The Spy by Sophie Lark

3

Nix

Freshman students board the ship to Kingmakers from the port in Dubrovnik, the first week of September.

I hadn’t realized we were supposed to put on our uniforms already, so I come down to the dock dressed in my usual tank top, cargo pants, and combat boots. My father’s men outfit themselves from the same military warehouse that supplies the Spetsnaz, and I’ll admit, that’s where I do most of my shopping. It’s all top-quality tactical materials, in consistent sizes. I like to be comfortable.

I’m not looking forward to wearing the uniforms, and I sure as fuck have no intention of putting on one of those plaid skirts. I bought the boy’s trousers instead.

I’m not trying to be a boy. Not trying to “be the son my father never had” or whatever the fuck. I just want to be able to run around and sit any way I like without worrying about my underwear showing.

I’ll admit, I feel a little scrubby compared to all the other students who dressed up for the first day of school—fresh haircuts and shiny shoes and all the works.

I thought I was really doing something just washing my hair last night. But it’s a lot more humid here than in Kyiv, and my curls are forming rebellious twists that are halfway between a dreadlock and something Medusa would have growing all over her head.

Meanwhile, the rest of the students are sleek and polished, and a lot of them seem to know each other already. They’re forming excited little bunches, eagerly chatting about the upcoming school year.

I throw my duffle bag down in the pile of luggage waiting to be loaded on the ship. Then I square my shoulders, looking around for one of those groups to sidle up and join. After all, the whole point of coming here was to try to make friends.

I’ve been isolated, growing up on my father’s private compound with nobody around except his army of men. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great having thirty rowdy uncles at your beck and call, but it’s not the same as your own peers.

I’m feeling pretty confident, though. I’m smart and funny, and always down to try something new—what’s not to like?

So I stroll up to the first person I see: a tall Asian girl with retro-framed glasses and hot-pink lipstick. She’s got a group of friends around her and she looks cool.

“Hi!” I say. “I’m Nix. Where are you guys from?”

“I’m from Hong Kong,” the girl says, holding out a slim hand to shake. “Alyssa Chan.”

Before I can take her hand, her friend mutters something in her ear in rapid Cantonese.

Alyssa drops her hand and tucks it into the pocket of her skirt, as if she never meant to shake. At the same time, she takes an unconscious step back from me.

“Nix . . . what was it?” she says.

“Nix Moroz,” I say, trying to pretend I didn’t notice the cock-block from her friend.

Alyssa nods, her face smooth and impassive. “Nice to meet you,” she says, coolly. Then she turns back to her friends, in a silent but perfectly articulate rebuff to any further conversation.

Well, fuck.

Either I’m sweatier than I thought in the Croatian sunshine, or maybe these girls feel like they have enough friends already.

Trying not to feel self-conscious, I look around for somebody else who might be more welcoming.

Maybe it’s my imagination, but I feel like a couple of kids are whispering to each other now, casting looks back in my direction. A ripple runs through the crowd of students, a message passed from ear to ear while I stand here, alone and stupidly gaping.

When I take a step toward a group of Irish students, they immediately split apart and head in opposite directions, some boarding the ship and others feeling a pressing impulse to check on their luggage.

What the fuck is going on?

Well, it doesn’t matter—the ship’s crew are hollering for everybody to board. I join the stream of students ascending the gangplank to the deck.

The barquentine is beautiful, with crisp white, navy, and gold paint, and taut sails snapping in the breeze. I watch the sailors with interest, seeing how they work together to manipulate the ropes and rigging, which are too heavy for one man to handle, no matter his experience or brawn.

Once every last student is onboard, the sailors cast off. The ship begins to move, with aching slowness at first, and then surprising speed as the sails fill with wind and the ship turns into the optimum angle for tacking.

The students settle in across the deck—some playing cards or dice games, a few reading, and others turning their faces to the blazing sun to catch a tan.

Everybody seems to have at least one person to talk to.

Except one girl.

She’s sitting on the railing of the ship, heedless of the fact that one rough buck of the waves could chuck her backward into the water. Her dark hair streams over her shoulder in the wind. Every male within a twenty-foot radius is staring transfixed at the long expanse of tanned thighs bared beneath the short hem of her skirt.

