The Bully (Kingmakers) Read online

  The Bully

  Sophie Lark

  Contents

  Soundtrack

  1. Dean

  2. Cat

  Kingmakers

  3. Dean

  4. Cat

  5. Dean

  6. Cat

  7. Dean

  8. Cat

  The Proposition

  9. Dean

  10. Cat

  11. Dean

  12. The Spy

  13. Dean

  14. Cat

  The Christmas Dance

  15. Dean

  16. Cat

  17. Dean

  18. Cat

  19. Dean

  20. Cat

  21. Dean

  22. Cat

  23. Dean

  24. The Spy

  25. Cat

  26. Dean

  27. Cat

  28. Dean

  29. Cat

  30. Dean

  31. Cat

  32. Dean

  Epilogue

  The Spy

  The Attack

  Snow

  Kingmakers

  Brutal Birthright

  Thanks For Reading!

  Meet Sophie

  This one is for all you ladies who love self-destructive bad boys, sad boys, and epic redemption arcs! Especially for my beautiful Love Larks who saw the potential in Dean from the very beginning, even when he was at his worst.

  Also thank you to all you wonderful women who trusted me to take something they might not be excited about initially (academy, love triangles, younger protagonists, etc) and grow it into something unique and powerful. As long as you believe in me, I promise to never phone it in or let you down!!!

  Love you all so much - you really mean the world to me ❤️

  Xoxoxo

  –Sophie

  The Bully Official Soundtrack

  Spotify → geni.us/bully-spotify

  Apple Music → geni.us/bully-apple

  Killer - Valerie Broussard

  I'll Make You Love Me - Kat Leon

  Bound - Indiana

  Play with Fire - Sam Tinnesz

  Do It for Me - Rosenfeld

  Black Sheep - Metric

  Smells Like Sex - Sizzy Rocket

  Wrong - MAX

  Cravin' - Stileto

  Control - Halsey

  Monster - Red Velvet

  Bad Drugs - King Kavalier

  ... Baby One More Time - Tove Styrke

  Crimson and Clover - Joan Jett

  Come As You Are - Imaginary Future

  Arcade - Duncan Laurence

  Wicked Games - The Weeknd

  Hypnotic - Zella Day

  Heaven - Julia Michaels

  Snow (Hey Oh) - Red Hot Chili Peppers

  CHAMPION - Bishop Briggs

  Dean

  Moscow

  The Bratva high table meets tonight in a private room on the top floor of the Bolshoi Theater. This is a meeting my father cannot skip. He’ll have to leave our house on Noble Row for the first time in months.

  As accustomed as I’ve become to the chaos inside our mansion, I was still shocked when I came home from school in the spring. From the exterior, the sandstone facade looked as expensive and well-maintained as ever. But the moment I opened the front door, I was hit with a wave of fetid, rotting air.

  No clear path into the house remained. My father’s burgeoning collection of trash overflowed into the entryway: stacks of books, newspapers, magazines, boxes, bags, and packages piled to the ceiling in labyrinthine channels that forced me to weave my way down the hallway and up the stairs.

  Where the house used to smell of dust and mold, now I had to pull my shirt up over the lower half of my face to filter out the stench of something that had died beneath the mounds of garbage. Rats certainly, and perhaps even a pigeon or a cat.

  He banned the maids from the house years ago. I doubt you could offer them a king’s ransom to return.

  My father hadn’t met me at the airport—I had no expectation that he would. I scaled the stairs in anger and resentment at how far he had allowed our house to continue to decay. It’s like he wants it to collapse on top of him so he can suffocate in the rubble.

  I went straight to his office.

  That space, at least, he had always kept clean. And he had always maintained his personal appearance, even as the rest of our home fell to ruin.

  But I found him sitting behind his desk in a filthy robe, his hair down to his shoulders and his fingernails two inches long. He looked up at me, confused, with his one good eye bleary, the other milky and blind.

  “What are you doing back here?” he muttered.

  “School is done for the year. It’s summer holiday.”

  He stared at me like he had no idea of the year, let alone the month. Then, slowly, he seemed to understand.

  “They sent me your grades,” he said, nodding toward a heavy gray envelope with a handwritten report.

  “I finished second in my class,” I told him.

  “Who was first?”

  My jaw twitched.

  “Anna Wilk,” I said.

  “A girl?” My father sneered.

  “She’s heir to the Chicago Braterstwo. You know her father.”

  Then it was his turn to flinch. We never mention Chicago. And we certainly never mention the people who live there still—not even our closest living relatives.

  “Next year I expect you to place first,” he snapped.

  “I intend to.”

  Anna and I scored within a percent of each other on our final exams. We didn’t know who had triumphed until the results were posted in the commons.

  She congratulated me as if she hadn’t beaten me.

  It was the first time we’d spoken since . . . a very long time.

  I still felt a tightness in my chest at the sound of her voice. My skin burned where her long, silvery hair brushed my arm as she turned away. I crushed those sensations like insects beneath my heel.

