Kingmakers, Year Two

1. Zoe

1

ZOE

I t’s my engagement party tonight.

I’ve never been less excited to celebrate something.

My stepmother Daniela sends her team of specialists to ensure that I’m in peak form, so Rocco and his family can be sure they’re getting their money’s worth.

They come into my bedroom at three o’clock in the afternoon and spend the next four hours scrubbing, exfoliating, waxing, moisturizing, painting, and primping every square inch of my body.

The fighting starts immediately when I demand to know why they’re waxing my bikini line.

“It’s an engagement party,” I tell Daniela. “Not the wedding night. I don’t expect anyone to be checking under my skirt. ”

I glare at my stepmother, who is already partway through her own exhausting preparations for the night ahead. She has a mud mask on her face and her hair up in rollers the size of soup cans. Far from looking ridiculous, it only makes her appear all the more imperious as the curlers encircle her head like a crown, and the mask obscures the few hints of emotion Daniela ever betrays. I can’t tell if Daniela actually lacks all human feeling or if she’s just very good at hiding it.

Daniela is only ten years older than me.

I was nine when my mother died, nine-and-a-half when my father remarried.

He used my mother up like an old sponge, putting her through fourteen pregnancies, ten miscarriages, two stillbirths, and the shameful arrival of me and my sister Catalina, none of which produced a male heir.

That last stillbirth was the death of her. She hemorrhaged on the gurney. The darkest part of me suspects that my father held back the doctor, allowing the life to drain out of my mother as punishment for the fact that even that final breathless baby was a girl.

My father went into a rage.

There was no comfort for Cat and me, no time to mourn our mother. Instead he ordered flower girl dresse s.

He was already making arrangements to marry Daniela, the youngest daughter of rival Galician clan chief. Her sisters had produced two sons each for their husbands, proof in my father’s eyes that Daniela would likewise be fertile and useful.

Daniela fell pregnant on the honeymoon, but an anatomy scan showed that the fetus was female yet again. My father forced her to abort it.

I only know this because I heard him shouting at her for hours, berating her into doing it. She was sick for several weeks after, pale and unable to walk from room to room without hunching over.

I don’t know how many more times she was coerced into repeating that process.

Eventually, my father stopped trusting in fate and turned to science.

They saw fertility specialists. Daniela went through several rounds of IVF, harvesting her eggs for the sole purpose of selecting the gender ahead of time.

None of these attempts were successful. Daniela bore no babies at all.

I’d feel bad for her. But the sympathy wouldn’t be returned.

Daniela hates me. She hates my sister, too .

Her loyalty is all to my father, no matter how he abuses her. She’s his constant spy, acting as jailor to Cat and me and helping carry out all my father’s most insidious plans for us.

Like this engagement.

It was Daniela who brokered the deal with Rocco Prince and his family. She told Rocco’s mother that I was intelligent, studious, obedient, submissive. And of course, beautiful.

When I was only twelve years old, she sent the Princes photographs of me laying by the pool in my swimsuit.

The Princes’ first visit soon followed. Rocco was thirteen—just a year older than me—but I could already tell there was something very wrong with him.

He came out to the garden where I was sitting on a bench under the orange trees, reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond . I stood up when I saw him approach, smoothing down the white muslin skirt of the summer dress Daniela had selected for me.

Back then, I was innocent enough that I still had fantasies of a better life. I had seen movies like Sleeping Beauty and The Swan Princess where the prince and princess were betrothed by their parents, but their love was genuine.

So when I heard that Rocco was coming to see me, I imagined he might be handsome and sweet, and maybe we would write letters to each other like pen pals .

When he approached me in the garden, I was pleased to see that he was tall and dark-haired, slim and pale with the look of an artist.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m Zoe.”

He gave me an appraising look, not answering at first. Then he said, “Why are you reading?”

I thought it a strange question. Not, “What are you reading? ” but “Why are you reading?”

He tilted his head, looking me up and down, unsmiling. “Are you trying to impress me?”

I shook my head, confused and wrong-footed.

“I always read on Saturdays when there’s no school.”

I didn’t tell him there was nothing else to do at my house—Cat and I weren’t permitted to watch TV or play video games.

He picked my novel up off the bench, examined the cover, and contemptuously tossed it down again, losing my place. I was annoyed but tried not to show it. After all, he was my guest, and I was already aware that our futures were meant to entwine.

