Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 76915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Don’t make friends with the marks,” my father rapped out. Barlov flinched and I nearly did as well, but I knew better. Thankfully, my father did not notice the older man.
He was a comical figure, like a character in a story book, from what I could remember. Those had been taken away from us, replaced with histories, particularly chronicles of war. Barlov was good hearted and not bad looking, despite the potbelly, which belied his affection for sweets. His glasses made his enormous eyes look myopic. The man was clearly not of the same warrior class as my father and his men. As I was expected to be, and my brothers were expected to be.
My father had made it clear the failure to become the type of man would result in punishment, or worse, banishment, and eventually death.
“Here you go, young man,” he said quietly with a kind smile after my father stepped away to talk to his men. Uranov was grim looking, as usual, but perhaps more so.
Uranov was as terrifying as my father, if not more so. His reputation was known far and wide. I had seen grown men shake in his presence. One had even urinated on his shoes when those silver eyes rested on him, which made everyone laugh.
Uranov had killed him, of course. I think he did so simply because of the man’s terror. He had shrugged afterwards. Life meant nothing to him. I knew he would never harm myself or my brothers, unless directly commanded to, but he frightened me all the same.
He was younger than my father, though his exact age was impossible to guess. He had the smooth, unlined face of a young man, but his eyes were ancient. He had seem so much. Too much. He was my father’s right-hand man. They had much in common, beyond their ambition and intelligence.
Uranov seemed to enjoy inflicting pain. More than that. He exalted in it.
“Boys, we go. It is time for your lessons,” my father snapped out and turned on his heel. I knew what he meant. He did not mean the tutoring we received in the mornings. He meant lessons in cruelty, and violence. At least once a week we saw him discipline, or eliminate one of the many people who lived under his rule. And the threat of that potential was always there. Everyone knew it. His own children, most of all.
My treat fell to the ground. I looked over my shoulder at the hapless shopkeeper, who was watching us with an assessing eye. He was clearly intelligent. So why was he not quaking in his boots at the thought of displeasing my father? But clearly this man was not. I said a silent prayer that I would never have to watch my father eliminate Barlov or his pretty wife.
And then he did something unexpected.
He winked.
Chapter 1
Anton
Vodka. Bottles and bottles of it. I squinted, my vision blurring. The bottles were… tiny. Dancing and jittering all over the table in front of me.
For a split second I thought that perhaps it was an earthquake. And then I remembered where I was.
I was on a plane. Our private jet. One of our private jets. This one was actually not mine… the colors were slightly off. It took a moment before I recognized the silver and grays of Andrei’s plane. We must have run out of vodka because we were into the tiny bottles the staff kept on board for guests. My brothers and I always travelled with our own stock. A case or two, usually. Sometimes three, particularly when we travelled together.
Which meant I had drank quite a bit.
I felt momentarily proud of myself for that bit of crack detective work. But my brain was not yet working properly. In fact, my head was too busy pounding to do much actual thinking.
My brothers were nowhere in sight, so I assumed that they too had exceeded our usual levels of debauchery. As nothing seemed urgent in my immediate environment, I closed my eyes again. Everything went dark for quite a while. It was much later when I awoke, still feeling the effects of overindulgence.
Was this a memory or a dream? I wondered as I twisted in my sheets. Sheets meant bed, not the spacious cabin of Andrei’s jet. Was it my bed, or one of the juicy stewardesses I bedded from time to time? Or one of the willowy fashion models or dancers I dallied with on occasion?
I could never be bothered to remember their names, except for the most famous of my playthings. I rarely saw any of them more than a handful of times. As a result, they were in my phone as the location I had met them and a physical description.
Bed club Miami, blue eyes, for example. Sometimes I even used these names to their pretty, but altogether forgettable, faces. So far, no one had ever complained.