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I can feel my skin getting hot, anger rising inside me.
“Moroz had her over the desk. I ripped him off of her, but he had already done what he intended.” Dom’s jaw is rigid, his hands clenched. “She was only sixteen.”
“She was ripe,” a deep voice says from the doorway.
Marko comes striding into the War Room, the same boisterous smile on his face as always, within the frame of his wild reddish beard. He’s been growing his hair ever since we were released from Stark. It now hangs below his shoulders, as uncombed as his beard.
He approaches us without shame or remorse. I don’t think he’s ever felt those particular emotions.
“This is true?” I ask Marko, already knowing it is. My brother doesn’t lie.
“Of course.” Marko shrugs. “The girl was pretty. And it’s a useful deterrent. Warlords have always known that the best way to subjugate a man is to fill his women with your seed. It’s why Genghis Khan has sixteen million descendants.”
Marko lets out his booming laugh, slapping his hands against his meaty thighs.
I’m not laughing or smiling.
Dominik glances quickly between Marko and me, probably wondering how Marko even knew we were meeting in here tonight.
I would expect nothing less from him.
“That is not my way,” I say to Marko. “It’s one thing to bend a man, another to break him. You sow nothing but the seeds of your own demise when you make bitter enemies for yourself. That is the kind of act that demands revenge.”
“I’d like to see Chaykovsky try,” Marko scoffs. “He’s no one and nothing.”
“You went there for the guns and the title,” I say. “That was punishment enough. We did not agree on more.”
“I don’t take orders from you, Ivan,” Marko says. His tone is casual, and his smile as friendly as ever. But I see the first hint of malice in his eyes—the glint of that demon, waking and beginning to stir.
“I’m not talking about orders,” I say. “I’m talking about a mutually agreed-upon plan.”
“Plans are a guideline.” Marko shrugs.
“Not to me they’re not.”
I see his jaw tighten beneath the red beard. He exhales through his nostrils, our eyes locked in place: mine dark, his an odd shade of green, like cloudy water in a stagnant pool.
Then he smiles again, breaking my gaze to stride around the room, pretending to examine the oil paintings on the walls and the heavy wooden mantle over the wide, cold fireplace where no wood burns in the grate.
Marko likes to take up space in a room. He likes to stand and walk so you never forget his stature, how easily he could destroy the furniture or overturn even this massive slab table.
“I don’t think your brother likes me,” Marko says, raising a gingery brow in Dom’s direction.
Dominik stiffens. “I never said that.”
“You don’t have to say it,” Marko hisses, the anger leaking out now. “It’s in those judgmental looks, in every time you avoid me, in every instance where you run to your brother to tattle!”
He’s roaring by the end, beefy fists clenched at his sides.
To his credit, Dom doesn’t flinch. He stares at Marko coolly as he says, “You’re right. I don’t like you. I don’t like your methods. And I don’t like your personality.”
“That’s irrelevant,” I cut between them. “The cogent point is the one Marko made first: there’s no one giving orders among us. And it’s time that there should be. This brotherhood grows too large—it requires a single leader. We no longer fit in the monastery.”
Marko has stopped pacing. He faces me, arms crossed over his chest “What are you saying?”
“Take the ten soldiers of your choice and your share of the money. Let us part while we are still friends, before anything comes between us,” I tell him.
Marko looks at Dominik, his face black with anger.
