uncle.”

“No.” She smiles. “Though I’m sure he thought about it a time or two.”

“None of us know the span of our life. You have to trust somebody. I’d rather be stabbed in the back by a friend than have no friends at all.”

Sabrina is a quiet a moment. “I’m not sure I agree. ”

I hold her gaze. “Then you’ve never had a friend like me.”

“Is that what we are?” she says softly.

“We’re going to be something. I can promise you that.”

The corner of her mouth tilts up. “Whether I want it or not?”

“There’s no choice about it. From the moment I saw you, I knew our paths would converge.”

Sabrina smooths her hair down with both hands, an action that does little because her hair seems as intent on insubordination as my own, especially this close to the ocean.

“You fascinated me before we ever met,” she admits.

“I heard about you, too.”

“From who?”

“Kade. The first week of school, he told me he’d never seen a girl so beautiful.”

“Hm,” Sabrina says.

“He’s not very observant.”

She laughs. “What does that mean?”

“Your looks are the least interesting thing about you.”

Color comes into her cheeks. I understand that this is the compliment Sabrina most wants to hear. She’s been told she’s beautiful all her life—you might as well observe that the sky is blue or water is wet.

I grip her upper arm and pull her close .

“If he took five minutes to look closer, he’d have told me that you’re brilliant and bold, and that you were made for me in every possible way.”

She tilts her face up to me, but she doesn’t kiss me, only looking straight into my eyes.

“You won’t like everything about me,” she warns.

I kiss her, long and deep.

“Yes, I will. I want all of you Sabrina—every single fucking thing.”