“You’re pretty,” he said, dispassionately, looking me over again. “Too tall, though.”

If that meant he wouldn’t want to marry me, I was already starting to think that might be a good thing.

“You live in Hamburg?” I asked, trying to hide my growing dislike.

“Yes,” Rocco said, with a toss of his dark hair that might have been pride or disdain—I couldn’t yet tell. “Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

I noticed little black flecks in the blue of his eyes, like someone had spattered his irises with ink.

“What’s that noise?” Rocco demanded.

A parrot was screeching in the orange tree, swooping low over our heads, and then returning to its branch.

“It’s annoyed because it has a nest full of babies up there,” I said. “It wants us to leave.”

Rocco reached inside his jacket and took out a pellet gun. It was small, only the size of a pistol. I assumed it was a toy gun, and I thought it was childish of him to carry it around.

He pointed it up at the small green parrot, following its flight path in his sights. I thought he was play-acting, trying to impress me. Then he squeezed the trigger. I heard a sharp puff of air. The parrot went silent, cut off mid-cry, dropping like a stone into the flowerbed .

I cried out and ran over to it.

I picked the parrot up out of the earth, seeing the small dark hole in its breast.

“Why did you do that?” I shrieked.

I was thinking of its babies up in the nest. Now that the parrot wasn’t squawking anymore, I could hear their faint cheeps.

Rocco stood next to me, looking down at the moss-colored bird. It looked pathetic in my hands, its wings folded and dusty.

“The chicks will wait and wait,” he said. “Then eventually they’ll starve.”

His voice was flat and expressionless.

I looked in his face. I saw no guilt or pity there. Just blankness.

Except for the tiny upward curl of his lips.

Those little black specks on his irises reminded me of mold. Like there was something rancid in him, rotting him away from the inside.

“You’re horrid,” I said, dropping the bird and wiping my palms atavistically on the sides of my dress.

Then Rocco did smile, showing even white teeth.

“We’re just getting to know one an other.”

Rocco has not improved on further acquaintance. Every time I see him, I loathe him more.

Tonight I’ll be expected to dance with him, to hang on his arm, to gaze at him as if we’re in love. It’s all a performance for the guests.

He doesn’t love me any more than I do him.

The only thing he likes about me is how much I despise him. That he enjoys very much.

That’s the man for whom Daniela demands that I wax my pussy.

I stare at her with deep distrust, wondering what she knows that I don’t. Why does she think it’s important that I be perfectly smooth from the chin down? What does she expect to happen?

“I’m not doing it,” I tell her. “He’s not touching me tonight.”

Daniela tilts her head to the side, eyes narrowed.

She’s quite beautiful, I’d never deny that. She has the austere look of a saint in a painting. Like a saint, she worships a cruel and vengeful god: my father.

“You’d better learn to please him,” she says quietly. “It will be so much harder on you if you fight. The things a man can do to his wife when she’s trapped with him, all alone in a big house like this, with only his soldiers around. . . ”

She blinks slowly in a way that has always reminded me of a reptile.

“You should learn how to flatter him. How to assist him. How to serve him with your body . . .”

“I’d rather die,” I tell her flatly.

She laughs softly.

“Oh, you’ll wish you were dead . . .”

She nods to her team of estheticians. With something approaching force, they push me down on the chaise, pry my legs apart, and spread hot wax over the entirety of my pussy, all the way up to my anus. Then they rip the wax off in strips, until I’m bald as an egg absolutely everywhere.

Daniela watches the whole thing, then examines the final result. She checks my bare pussy for any sign of deformity that might derail her plans. Then she nods her approval.

“When I was presented to your father, I was stripped naked in front of a dozen of his soldiers. They evaluated me like a horse at auction. Be grateful it’s only Rocco you have to impress.”

She leaves me with the aestheticians so she can complete her own beautifying.

Daniela has already selected the clothing and jewelry I’ll be wearing.

The aestheticians carry out her orders, zipping me into a suffocating gown that hoists up my breasts and cinches my waist to a fraction of its usual size. The gown is long, gold, and sparkling, with the sort of sleeves that are not sleeves at all, but only fabric draped below the shoulders. My hair is piled up on my head with a gold band as a tiara.

It’s all undeniably beautiful, in impeccable taste.

I’m a glittering golden gift.

A black shroud would be more fitting. I feel like I’m going to my own funeral.

