Kingmakers, Graduation

19. Sabrina

19

SAbrINA

O n September first, instead of boarding the ship in Dubrovnik, I fly to Moscow with Adrik.

I send my parents one single text:

I’m going to Russia

Then I shut off my phone so I don’t have to deal with the fallout of that particular bomb.

I feel strangely calm all through the flight. Now that my decision is made, I’m no longer pulled apart at the seams. My confidence returns, and I fill with excitement.

Adrik likewise seems altered.

He’s dressed in his usual way—t-shirt, jeans, boots, same battered leather jacket he wore the day he picked me up in Dubrovnik. And yet he’s different here in the Moscow airport, amongst the throngs of peo ple who look somewhat like Americans do, but not quite the same.

There’s enough dissimilarity in the style of suits and casual wear, amplified by the incomprehensible announcements over the loudspeakers and the Cyrillic signs, to remind me that I’m very much in a foreign country.

Eastern Europeans have their own characteristics—high cheekbones, narrow eyes, strong jaws, broad noses. Seeing Adrik next to his countrymen seems to emphasize the dark exoticism of his looks. He’s never looked more brutish, or more Russian.

I’m all nerves and anticipation. I wish I could read the signs—I’ll have to learn. I like learning new things.

“Where do we go first?” I ask Adrik, once we’ve retrieved our bags.

“Home. I want you to meet my brothers.”

This is the part of the adventure that concerns me most. Adrik lives with five other men. I know his actual brother Kade and we get on well. But Kade is headed back to Kingmakers today. The five I’ll be meeting are strangers to me. I’ll have to learn to work with them, integrating into an already tightly bonded group.

I understand group dynamics well enough to assume that there’s already heavy competition for Adrik’s favor. As the only woman—and presumably the only one fucking him—I can expect a certain level of animosity.

I don’t enjoy frat-house fervor. Ilsa had to put up with it constantly in the Gatehouse. She didn’t seem to mind it as much as I would. She’s not as fastidious about hygiene, and she has a brash humor that served her well. She’s as likely to pull a prank or start a brawl as anyone .

Besides, she’s an actual gold-star lesbian who’s never even kissed a man. The constant flirtation lobbed at her in her first year died off when the guys finally accepted her adamant disinterest.

My situation is a little more complicated.

I don’t have to wait until we arrive at the house Adrik jokingly calls “the Den”—one of his Wolfpack is waiting for us at the curb, leaning out the open windowsill of a black SUV. I can deduce his name from the forearm and fist propped up against his jaw, tattoos of skeletal bones superimposed on the flesh—this is Jasper Webb.

He graduated before I ever came to Kingmakers, but my cousins described him in detail. He was an enemy to Miles and something of a friend to Leo. I don’t know what that makes the two of us.

“Take the front seat,” Adrik says, throwing our suitcases in the trunk.

He doesn’t want us both in the back with Jasper as chauffeur, nor does he want to relegate me to the backseat alone.

Adrik is cognizant of small social cues. Without any obvious effort, he’s the oil that keeps the gears running smoothly when people come together.

Jasper turns his cool gaze on me. His unblinking eyes, pale and reptilian, offer no welcome. Grim skeleton tattoos run from his fingernails up the backs of his hands, his arms and his shoulders, across his chest and up his neck to his chin, visible through the thin material of his white shirt. If I could see through his jeans, I’d guess they run down his legs as well. Jasper doesn’t look like a man who does things by halves .

The sides of his head are shaved, his shock of dark red hair falling down on the right side. His flesh is bone-white, his mouth thin and unsmiling.

“Sabrina,” I say, holding out my hand.

With Adrik watching, he has to shake hands.

He squeezes hard. I squeeze back harder, holding his eye with none of the placating smiles women are taught to offer.

“Jasper,” he says.

I could say, I know, but I don’t. I don’t care what he thinks of my cousins or of me. I’ll forge my own relationships here, on my own terms. None of us are at Kingmakers anymore.

“Good to have you back,” Jasper says to Adrik, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror before directing his attention to driving.

I notice Jasper doesn’t use any term of address with Adrik—not Pakhan or Boss or Krestniy Otets.

“It’s good to be back, brother,” Adrik says, leaning forward to clap Jasper on the shoulder. “We’ll talk tonight—I’ve been making plans in my absence.”

I feel the frisson of excitement on Jasper’s bare skin, though he only nods.