  I learned my lesson from that infatuation. I will NEVER allow love to make me weak again.

  I feared that my father had been neglecting his work as much as his hygiene, but the stack of ledgers strewn across his desk seemed to indicate that he at least had not forgotten how to do his job. He’s the head bookkeeper for our territory in Moscow, with a team of accountants beneath him. Lucky for him, it’s one of the few jobs in the Bratva that can be done from home.

  He hates to be seen.

  My father was handsome once. Athletic, charming, beloved by women of all ages. He couldn’t smile in the direction of a female without her blushing red and slipping him her phone number.

  Of all the pretty girls in the world, none adored him more than his twin sister Yelena.

  Then she betrayed him.

  She married his mortal enemy, Sebastian Gallo.

  Sebastian tied my father to a chair on the top floor of his mansion. When my grandfather threw a Molotov cocktail through the window, Sebastian left my father to die, burning alive in the collapsing house.

  But he didn’t die. His lungs bubbled, his flesh peeled off, his hair burned away, and yet he survived. He was carried to the hospital where they stuffed him full of tubes and shoved an air hose down his throat. A pretty blonde nurse named Rose Copeland attended him.

  Dozens of surgeries followed: surgeries to cut away the charred flesh and scrub the ash and dirt out of what remained. Surgeries to slice healthy skin off the uninjured half of his body and graft it over the open wounds.

  They gave him drugs. Cocktails and pills and mainlines dripped directly into the vein. None of them could dull the agony of the exposed nerves. He screamed alone in the hospital because there was no one left to visit him. He refused to see his
treacherous twin, and his father was dead, murdered by Sebastian Gallo.

  His only solace was the blonde nurse who stayed long after her shifts ended to hold his hand—the good hand, the one that wasn’t burned.

  He suffered in that hospital for months.

  Then he returned home to his father’s empty house. The nurse came with him, to inject him with morphine at night and change the dressings on his healing wounds.

  She read to him. It was the only thing that could distract him from the pain. He had never been much of a scholar before. The nurse introduced him to Hemingway and Hawthorne, Tolstoy and Tolkien. She gave him dozens of the books that lined our shelves when I was young, when our house was bright and clean.

  Now you could never find those shelves through the stacks of books leaned up against every wall of this house. He has no discernment for literature anymore. He’ll buy any book and never even read it: thrillers and mysteries, romance and science fiction. Textbooks, biographies, memoirs. The desire to read has been subsumed in the desire to hoard.

  I don’t think he leaves the house at all, except to bring in the groceries delivered to the front step.

  But he has to visit the Bolshoi Theater tonight, and he’s demanded that I accompany him.

  For the second time today, I shower the scent of this filthy house off my skin. Then I dress carefully in my nicest suit. It’s a little too tight in the chest and shoulders. I put on muscle this year at school.

  The suit is black, as is my father’s. He looks like a priest with his simple cleric collar and his monochromatic shirt.

  I’m glad to see that he remembers how to dress, at least. He’s washed and combed his hair, on the side where it still grows. Shaved that half of his face, too. Trimmed his nails and scented his wrists with cologne.

  When I stand on his left, I see a man who looks keen, intelligent, austere.

  When he turns to the right, I see madness. Crackled, bubbled flesh. A withered arm and claw-like hand. And one blind, staring eye with no lid.

  “Are you ready?” The left side of his mouth says.

  I nod.

  I’ve called a car to take us to the theater. As my father descends our front steps, he pauses on the sidewalk, wincing in the glare of the street lamps. I don’t think he could have tolerated full sunlight. The unblemished side of his body is pale as talcum.

  He stoops to enter the car, leaning on his walking stick.

  I follow after him, taking a deep lungful of the town car’s leather interior, and the pleasant scent of scotch from the open bar. So much better than the musk of the house.

  I want to clean our house, but I think my father might kill me if I try. He goes into a rage if I touch anything, even the food in the fridge. Everything has to stay exactly where he put it. Only he can see the order in his jumbled system.

  I don’t have to tell the driver the address of the theater. Everyone knows the Bolshoi—it’s featured on the hundred-ruble note. The neoclassical pillars are as familiar to Russians as the Lincoln Memorial is to Americans from their penny.

  The Bolshoi is our Phoenix. Four times destroyed by fire and once by a bomb, we’ve rebuilt it every time. Its last renovation symbolizes something rather less inspiring—classic Russian graft. The billion-dollar taxpayer bill was sixteen times the estimated price, and the lead contractor was paid three times over for the same work.

  State construction projects are how the oligarchs funnel public money into their pockets. Politicians, businessmen, and Bratva are one and the same in Russia.

  Ballet tickets are sold in bulk to mafia dealers, who provide them to the public at double the face value. We have our hand in every pocket. No commerce can be done without the Bratva taking their cut.

  I’ve been to the Bolshoi many times before. I know the rehearsal rooms, the backstage, and the secret passageways just as well as the front lobby. My father and I easily make our way through the bustle of dancers in their ripped tights and battered shoes, the air redolent with the scent of hairspray, nylon, and sweat.