She looks boldly back at them, daring them to approach. None has gathered up the balls to do it yet, probably because she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Her skin is deeply tanned, her figure outrageously sensual, her lips full and pouting, and her eyes an unusual shade of foggy gray. Her eyebrows are dark slashes, slightly tilted up at the outer edges, giving her a fierce expression, though she’s actually smiling slightly.

It’s no wonder that none of the girls have gone near her, either. I see a few casting her envious or wistful looks. I don’t believe that girls hate pretty girls—they’re drawn to them, more often. But this kind of beauty is terrifying and fundamentally unfair to most people’s eyes.

I’m fascinated by her. Maybe it’s because I do so much hunting with my father—I can’t help but view this girl as a rare specimen.

Besides, I never expected to be the prettiest girl around. I’m a little odd-looking, quite frankly. Almost as tall as my mother was, with this wild hair and skin that will never take the slightest bit of sunshine, always remaining as cadaverous as if I lived full-time in a cave. I’ve got a raspy voice, and I laugh too loud. I turn heads for the wrong reasons.

So I stride right up to this girl and I say, “Is everybody too scared to talk to you because you’re gorgeous, or are you a secret serial killer?”

The girl gives me a wicked grin, saying, “I’m not a secret anything.”

“Nix Moroz,” I say, holding out my hand.

She slides off the railing so she can shake. Once she lands on her feet and realizes she’s a good four inches shorter than me, she says, “Goddamnit! I hate looking up at people.”

But she gives my hand a good squeeze anyway. Hers is surprisingly strong, and I notice that her fingers are stained with something dark. Her perfume is tinged with a heady chemical scent—oil or gasoline. It makes my head spin.

“Sabrina Gallo,” she says.

“Where are you from?” I ask her.

Maybe it’s rude to ask everybody that question, but I’m wildly curious, with students coming to Kingmakers from every corner of the globe.

“Born and raised in Chicago,” she says. “You?”

“Kyiv.”

“Oh yeah,” she nods. “I was gonna guess Russian—the accent sounds the same.”

“To you.” I grin. “Not to us.”

“Fair enough.” Sabrina smiles back at me.

There’s an easy comfort between us already—the kind that springs up between people who are blunt. It’s so much easier to know where you stand with someone who says whatever pops into their head, rude or not.

“Are you excited to go to Kingmakers?” I ask her.

“Hell yeah,” she says. “I’ve been jealous as fuck of all the fun my cousins have been having.”

“I’m jealous you’ve got cousins,” I say. “I don’t know anybody here.”

“You will soon enough. There’s less than a hundred people in our year. By Christmas you’ll know them all, and by springtime you’ll be sick of them.”

“That sounds . . . pretty nice,” I laugh.

“I recognize a few people,” Sabrina says, her eyes sweeping the bunches of students all over the deck. “That’s Leah Weiss over there—she’s from Chicago. Her older brother Jacob’s in the Spy division. I think she said she was gonna be an Accountant. Fucking kill me—I’d rather scrub toilets than balance books. No offense, if you’re one.”

“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.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say coldly.

“He’s got a lot of nerve sending you here,” Estas sneers, his nose so close to mine that his spit hits my cheeks. He bumps me with his chest, pushing me backward. “Does he think the Rule of Recompense is gonna protect you? We can make your life a living hell without ever putting a finger on you . . .”

“Get the fuck out of my face,” I snarl back at him. “And don’t you say a word about my father or I’ll twist your head around like a fuckin’ dandelion!”

“I’ll say whatever I like about that lying, murderous piece of—”

I haul off and punch Estas right in the nose, hard as I can.

I do it without thought or any kind of plan. I know we’re not supposed to fight at Kingmakers, but technically we’re not at Kingmakers yet, and also, fuck this lying sack of shit trying to start something with me on the first day of school!

Disloyalty to family is the worst accusation you can make in the mafia world. This motherfucker’s gonna learn real quick the consequences of slandering my father.

His skinny friend tries to grab me and put me in a headlock, which turns into a tussle on the deck, me punching and kicking every piece of him I can reach, while the skinny guy hangs on like a spider monkey. Estas, snarling with blood all over his teeth, tries to jump on me too. To my surprise, the lovely Sabrina Gallo punches him in almost exactly the same place that I did, turning his bloody nose into a spurting fountain.