I’m lit with the same excitement myself. It’s impossible not to be affected by Adrik’s voice, deep and clear and confident. The Churchills and the Washingtons of the world have always had this quality—to stir the hearts of men when they speak.

As we pull onto the main roads of Moscow, I note the broadness of the avenues. The main artery of Kutuzovsky spans ten lanes across. Still, the streets are clogged with cars, each red light interminable. In the midst of all this congestion, a black town car with a howling siren speeds down the highway in the opposite direction, forcing the cars to edge out of its way as it careens past.

“Was that a cop?” I ask.

Adrik laughs. “A politician—top-ranking officials don’t have to obey the traffic rules. They can speed all they like, drive on the wrong side of the road, cut off an ambulance or a fire truck … You better run for office, Jasper, or we’ll never get anywhere.”

Jasper spits out the open window. “Fucking parasites.”

I smile to myself. The antipathy between criminals and politicians has always amused me, each of us disgusted at the corruption of the other. At least criminals are honest—we admit what we are.

“It didn’t used to be this way,” Adrik tells me. “The number of cars in Moscow has doubled in the last ten years.”

The further we drive into the center of the city, the more I’m astounded at its sprawling mass. Twelve million people live here, I looked it up before I came. The number gave me no idea of its real density—four times the size of Chicago, and in some places, just as modern in appearance. To the west, I see a forest of skyscrapers, gleaming glass towers to rival any at home.

But I’m not at home. The heavy Brutalist architecture reminds me of that, the many cement tenements and, in the distance, the unmistakable red brick Kremlin and the colorful onion domes of the basilica.

The cars themselves are a bizarre mix of ultra-luxury Ferraris and beemers, bumper to bumper with Ladas and Kias held together with wire and twine .

On the plane I read that the average salary in Moscow is $1100 a month. Conversely, Moscow has more billionaires than London or San Francisco. I can see the dichotomy everywhere I look, the gated communities of the privileged jammed up against the cramped Soviet apartments of the worker ants.

“Where’s the Den?” I ask Adrik.

“In Lyublino,” he says. “Not much further.”

Jasper navigates a series of increasingly narrow streets, through concrete buildings that loom up on both sides, claustrophobically close. Everything in Moscow is built on a grandiose scale, thick and heavy and hulking. Each glimpse of a park is a relief, a breath of green in all this gray.

We’ve passed through countless strata of neighborhoods. Lyublino is on the seedier side—metal bars across the windows, graffiti in the alleyways. I see a mural of a woman with crow’s wings growing out of her eyes, and another of a technicolor Matryoshka doll.

At last we reach the end of the road where Adrik’s house sits. We pass through an iron gate running beneath a pointed archway topped by several spires, the crumbling stone blackened with soot and grime. Adrik’s parents live in a monastery in St. Petersburg—perhaps his childhood home influenced his choice. The Den resembles a gothic church, dark and ornate, with mats of crawling ivy attempting to pull down the dilapidated stones.

Jasper pulls the SUV into an alcove of cars, among which I see Adrik’s bike and several others of similar style. I’ll have to get a bike of my own—fuck sitting in Moscow traffic.

“Come meet everyone,” Adrik says, taking my hand .

He lets go before we enter the house, which I prefer. I don’t want to be presented as his paramour, I’m here to work.

The interior of the Den is dim and cool, thankfully smelling only of damp and dust, not sweaty men. Tiny motes swim in the thin bands of watery sunshine crossing the hall.

The floors are bare stone, relieved by a few faded rugs. No art hangs on the wall, and the furniture I can see is sparse and shabby. I leave my suitcase by the door. Adrik does the same.

He leads me through a warren of narrow passageways, past a kitchen with two mismatched refrigerators and one vast farmhouse table, then down a short set of steps into a large common room.

Here we find the rest of the Wolfpack.

I hear the gruff laughter and shouting before we get close. Two are playing Call of Duty , sprawled out on bean bags on the floor. A thick-shouldered giant sits in an easy chair that groans beneath his weight, fucking around on his phone. The last wolf lays across the length of the couch, reading a paperback.

They’re all much bigger than me, muscular and full of restless energy. As soon as we enter the room their attention shifts, and silence falls.

The two video game players set down their controllers, swiftly shutting off the TV. No one jumps to their feet, but the sense of alertness is palpable. The reader lets his book fall to his lap, sitting up and grinning at Adrik. “Welcome back, boss. And you brought … a friend.”