I’m like those maidens the Incas used to sacrifice to the gods: the Virgins of the Sun. All year they were fed delicacies—maize and llama meat. They were bathed and beautified with feathered headdresses and exotic shell necklaces. And then they were carried to the mountaintop tombs, to be sealed inside as an offering to a god that craved their death.

Catalina comes into my room, likewise dressed for the night ahead.

Cat perfectly suits her name. She’s small and lithe, and she moves as silently as a little black cat. She has a pretty heart-shaped face, large, dark eyes, and a dusting of freckles across her nose. She’s dressed in a pale lavender gown.

Even though we’re only a year apart, she looks much younger .

She’s always been timid.

I can see how nervous she is for the party, for everyone staring at us. Lucky for her most of the attention will be pointed in my direction. And she doesn’t have to worry about being roped into some hateful marriage contract, at least not yet. That was part of my agreement with my father: Cat doesn’t have to get married until she graduates college, and neither do I.

My father and stepmother are allowing me to attend Kingmakers for all four years, as long as I agree to marry Rocco directly after graduation.

It was a last, desperate ploy on my part to delay the inevitable.

They only agreed because Rocco is also at Kingmakers, as are plenty of his cousins and mine, always around to spy on me, to make sure I’m not drinking or dating or breaching any of the rules of the betrothal.

Kingmakers is no normal school.

It’s a private college for the children of mafia families from around the globe, located on Visine Dvorca, a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea.

You couldn’t imagine a more lonely or isolated place.

And yet, I almost enjoyed my Freshman year .

It was my first time living away from my father. The relief I felt, alone in my tiny dorm room, was like nothing I’d ever experienced. When I attended my classes I was free to study and learn, and even make friends without constant judgment, constant criticism.

Kingmakers is a castle fortress, a city unto itself. So vast and sprawling that I could easily avoid Rocco most of the time. Since he’s a year older than me, we don’t share classes together.

The relief I felt was painful. Because I knew it couldn’t last.

Tasting freedom might only hurt me more in the end.

I felt guilty leaving Cat here alone. I know it was a hard year for her. I can see it as she sits down on the edge of my bed. She has a flinching reaction to noise that has worsened since I was gone.

But she should experience the same freedom soon enough—she’s been accepted to Pintamonas and will be leaving in the fall, the same as me.

Cat is a talented artist. She loves drawing, painting, and graphic design. She’ll flourish at school.

The further away from our world she goes, the better off she’ll be. Maybe she’ll escape it entirely, someway, somehow .

“You look stunning,” she says to me, wide-eyed and impressed.

Cat is so innocent. I’ve always tried to protect her from the uglier things in our lives. Like how much I loathe Rocco.

She knows I’m not thrilled about being pushed into the marriage. But I’ve never told her how much he terrifies me. It would devastate her. There’s nothing she can do to help me.

“The Princes will be so impressed by you,” Cat says sincerely.

“You look lovely, too,” I tell her.

She smiles at me, pleased, twisting back and forth a little so I can admire her new dress. Then she says, “I made this for you.”

Gently, she lays a bracelet in my open palm. It’s delicate and intricate, a net of tiny golden beads strung on woven wires. I can’t imagine the hours of painstaking work to braid those fragile strands.

It makes me want to cry.

Knowing you’re loved, truly loved, by at least one person makes all the difference in the world.

I put my arm around my sister and hug her hard, closing my burning eyes.

“Thank you Cat,” I murmur.

“I’ll help you put it on, ” she says.

She circles it round my wrist, closing the tiny clasp. It fits perfectly.

Daniela will be furious if she sees that I’ve augmented her meticulously curated look, but I don’t give a fuck. I can’t express to Cat how much it means to me to wear something I actually like, one good omen within this awful night.

“We’d better go down,” I say to Cat.

Even though Cat and I are early, our father and stepmother are already waiting in the airy foyer. It shows how anxious they are to close this deal with the Prince family.

Daniela is wearing a sleek gown of deep bronze, her hair in an elegant bun. My father has on a black velvet jacket with a matching bronze pocket square. He’s a man of substantial height and breadth, though Daniela is still always careful to select heels that will put her at least an inch or two below him. He has a mane of grizzled gray hair that makes him look like an elderly lion, and a broad, aristocratic nose. His mouth is the only weak feature about him—his lips thin and fleshless, always pulling down at the corners.