Caleb grabs her arms and hauls her back, shouting, “Dude! How am I the responsible one here?”

The rest of the fight is swiftly broken up by several burly deckhands who rip Estas and me apart, tie our hands in front of us, and dump us down on opposite ends of the deck.

Unfortunately, Sabrina gets the same treatment, deposited right next to me with Estas’ blood still on her knuckles.

“NO FIGHTING!” the first mate howls at us, pointing his thick finger right in our faces. “You fucking sit there and don’t move an inch, any of you!”

Estas and his skinny friend glower at us from the stern, but under the first mate’s glare, they keep their mouths shut.

Caleb, at least, isn’t in trouble because he only tried to hold Sabrina back. He watches us from several feet away, frowning and worried, held back by the prowling first mate. Cara Wilk gives us a sympathetic shrug.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Sabrina guiltily.

“Ah, it’s fine,” she says. “He started it.”

“I don’t even know him!” I cry. “I don’t know what the fuck his problem is.”

“Hm,” Sabrina says noncommittally.

“What?” I demand, turning to face her.

“Nothing.” She shrugs.

“No, it’s not nothing,” I say. “Everybody’s looking at me weird. You know something about it—go on and spit it out.”

Sabrina cocks one soot-black eyebrow, looking at me with her cool gray eyes.

“You didn’t seem too open to constructive criticism from our friend Estas over there,” she says.

My face goes hot. I swallow back the retort that immediately springs to mind. I’m in fight mode right now, and I don’t want to turn that on Sabrina. She was trying to help me.

“I want to know what’s going on,” I tell her.

Sabrina holds up her bound hands, in a silent, Well, if that’s what you really want . . .

“Your dad’s got a bad reputation,” she says.

I frown.

“Everybody has a bad reputation. We’re a bunch of criminals.”

“Even in a school full of bad guys . . . he’s known as a pretty bad guy,” Sabrina says.

I want to tell Sabrina to fuck off. That’s my father she’s talking about—the man who adored me and raised me and taught me everything I know. My dad’s brilliant and ambitious. Yes he has a temper, and yes we fight like hell sometimes, but I admire him wholeheartedly.

On the other hand . . . Sabrina’s not really the person saying this. The message is screamed at me in the cold disdain of every student I meet.

Sabrina Gallo’s the only person who doesn’t seem to hate my guts on sight. So it would be pretty stupid to bite her head off as the bearer of bad news.

“I’ve never heard that before,” I say stiffly. “Obviously I think he’s great.”

“Of course you do,” Sabrina says.

I sit there fuming for a minute, pissed that all these kids think they have the right to judge my family, when they’re from thieving, murdering stock, just the same as me.

“Why’d you help me, then?” I demand. “If you think Estas is right?”

“I didn’t say I thought he was right,” Sabrina says. “I don’t know your dad; I’ve never met him. You seem cool, and Estas seems like an asshole. And quite honestly, I didn’t put that much thought into it before I decked him. It just felt right in the moment.”

That’s about the same amount of forethought I was using.

Our eyes meet, and I can’t help snorting. Sabrina starts laughing, too.

It’s embarrassing as hell arriving in the port of Visine Dvorca tied up like prisoners. But it’s also kind of funny how badly I managed to fuck up the first day of school.

Caleb Griffin sees us laughing. He shakes his head at us like we’ve lost our damned minds. Cara Wilk watches us solemnly.

“She’s definitely gonna write a short story about this later,” I whisper to Sabrina.

Sabrina hides her face in the cave formed by her arms and her drawn-up knees, shoulders shaking with laughter.

“Thank god my parents won’t care if we get expelled before we’ve even started,” she says.

“My dad will throw a party,” I say. “He never wanted me to come in the first place.”

That thought wipes the smile off my face.

“What’s wrong?” Sabrina says. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yeah . . .” I say. “I just don’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was right.”

That’s not it, though.

What actually disturbs me is the realization that there’s more than one reason my father didn’t want me coming to Kingmakers.

* * *