Five pairs of eyes fix on me—six, if you count Jasper who followed us into the house. I can feel his stare on my back .

“This is Sabrina Gallo,” Adrik says, calm and pleasant, with no acknowledgment that this might be poorly received. “She’s agreed to join us.”

He points to each of the Wolfpack in turn, naming them: “That’s Andrei, Hakim, Chief, and Vlad.”

Andrei and Hakim are the gamers. Andrei is as blond and Slavic as one might expect, Hakim his direct opposite. Hakim might be Arabic, his close-cropped hair dark and curly, his five o’clock shadow black as paint.

Chief eyes me with interest as if we’ve already met, though I’m quite sure we haven’t. He’s not Russian either as far as I can tell — maybe southeast asian, with light brown hair and a golden cast to his skin. I’m not surprised to see him reading, since he was the one Adrik described as particularly intelligent.

Vlad, by contrast, is the biggest, the beefiest, and certainly the surliest. His close-shaved head with its grayish stubble resembles a rock sitting directly atop his hulking shoulders, and his small, dark eyes glitter like malachite as he glares at me with instant dislike. He’s testing the structural integrity of the Affliction t-shirt stretched across pecs the size of dinner plates. I wonder if the shirt is ironic, or if Affliction only just made its way to Russia.

Though the group’s manner is casual, I’m cognizant of the ways in which they resemble a military unit. It’s not just the matching tattoos on each of their arms—it’s their deference to Adrik and the way communication passes between them in glances and inflections. I can imagine them storming a building with only a few gestures needed to coordinate an attack.

These are men who have bonded already. Worked together. Learned to trust each other .

I’m a stranger. An intruder.

They regard me silently.

I speak instead: “Adrik said you guys need some help opening jars.”

It’s not the world’s greatest icebreaker, but it’s enough to get a smirk out of Chief.

Not Vlad. “Why don’t you help us decorate?” he sneers.

I feel Adrik stiffen, but I cut across him.

“Sure,” I say easily. “Let’s start with that shirt.”

That gets a snort out of the two gamers, Andrei and Hakim.

Andrei pipes up. “A Gallo, huh? Was Leo busy?”

It’s still insulting, but not a bad sign. Ribbing is better than cold silence. If you can’t take a few shots, you’ll never fit in with men. They really are pack-animals, releasing their aggression publicly in front of the group so the group determines the appropriate behavior. They don’t bottle shit up and bitch behind your back—or at least, not often.

Andrei obviously knows Leo, but he’s too old to be in the same year. So I know exactly how to respond.

“Yeah.” I grin. “He’s all tuckered out from running train on you at school.”

This gets a laugh out of the gamers and Chief as well.

The chill in the room is warming, at least a few degrees.

Vlad isn’t biting, hefty arms crossed, a scowl on his face. “I thought this house was patch-only. ”

He means the tattoos. It must be a rite of passage before entering the Wolfpack.

Adrik says, “This house was supposed to be brains only, but we let you in.”

Now they’re all laughing, and Vlad looks suitably stupid.

The tension is broken, as much as it needs to be for now. The real work will take place one-on-one as I get to know them individually.

Nobody welcomes change, but if I want you to like me, you’re damn well gonna like me. I’m as relentless as Adrik, in my own way.

“Do we need to clear out a room?” Chief asks.

“No,” Adrik says. “She’ll be staying with me.”

Andrei and Hakim exchange a glance across the space between their beanbag chairs, but this is no more than they expected. The calm holds.

“Come on,” Adrik says, “I’ll show you the room.”

We retrieve our suitcases, carrying them up the narrow staircase to the top floor.

I’m relieved everyone here speaks English. It’s the lingua franca at Kingmakers, and probably in this house, too, if Adrik gathered his Wolfpack from several countries.

I expect Adrik’s room to be the largest and most luxurious. In actuality, it looks much like the others we passed on our way. A wide, low bed takes up most of the space, covered with a red cotton comforter in folk print. The bed is neatly made, the room cleaner than any other part of the house. I doubt this was for my benefit—Adrik is more disciplined than he looks, and much more organized .

A wardrobe stands on one side of the room, a hefty bookshelf on the other, its shelves stuffed with tattered paperbacks.

“Did you bring those from home?” I ask Adrik.

He shakes his head. “I bought a crate of books in Danilovsky market. I like to read to wind down. I’m not sure exactly what’s in there, actually—haven’t had the chance to go through them all.”