They turn to examine Cat and me as we come down the stairs. I slip my left wrist into the folds of my skirt, so Daniela won’t notice the bracelet.

Daniela frowns, displeased with something in our appearance. Maybe it’s Cat’s flyaway curls that can never be tamed, despit e the best efforts of the professionals. Maybe she doesn’t think my waist looks small enough. It’s always something, and usually nothing we could actually fix.

My father nods his approval, so Daniela keeps silent.

“Be sure to curtsy to Rocco when you see him,” my father says.

I crush down the rebellious part of me that cringes at that instruction. I hate this formal parade of false affection. I hate that I’m expected to bow and simper all night long in front of all these hateful strangers.

I follow my father out of the house to the waiting limo.

We live in a traditional-style villa in Sitges, on the south coast of Barcelona. My father bought this place because of the unusually large plot of land and the clear view to the ocean. The grounds include a spa and sauna, a Turkish bath, several ponds stocked with exotic fish, a large outdoor dining area, and an orchard. Surrounded on all sides, of course, by hedges and stone walls.

He likes to think of himself as a gentleman, though we’re descended from fishmongers.

The Galician clans were all fishermen to begin with.

Then the Bay of Biscay ran barren, and they turned to tobacco smuggling instead. Smuggling was far more lucrative than fishing had ever been. The fleets multiplied and the fishermen grew r ich with empty nets, and cargo holds stuffed with tobacco, hashish, and cocaine.

The Galicians made contacts in Colombia and Morocco. Spain became the entry point for the vast majority of the high-quality cocaine smuggled into Europe.

They built distribution routes to Portugal, France, and Britain, made alliances with the Albanians and the Turkish mafia to bring in heroin, too. They bought politicians and won the love of the people by sponsoring festivals, schools, and football teams. Juventud Cambados became the highest-paid football players in the nation, despite being located in a tiny town, all thanks to narco money.

But what had been a local operation between the tight-knit Galician clans became an international enterprise. The clans began to feud. Long-seated resentments flared up all over again, this time with exponential force behind them.

Threats turned into kidnapping. Kidnapping into torture and murder. A cycle of bloody reprisals split the clans apart.

This is where my father finds himself now: caught between the powerful Alonso clan who have allied themselves with the Brits, and the Torres family who owns the People’s Party and the Galician Premier .

My father needs a partner, or he’ll be swallowed up by one of the other clans. Or worse, crushed under their boot. He’s clinging on to his empire by his fingernails.

That’s where the Prince family comes in.

The Princes own the most powerful distribution network in Germany. With our product and their network, we’ll all become wealthy beyond measure.

For the small price of my marriage to Rocco Prince.

I’m sure his parents know they’re raising a psychopath.

He bounced around boarding schools across Europe to hush up the rumors of his cruelty, his depravity, his senseless violence . . .

I doubt there’s a mafia family in Germany who would give him one of their daughters.

But a desperate Spaniard . . . yes, my father will gladly hand me over. As long as he gets the protection he needs.

As we seat ourselves in the backseat of the limo, my father pops a bottle of chilled champagne. He fills four flutes, his hand steady even with the unpredictable motion of the moving car as we head into the city.

“To securing our fortune,” he says, raising his glass.

Daniela watches as I drink mine down .

They used to ply the Inca virgins with alcohol and coca to keep them docile. To help them accept their gruesome fate.

“Have another glass, why don’t you,” Daniela says to me. “For your nerves.”

We drive down to Port Vell, to the Royal Shipyards. The old medieval dockyards have been renovated into grand venues for weddings and galas. The vast spaces that once held the bones of barquentines now host the elite of Spanish society in their tuxedos and gowns, their genteel laughter echoing high up in the rafters.

It’s almost midnight. In Barcelona we don’t even eat dinner until ten o’clock at night. This party won’t reach its peak until the early hours of the morning. I’m already exhausted just thinking about it.

My father takes my arm in a steel grip and steers me relentlessly toward the center of the room where I can see Dieter, Gisela, and Rocco Prince holding court amongst their many admirers.

The Princes look just as regal as their name. Dieter could be a Kaiser with his immaculately trimmed black mustache and his military-style tuxedo. Gisela is fair-haired and pale, significantly younger than her husband. Rocco stands between them, black hair combed straight back from his brow, face lean and pale and cleanly-shaven, cheeks so hollow that a dark shadow runs from his ear down to his jaw .

