Petre had inherited the worst traits of the Greengallow family, and being left here to run the business while I chose something else had only made him worse. He now thought of himself as some shit-hot gangster, untouchable in his own way and completely devoid of any morals.
My time away, with an uncle who had long since left the life we led, had taught me one thing: legitimate doesn’t have to mean less lucrative. I turned his businesses around, used my brain to find angles he hadn’t already, and came away with a tidy profit of my own. It had been a learning experience, and I was grateful for it, but nevertheless I wanted to be back here. There was no way I’d ever rejoin the family business, with its shady deals, back-alley beatings and occasional body disposal. But I did want to return home. This was where I was from, and like it or not it was where my heart longed to be. So, unbeknownst to any of my family members, I’d started sending men of my own back here long before I’d returned in person. On my behalf, they’d acquired business interests and contacts, and one trusted servant, who I had grown to consider a friend, had even installed himself as a footman in the household of a particularly slimy character, in order to relay to me any information that might be of use.
People are people, after all, and there’s always money to be made from those who are too rich to know what to do with it.
I watched my brother slide a stack of chips to the center of the table. He did it slowly, like he was savoring the sound.
Fuck, I hate him.
Normally, I loved to beat him in cards, but I’d always preferred to do it slowly. A grand here, a hundred and fifty there; death by a thousand cuts.
But tonight, it was time for something bigger. He’d upset Valeria and he was going to pay for it. It was time to bleed him dry.
I let him build up his confidence, losing hands on purpose. Setting up his wins. Whether the other bone-headed dumb shits at the table were doing the same, I couldn’t be sure. Probably.
They were his hired thugs after all, his posse of muscle, every one of them dumber than the next. He called them his friends, but it’s a shitty friend that needs a paycheck.
But even stupid animals love to see an asshole gutted like a fish. And judging by their glances at one another, they had a good idea of what I was up to and they weren’t about to stop me.
Petre stacked his chips up in front of him in irritatingly organized little towers. As he ran his finger over the ridges on the chips, his pinkie ring glittered in the firelight. Gold with a fat ruby in the center.
I hated that ring.
It had been my grandfather’s, from whom my brother had clearly inherited the asshole gene. My grandfather had gotten his throat cut in a back alley in Bucharest. We never knew who did it because literally everybody hated him enough to kill him.
Just like my goddamned brother.
While he was up, feeling cocky and invincible, I plied him for information about Valeria. I needed to know more; I needed to know everything.
“Where’d she go?”
My brother raised his eyes to me. For one instant, I could tell he was thinking where did who go?
What a dick.
“How the fuck do I know? Back home or back to her prissy little boarding school,” Petre said, adding more chips to the pile. “Saint…Whatever the hell it’s called.”
Saint Theodora’s, motherfucker.
I wondered how much Petre really knew about the place. About the fact they taught their girls to fence, to fight, to be strong. Was he even aware that our mother had attended the place? Did he even pay attention to the fact that she was one of the strongest women—one of the strongest fucking human beings—I’d ever met?
I doubted it.
It was named for Saint Theodora, who’d taken on her father’s oath to protect the local village against attackers who’d besieged their homes, despite the near certainty of defeat. Like her knight father before her, she’d given her life in defense of the weak and vulnerable, barricading everyone inside the church and then riding out to meet the oncoming tide. It’s said that she slew so many, they gave up and retreated, and she was canonized first by the villagers and then by the Pope in honor of her sacrifice.
Fitting.
The idea of Valeria—exquisite, goddess-like Valeria—married to my brother was enough to get my blood pumping with rage and jealousy. But I suppressed my anger for now.
I kept my cool. And waited.
Intentionally blowing my admittedly decent hand, I made a show of tossing my cards, like I was fed up with all my ‘bad luck’. My brother fucking loved it, and took my pile of chips over to his side of the table.