The singular window looks down over the small back garden. I peer through the bubbled glass, bisected by slender molded mullions, with a pretty pattern of decorative tracery at the top.

“Garden” was perhaps too generous a term; nobody has tended the jungle of vines and shrubs choking the trees, and half the ornamental plants are dead while the wildest weeds run rampant. You could hardly walk through to the high stone wall behind. Beyond that, a jigsaw of uneven tenement buildings, rectangular and ugly, with metal fire-escapes crisscrossing down their sides.

“Not the best view,” Adrik acknowledges.

“I’m not here for scenery.” I set my suitcase down in the corner, turning to face Adrik.

“Then what are you here for?” he says, running a hand through his hair in a way that looks like it will smooth it, but really makes it stick up in more directions than ever.

“Why don’t you tell me? On our first date, you said you wanted to recruit me. What did you imagine I would do here? Where do I fit in with everyone else?”

Adrik shrugs, his heavy shoulders lifting and falling with almost audible weight .

“I told you Sabrina—I don’t plan to be your boss. I want you to run free. We’ll see what you come up with.”

A light heat spreads through my chest, and I let him see my smile. I worried that once I was here, he’d revert to some misogynistic Bratva and start barking orders at me. But it seems he really does intend to keep his word.

“Will you take me out tonight?” I ask. “Show me the city?”

“Of course.” Adrik gestures to the room. “Does this suit you? Would you prefer your own space?”

I consider. I might like my own space, but I also know I’ll be pulled into this bed every night like a magnet.

“This is good for now.”

Adrik smiles. “That wasn’t a real offer. I didn’t fly you across the world to be roommates.”

He opens the wardrobe.

“You can put your clothes in here; there should be plenty of space. I have to speak with some of the others. If you want to rest, there’s at least an hour before dinner.”

He leaves me to unpack, which takes little time since I brought only the single suitcase, mostly containing school uniforms that I toss straight in the trash.

Adrik wasn’t joking when he said there was room for my things—he’s got about six shirts in the wardrobe and not much else. He lives a minimalist life, that much is clear .

I’ll have to adjust to all this tidiness. I’ve been known to toss my clothes on the floor when I roomed with Nix, but I won’t do that here. It’s time to grow up, like my dad said—in more ways than one.

We’ve got our own bathroom, thank god. I don’t think I could stand sharing with Vlad.

I set my toiletries inside, my toothbrush next to Adrik’s and my shampoo in the tiny box of the shower. The bathroom has been renovated somewhat more than the rest of the house, but it still looks thirty years out of date, its pedestal sink cracked on one side, the brass faucets rusted. The tub is made of oxidized copper so heavy that the floorboards sag beneath it.

Unpacking completed, I shove the empty suitcase under the bed, then stand and wait, wondering if I’ll feel regret now that I’m settling into the reality of my situation.

Regret doesn’t come. Only a deep sense of exhaustion.

I’d planned to make use of that cramped shower. Instead, I sink onto the bed, burying my face in Adrik’s pillow. It smells of him—a scent I’ve tried a hundred times to isolate, without ever being able to name it. It comes to me in waves like colors—dark like a deeply steeped tea, with notes of heady sweetness, burgundy wine or black cherry. Then that head-spinning chemical edge that compels you to inhale again and again, even if you know it might be bad for you, or even toxic—testosterone like pure gasoline.

It’s that scent that makes me feel at home in this room. That chains me to this bed with no desire to ever leave it.

I fall asleep breathing him in, over and over and over.

I wake to the clanging of a cowbell. It echoes through the house, bringing scuffling feet, scraping chairs, and jumbled conversation into the kitchen below.

If I hadn’t been woken by the noise, the smell of beef stew might have done it. My gurgling stomach urges me out of the bed.

A glance in the mirror reveals smears of mascara under both eyes and a lopsided haystack of hair. I twist my hair up in a topknot and take a couple halfhearted swipes at my face with a damp cloth, too hungry for anything else.

By the time I get to the kitchen, everyone else is seated on the dual bench seats of the farmhouse table, including Adrik. He throws a look at Hakim, telling him to make room for me. I drop down between Andrei and Chief instead. I don’t need Adrik’s protection, not in this house.

Chief pushes me a basket of crusty bread, hard enough that it makes a sharp cracking sound when I tear off half a baguette. I dish stew from the tureen in the center of the table, ladling it into an earthenware bowl so heavy that I can hardly hold it in one hand. The stew is beef and vegetables, the broth thick as gravy.