My father shoves me forward so I’m forced to sink into a low curtsy in front of Rocco. I can feel his eyes looking down the front of this ridiculous gown. He makes me hold that position a moment too long, before putting his cool, slim fingers under my chin and tilting up my face.

“Hello, my love,” he says in his soft, sensual voice.

His fingers feel as smooth and cold as a snake’s tail. I want to cringe away from his touch.

Instead, he lifts me to my feet, allowing his fingertips to trail over my collarbone and the tops of my breasts as he releases me.

I give a small bow to his mother and father. Dieter Prince takes my hand and lifts it to his lips in a brief, dry kiss. I much prefer his indifference to his son’s deliberate torment.

Gisela Prince briefly meets my eye then looks away. I’ve barely spoken to Rocco’s mother, but if she knows anything about her son, she must feel some measure of guilt over the fate in store for me. I would assume there’s a reason the Princes never had any other children. They might have worried that Rocco would strangle a baby in its sleep.

“Shall we dance?” Rocco says.

He doesn’t wait for my response. He takes my hand and pulls me onto the dance floor, which is already filled with whirling couple s. The light, lilting Spanish guitar contrasts the tense repulsion I feel whenever Rocco touches me.

The musicians are playing a gentle Arrolo, but as soon as Rocco has me on the floor, he snaps his fingers, ordering them to switch to tango instead.

“I don’t know how to tango,” I tell him, trying to pull away.

He yanks me against his body, hand cradling the back of my neck, fingers digging into the vulnerable flesh at the side of my throat.

“Don’t lie to me,” he hisses in my ear.

The dual bandoneons play their introductory riff, their fingers flying over the strings. Rocco shoves his thigh between mine, dipping me back across his other leg until it feels like my spine will snap. Then he whips me upright again, our bodies pressed together from breast to hip, his face only inches from mine. He forces me to look in his eyes. He forces me to see how much he enjoys this.

He strides forward, shoving me backward in four long steps. Rocco is slim but horribly strong—there’s nothing on his frame but muscle and sinew. Struggling against him is poi ntless, especially when every eye in the room is turned toward us and I can’t cause a scene.

Raising his arm over my head, he spins me like a top, then bends me back again, exposing my breasts to the crowd even more than they already were.

This is the real purpose of us dancing together—so Rocco can display his control over me. There’s no passion in his tango, no sensuality. His movements are rapid and technically precise, but without any feeling. Latin dancing is all about desire. The music is raw, insistent, all heat.

There’s no warmth in Rocco.

I don’t think he even feels lust.

He’s flaunting my body because he knows it embarrasses me. All his pleasure comes from my discomfort, my desire to defy him juxtaposed with my complete inability to do so.

I feel like a marionette on strings. I actually like dancing—the few times I’ve been able to enjoy it without anybody watching. Rocco is poisoning this, as he poisons everything. My face is flaming, acid in my throat. The song seems interminable. The crowd around us is a blur of color and dark, staring eyes.

Finally the music stops and the guests applaud politely. This party is such a fucking charade. No one here cares about Rocco or me, or our upcoming wedding. Everyone present is fully focused on the deals they plan to make tonight, the connections and the agreements.

Rocco hasn’t released me.

“That’s enough dancing,” I tell him. “I need a drink.”

“Of course, my love.”

He delights in pretending to be the doting fiancé. Using these terms of endearment, pretending that he has my interests at heart. When really everything he does is in pursuit of his own amusement.

That’s why he forces me to take his arm as we head toward the bar. He wants me close, and he wants me touching him at all times.

“Just water, please,” I say to the bartender. I already had enough to drink in the limo. I don’t want to be inebriated around Rocco.

“Two scotch,” Rocco cuts across me.

The bartender obeys him, not me. He pours the expensive liquor over single spheres of ice, then passes us the drinks.

“Bottoms up,” Rocco says, his blue eyes boring into mine.

I swallow the drink. The sooner I get through these niceties—dancing with him, drinking with him, speaking to him—the sooner we can part ways again .

When he sees I’ve downed the lot, he murmurs, “Let’s take a walk along the marina.”

“I . . . I don’t think we should leave the party.”

I don’t want to be alone with him.

“Nonsense,” Rocco says quietly. “It’s expected that the happy couple will want to slip away.”

