The Heir

4

Leo

“LEO!” A

The impact makes my skull throb. I don’t know what the fuck was in that brandy last night, but I’m experiencing a hell of a hangover. The bright Mediterranean sunshine streaming in through the window is about ten times more cheerful than I want to experience at the moment. I’d much rather plunge back into the lovely dark silence of a huge pile of blankets over my head.

“What are you doing?” I groan, shaking the hair out of my eyes.

“We’re supposed to be boarding in ten minutes! Didn’t you hear me banging on your door?”

“A

“GET UP!” she hollers, making my head ring like a bell. “WE’RE GONNA MISS THE BOAT!”

“Okay, Jesus,” I say, picking myself up off the floor.

A

“How come you’re not hungover?” I ask her.

“Because I didn’t drink as much as you,” she says.

“But I’m twice as big as you. I should be able to drink twice as much.”

“Good hypothesis—how’s the field test working out for you?”

“Not great,” I admit.

I fell asleep in my clothes. I pull my dirty t-shirt over my head, and then unbutton my jeans and drop them down. A

“You’ve seen me naked before,” I tease her. “And I’ve seen you . . .”

“Not in a long time,” A

We used to go ski

“How’d you get in here anyway?” I ask her. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t drunk enough to forget to bolt the door.

“I picked the lock,” she says. “It’s hardly Fort Knox.”

A

I’m heading to the shower when A

“Okay, okay,” I grumble, rifling through my duffle bag. I stare stupidly at the clothes, realizing that it’s almost all white dress shirts, gray or black trousers, charcoal sweater vests, and sage-green pullovers.

Fucking uniforms. I forgot about that.

Grabbing items at random, I put on a white button-up and a pair of gray slacks, both horribly wrinkled from being stuffed in my bag without proper folding. I rake my fingers through my hair, give my teeth a five-second brush, rub on some deodorant and a spritz of cologne, and in less than two minutes I’m ready to go.

“With time to spare,” I say to A

She rolls her eyes at me, marching toward the door, her green plaid skirt swishing behind her. She already has a run up the back of her stockings, and she’s wearing the same big, clunky vintage Docs that she’s owned since Junior high.

“You’re looking very kawaii,” I say, gri

A

“Don’t start with me,” she hisses.

“I’m just saying—“

“Don’t say anything. Not a fucking word.”

I’m guessing she’s sensitive because A

“My lips are sealed,” I promise, throwing my duffle bag over my shoulder and following her out of the room.

We have to run to make it down to the dock in the remaining seven minutes. Thank god we picked a hotel so close to the water.

Our boat is leaving from the very last berth. They’ve only just started loading, and the dock is still crowded with students from all over the globe.

I can guess where some of them are from: one boy has a traditional dragon tattoo extending down his arm from beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his dress shirt, the scaly, curling tip of the tail wrapping around the base of his thumb. His friend is probably Yakuza too, though not a very obedient one. He’s missing the tip of his right pinky, which means he’s had to commit yubitsume, the apology ritual where the offender has to amputate his own finger.

Next to those two, I see a girl with flaming red curls who wipes the sweat from her face, saying loudly, “Jaysis, it’s quare warm today, isn’t it?”

The dark-haired girl she’s speaking to stares back at her blankly. “What?” she says, in an accent I can’t quite place—it might be Galician.

“It’s fierce hot!” the Irish girl reiterates. “Anybody got a mineral?”

“I thought we were all supposed to speak English,” the dark-haired girl says, tartly.

“I bloody well am!” the Irish girl cries.

I glance over at A

“Why’s it so big?” I say out loud. There can’t be more than two hundred Freshmen, and the trip isn’t that long.

“The water around Dvorca is rough as hell,” a boy with close-cropped dark hair answers me. “If you tried to sail over in some fishing boat you’d get tossed around like corn in a popper. Some parts of the year you can’t come and go from the island at all.”

“How do you know?” another kid demands.

“I’ve had five siblings go through Kingmakers,” the boy replies, shrugging. “I’ve got a pretty good idea how it all works.”

“Where’re you from?” I ask him.

“Palermo,” he says. “I’m Matteo Ragusa.”

“Catholic?” I ask.

“You know it.” He grins.

“I’m half-Italian too.” I put out a hand to shake. “Leo Gallo.”

“Chicago, right?” he says.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Two of my brothers live in New York. There’s plenty of Italians at Kingmakers. More Russians, though.”

“I’m also half-Russian,” I tell him.

He laughs. “I won’t hold it against you. Can’t say the same for the rest of them.” He jerks his head toward our fellow students.

“What’s wrong with Russians?” A

“Everything,” Matteo says, laughing. “They’re blunt and rude. Mean as hell, though not as mean as the Albanians. Then you’ve got the Italians, you know we’re all hot-headed and a little bit lazy, then you’ve got the Irish—”

He breaks off, seeing A

“Just kidding around,” he says, raising his hands in defense. “You’ve got twenty different kinds of mafia families, with a hundred kinds of prejudices and grudges. And yet somehow we’re all supposed to get along for four years. Until we go out in the real world and get to battling again.”

“I’m not worried,” I say, mostly to a

A