  “Adrian and Dmitry, it’s been too long,” Danyl Kuznetsov greets us, dapper in his navy suit, with his dark hair and beard freshly trimmed.

  Danyl is the one who helped secure my admission to Kingmakers. For that, I owe him two years’ service after I graduate.

  “I hear you’re doing very well at school,” Danyl says, clapping me on the back.

  “I enjoy the classes,” I say, which is mostly true.

  “Now you get a little break. Even God rested for a day.” He chuckles, then pulls me close against his side, nodding toward the pretty little ballerina scurrying by. “You want to fuck one of those? I can bring one upstairs for you. Or two if you like! They’ll do anything for a part in the next show. Or a handful of rubles. They make no money here, not until they become principles.”

  “No thank you,” I say stiffly.

  “What’s wrong, you don’t like to fuck?”

  “I don’t like dancers. Too skinny,” I say.

  I don’t want to fuck a ballerina. Just standing in this theater is reminding me of things I don’t want to remember.

  “Suit yourself.” Danyl shrugs.

  He doesn’t bother asking my father. All the Bratva know that Adrian Yenin won’t disrobe for anything. And they probably prefer it that way. Even the most hardened soldiers don’t enjoy looking at my father’s face.

  “Come have a drink, at least,” Danyl says, leading us up the back staircase to the private elevator, where we ascend to the topmost floor.

  The penthouse suite is as lush and gleaming as the rest of the theater, every inch of space covered in red velvet, gilded gold, and sparkling chandeliers. I recognize most of the men already gathered, including the three Moscow bosses.

  Moscow is divided into three territories, each with its own Pakhan. My father’s territory is run by Abram Balakin. Danyl is his lieutenant, and my father is third in line in terms of authority, though he could never be boss himself, not with his particular proclivities.

  Since neither Abram nor Danyl has any children, it’s possible that I could become Pakhan someday. That’s the reason I was accepted to the Heirs division at Kingmakers. But my position is not assured. I’ll have to prove myself at school, and then in the ranks of the Bratva after graduation.

  Abram greets me warmly. He’s always liked me, and my father too, because of all the money my father has saved the Bratva through his meticulous record-keeping and careful investment.

  “You look strong, Dmitry,” he says approvingly. “They feed you well at school.”

  Abram has been fed a little too well himself. His tailors must charge him twice the usual price for a suit, with the vast amount of fine Italian fabric required to cover that belly. His cheeks are floridly flushed from alcohol, and you could fit a weekend’s worth of luggage in the bags under his eyes.

  Success has defeated Abram when no enemy could do it. He’s become lazy and complacent, a shadow of the warrior who once slaughtered thirty rivals in a single night.

  He must secede his place sometime in the next five years or ten, before it’s taken from him forcibly. I’m sure he knows this. He’s transferring assets out of the country and promoting the men beneath him.

  I can almost taste Danyl’s ambition as he stands shoulder to shoulder with his boss. He wants to be Pakhan, badly.

  And who will be lieutenant then?

  “Abram,” Egor Antonov says. “I brought you one of those Don Arturo cigars you love so well. Smoke with me; my son is home for the summer.”

  Egor holds out the cigar to Abram, subtly shouldering aside my father so that he and his son stand in a better position. My father takes a step back, leaning on his walking stick. I clench my fists inside the pockets of my trousers.

  I know Vanya Antonov from Kingmakers. He’s an Enforcer in my year, friends with Bodashka Kushnir and Silas Gray. He’s tall and well-built, square-jawed, with a bold Roman nose and dark features. He has an arrogant tilt to his chin an
d a smile that’s more of a smirk.

  “Now there’s another well-built lad,” Abram says, slapping Vanya on the back. “I wish all my soldiers came from Kingmakers.”

  “Vanya is strong as an ox. And fights like a bear! He’s knocked a few heads together at school.”

  “Oh really?” I say coolly. “I didn’t see you fighting in the tournament last year, Vanya. You weren’t chosen, were you?”

  Vanya turns his head to look at me, cocking one well-groomed eyebrow. I bet he plucks them, the prissy bitch.

  “No, I wasn’t,” he chuckles. “Probably because it was your cousin doing the choosing.”

  “We all know how that goes,” Egor snorts.

  Nepotism is an art in Russia.

  “I was chosen off talent,” I remind Vanya. “Leo Gallo and I despise each other.”

  “So even your own family doesn’t like you,” Vanya replies, smirking all the more.

  The other men laugh, and I take a swift step forward, pulling my fists out of my pockets. The only thing preventing me from propelling one of those fists directly into the center of Vanya’s arrogant face is my father’s good hand pressed flat across my chest.

  “Control yourself,” he hisses.

  “I placed first in the tournament and second in marks,” I tell Vanya. “Whereas I’ve barely heard your name spoken at school. I almost forgot you attended until this moment.”

  Abram gives a little snort. Vanya hears it. Now it’s his turn to color, because he has no good response for his complete failure to distinguish himself at Kingmakers.