I set my glass down on the bar, the ice sphere spinning like a lonely planet.

“I won’t be able to go far in these heels.”

With a thin smile, Rocco says, “Then take my arm.”

I have no choice but to comply, trying not to think ahead to a time when I’ll be required to touch much more than Rocco’s suit-clad bicep.

There should be plenty of people on the marina at this time of night. The docks are lined with restaurants, nightclubs, and shops. Still, I know he isn’t taking me out there for no reason. He always has a reason.

I glance around for Cat as we’re leaving, hoping to make eye contact with her so she’ll know where I’ve gone. She’s dancing with one of my father’s associates, a lecherous old fuck with a spotty bald head, who’s holding her much too close to him and whispering god knows what in her ear. Cat’s smile looks pasted on her face.

She doesn’t see me.

Rocco notices where I’m looking, and he smiles in a way that I don’ t like one bit.

He tucks my hand into the crook of his elbow once more and begins to parade me down the marina.

“You’re very close to your sister, aren’t you?” he says.

“No more than normal.”

The lie is instinctive and automatic. Rocco will use any leverage he can find to fuck with me. I don’t want him to know that the one thing in the world I truly care about is Cat.

But he already knows. He doesn’t ask a question without already knowing the answer. And he can always tell when I’m lying.

“Did she make that bracelet for you?” he asks, touching it with one long, slim forefinger.

I snatch back my wrist, irrationally outraged. I don’t want him tainting the bracelet.

“No,” I lie again.

It’s my only protection against him—to refuse to answer him truthfully, even in the smallest details. I try to build a wall around myself, shutting him off from anything genuine. It’s the only way to keep myself safe.

I hate lying. I’m an honest person. Deceit never tastes right in my mouth, no matter the reason for it. The way I’m forced to sneak and conceal, by Rocco and by my father and stepmother, sickens my soul .

Rocco likes making me lie.

This is what he wants: to break me down. To twist me and change me.

We’re passing a seafood restaurant, the open patio full of diners enjoying their wine and poached fish.

Swifter than I can blink, Rocco grabs my arm and jerks me into the narrow alleyway between two restaurants. He shoves me up against the wall, the reek of empty mussel shells and fishbones filling my nostrils.

He seizes my jaw in his hand, pinching hard on both cheeks. The pressure of my flesh against my molars is intensely painful. He forces me to open my mouth.

“You weren’t very friendly to me last year at school,” he hisses, his nose inches from mine. “I almost felt like you were avoiding me, Zoe.”

My bare back is shoved up against the filthy alley wall. My jaw is aching, and I feel absurdly vulnerable with my lips forced apart. I expect him to try to kiss me.

Instead, he spits in my mouth.

The cold saliva hits my tongue. I lash out instinctively, wrenching my face free and hitting him away from me while I wretch and gag. The unwanted scotch comes heaving up and I vomit on the cement, splashing my bare toes in their golden sandals.

My flailing arm knocks Rocco across the face. He scowls at me, either from the blow or from my extreme reaction to his spit on my tongue.

At least he doesn’t want to touch me anymore now that I’ve puked.

“I expect your attitude to improve come September,” Rocco says coldly. “If not, there will be consequences.”

He strides away from me, leaving me alone in the alley.

My legs are shaking so hard that I can barely make it back to the party.

As soon as I enter the room, Daniela appears at my side hissing, “Fix your makeup, you look like a whore.”

I stumble off toward the bathrooms. Sure enough, my eyes are watering from vomiting and my mascara is smeared as if I were giving an enthusiastic blowjob in that alley.

Daniela had no problem with that—it’s what she expected me to be doing. It’s the lack of care in my appearance that she can’t abide.

Rocco’s spit in my mouth was almost as bad as the alternative .

I wash my mouth out at the sink, rinsing over and over until I’ve recovered the ability to swallow without heaving.

I don’t like this new demand from Rocco, but I don’t see how he can enforce it. I agreed to marry him after graduation. I never said we’d be best friends at school.

He leaves me alone the rest of the night, and I think that’s all he has in store for me. I think I got off relatively easy.

The next morning my father and stepmother breakfast with Dieter and Gisela Prince, to see them off before they head back to Hamburg, and no doubt to discuss details of their new collaboration.

I’m not invited. My spirits begin to rise, knowing that I won’t see Rocco again until I board the ship to Kingmakers.