“We take turns cooking,” Adrik tells me.

“I don’t cook.”

“Neither do Vlad or Hakim, but we eat the shit they make and we don’t complain.”

“Not even when Hakim makes goulash for the twenty-seventh time,” Andrei says, grinning across the table at Hakim.

“Fuck off,” Hakim grouses. “Took me long enough to learn to make that. I’m not fuckin’ Gordon Ramsay, am I? ”

“You’re barely Sweeney Todd,” Andrei laughs.

“I will be if you keep it up,” Hakim says darkly. “You’re getting fat enough to make a good pie out of you.”

Andrei looks genuinely offended at this. “I’m not nearly as fat as Vlad. Am I, Vlad?”

He elbows his seat-mate in his generous flank.

Vlad shoots Andrei a look of such malevolence that Andrei’s grin morphs into a puckered mew, his blue eyes as round and startled as a schoolboy’s. Andrei scoots several inches to the left, knocking my elbow and dislodging the delectable chunk of beef I’d gotten within an inch of my mouth. In retaliation, I steal the rest of Andrei’s baguette.

While I loathe the idea of cooking for this pack of hyenas, I have to respect Adrik’s insistence on family dinners. Eating is a bonding activity, and if we weren’t forced to cook proper food, the house would soon become a wasteland of empty fast-food bags, with Andrei and Vlad as plump as Hakim claimed.

In truth, everyone at the table is admirably fit, ranging from Jasper’s lean and rangy muscle to Vlad’s bulk. There must be a gym close by, maybe at the house. I wonder if Adrik makes everyone work out together?

It can’t be worse than the workouts Ilsa used to put me through.

I catch Adrik’s eye as he takes a second helping of stew. He grins, his teeth a flash of white in his tanned face. There is no head or foot to this table—also intentional, I’m sure. Adrik calls his men “brother.” He avoids the appearance of authority. Yet they all wear his brand on their arm. They listen when he talks, and I assume they obey. Will he demand the same from me ?

Conversation bounces back and forth across the table. Everyone here is younger than thirty, full of energy and crudity. Even Jasper smiles once or twice, though his chill is more complete than Vlad’s, directed at everyone, not just at me.

Adrik passes out frosty bottles of Baltika from the fridge, popping their caps on the scarred edge of the table.

“Does the lady need a Cosmo?” Andrei smirks at me.

“Is that what you use to get Hakim in bed?” I say, sweetly sipping my beer.

“He might be getting desperate enough,” Hakim snorts. “You’re on a dry spell, aren’t you Andrei?”

“I’d get laid every night if I was willing to take home the dogs you fuck,” Andrei retorts.

“Can we talk business?” Chief pleads of Adrik. “Before I have to hear another recital of Hakim’s conquests and the lies he has to tell to get them in bed.”

“What lies?” Hakim protests.

“Did you or did you not tell some poor college student that you were Zayn Malik’s cousin?”

Hakim shrugs. “I could be. I’ve got a lot of cousins.”

“We can talk,” Adrik says, silencing them all. “Who wants to tell me what you did while I was gone?”

“I will,” Jasper says, composed and ready. “We sold off that load of ARs to the Slavs. They offered us ten keys coming in fresh from Bolivia. But they’re asking fifty per, and I think we can get a better deal f rom Baldoski. We’ll have to get a sample first and test it—there’s rumors that he’s cutting below forty percent.”

Adrik nods, mentally tallying each point. I have no doubt he could repeat it all back verbatim if he wanted to. I know I could.

“And the books?”

“Up to date,” Chief replies. “We took in twenty-eight K on the ARs, but I had to pay out twelve to the Musor. ”

“Good,” Adrik says. “I’m taking Sabrina out for a drink.”

That’s all. He gives no instructions. Dinner breaks up, Andrei washing the dishes because it’s his turn.

As we exit the kitchen I ask Adrik, “Don’t you have any orders?”

“They know what they need to do. They’ll come to me if they need help.”

Interesting. This is unlike what I’m used to, even in relatively flexible mafia organizations. Adrik offers an unusual level of autonomy to his men.

“What’s the Musor?” I ask him.

“The cops. Don’t call ‘em that to their face, though—it means garbage. They’ve been raking us over the coals with the bribes. I’m gonna have to figure out some kind of leverage besides money or we’ll never make a profit.”

“Where are you taking me?” I ask him, wondering how to dress.

He smiles. “I’m gonna show you how we party in Moscow.”