When we meet again, I’ll have friends around me—Anna Wilk and Chay Wagner, for instance, who shared the same dorm with me Freshman year. They’re formidable women, both proper Heirs who will actually inherit their families’ businesses instead of being given the title in name only and then immediately married off.

Anna will run the Polish mafia in Chicago—she’ll have a dozen Braterstwo under her command. Chay is the Heir of the Berlin chapter of the Night Wolves, a Russian motorcycle gang. With those two girls beside me, I’m not afraid to face even Rocco and his friends.

That is, until my father calls Cat and me down to his study.

I hate entering my father’s office. This is a place I’m never invited unless I’m in trouble. Cold sweat breaks out on my skin just stepping foot over the threshold.

Cat is even more frightened. Her teeth are rigidly clenched to keep them from chattering.

We enter his study, which is dark and oppressive, the walls lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves in ebony wood, most of their spaces filled with fossils instead of books. My father is immensely proud of his collection, which includes several dragonflies preserved in limestone, the pelvis of a wooly rhinoceros, and a full archaeopteryx.

I’m not looking at any of that because I see Rocco Prince standing next to my father. Rocco is dressed in a dark suit and tie, with a ruby pin in the lapel that glimmers like a droplet of blood, as if it fell from the corner of his mouth.

“Sit.” My father points to the chairs in front of his vast, gleaming desk.

Cat and I sit down, while my father remains seated in his own grand chair and Rocco stands next to him, like a king and his executioner .

“Your fiancé is worried about you,” my father says, glaring at me from under his grizzled eyebrows. “He says you were in low spirits last night.”

I chance a swift glance at Rocco, trying to guess his purpose.

He’s punishing me for slapping him last night. But what does he want, exactly?

I don’t know how to reply. Arguing will only get me in more trouble. So I offer a dull, expressionless, “I’m sorry.”

“Rocco says you were unhappy all last year at Kingmakers. He said you seemed lonely.”

My eyes dart back and forth between my father’s scowl and Rocco’s smooth, impassive face.

What is this game?

Is he trying to get me to promise to fawn over him at school?

Is he trying to get me to drop out? No. . .Rocco still has two more years at Kingmakers. He wants me there where he can keep an eye on me, I’m sure of it.

“School was new and different at first,” I say, cautiously. “But I think I adjusted eventu ally.”

“Your fiancé disagrees.”

I clench my hands hard in my lap, my mind racing. I don’t know Rocco’s angle, so I have no idea how to try to counteract it. My father’s clock ticks away on the wall, maddeningly loud.

My father clears his throat, looking between my sister and me. “After some discussion, I’ve thought of a way to make you more comfortable in your Sophomore year.”

I try to swallow but my mouth is too dry. “What?”

“Cat will be attending Kingmakers with you.”

Cat gives a terrified squeak in the seat next to mine.

Before I can stop myself, I cry, “You can’t!”

My father’s face darkens and his head lowers like a bull about to charge. “Excuse me?”

I see the flicker of a smile on Rocco’s lips. I’m playing right into his hands. By challenging my father, I’m only entrenching his decision.

I try to backtrack. “I only meant . . . what about Pintamonas? Cat’s already been accepted?—”

“She’ll go where I tell her to go,” my father growls.

“I’m perfectly happy at Kingmakers! I’ve adjusted already, Cat doesn’t need to?—”

“Art school is pointless,” my father interrupts. “Rocco has been telling me all he’s learning at Kingmakers, the variety of skills taught amongst the various divisions. Cat is timid. Cowardly, even. It would do her good to learn the real work of the mafiosi. If only so she can appreciate what her husband does, when the time comes.”

Cat gives me a desperate, pleading look, begging me to think of some way to get her out of this. I’ve told her how challenging Kingmakers is, how brutal it can be. For me it’s a welcome distraction. For Cat it will be hell on earth.

“Please, father,” I beg, “Cat is delicate. She could get injured?—”

My father could not possibly care less.

“It’s time for her to toughen up,” he says ruthlessly. “I’ve made my decision.”

Rocco made the decision, more like. Then he manipulated my father into thinking it was his idea.

I don’t want to look at Rocco, but I can’t help myself.

I turn my full, furious stare on him.

He smiles back at me, showing his sharp white teeth.

“Don’t worry, my love. I’ll take care of your sister. . .”