CHAPTER THREE
**This chapter contains graphic scenes of hunting for sport. It may be skipped over as its contents are implied in other chapters.**
age eighteen
Throughout the world certain people practiced their religions in chapels, synagogues, and cathedrals. In my world, power was the religion, and there were five gods—my father, Kipton Donahue, along with Malcolm Huntington, Pierce Carmichael, Winston Radcliffe, and Grey Van Doren. Each of them was a key player in the Obsidian Brotherhood. These five families were bound to the Brotherhood by blood. They all worshiped on the altar of the almighty dollar, and instead of saving their souls, the power swallowed them whole.
The entire Brotherhood consisted of one-hundred men from around the globe—all bankers, tech engineers, real estate moguls, diplomats, and politicians. There was enough collective money and power in this one organization to run the world. The only way in was by formal invitation from a current member, followed by an initiation sealed in blood—either yours or someone else’s. Preferably someone else’s. The only way out was death. And no one within the Brotherhood talked about the Brotherhood.
To these men, authority was a privilege, not a right. Hundreds of years ago, the founding fathers—my great-grandfather included—established a secret society devoted to keeping power where power belonged. There was an order to things, a balance between dominance and subservience, and it was their job to maintain that balance, by any means necessary. These men didn’t dance with the devil. They bent over, dropped their pants, and let him defile them.
Everything,everything, was the result of a meticulously constructed plan set in motion long before our time. From secret meetings in hidden rooms to controlling the media, all the way down to a fucked-up ritualistic ceremony they liked to call Judgment Day in which the single men in the organization chose their wives—there was a doctrine that these men were willing to die for, tokillfor.
Since I was old enough to walk, I’d witnessed it all from a distance—the rise and fall of empires, of fame, of governments. I’d watched my father, the puppet master, pull strings in countries around the world, in languages I didn’t understand yet, all from the sleek black, Italian leather chair behind his Dalbergia wood desk. I memorized every facial expression, soaked in every word—not just his but those of everyone around me. The world was my classroom and experience my favorite teacher.
By the time I was eleven, I could smell a lie from a mile away and manipulate a conversation with a con man three times my age. At thirteen, I saw the world for what it was. By sixteen, I could charm the panties off a nun.
Today was my eighteenth birthday, a rite of passage, the threshold into manhood. All my friends got parties at The Boulevard, the most exclusive club in New York City’s posh neighborhood of Chelsea. Not me. I was the only son of the almighty Kipton Donahue. We didn’t do parties.
Everything my father did was an exertion of power, including birthday celebrations. You didn’t prove you were a man by lining up shots and doing keg stands.Manhoodwas a label that had to be earned. I’d already earned mine years ago, but out of tradition, here we were, thousands of miles from home, in the middle of the African savanna with two of Dad’s business associates hiding behind brush and studying our prey. Deer and rabbit were for amateurs. You weren’t shit ‘til you’d taken down an elephant or a wildebeest. Hunting the Big Five. This was what my father calledsport. Fine with me. I’d rather be here than at a party anyway.
It was mid-August, so most of the leaves had begun to fall, making the animals we hunted easier to spot from two-hundred-fifty feet away. The ground was dry and dingy brown, nothing but a dusty path beneath our feet. The grass was tall but dull and yellowed. The branches were brittle, leaving very little green to be seen on the treetops.
“Everyone wants to eat, but no one has the balls to hunt.”
I’d heard those words countless times when Dad would slam down the receiver after an intense business call or slip his tie from beneath his collar and toss it onto the kitchen counter after a long day at the office.
It meant everyone wanted something, but no one was willing to work for it. People wanted wealth, fame, and happiness but weren’t willing to make the sacrifices that came with it—sacrifices I knew all too well. Sacrifices I’d spent most of my life watching him make.
“The world is a jungle, Son. You’re either the lion or the antelope. You either run or you take.”
I was a taker, and today I was going to prove it. After all, that was why he brought me here—to hunt—to prove I’d earned my seat at the fucking table. I wasn’t just another pretty-faced fuckboy who needed to be spoon-fed from a silver platter. I was the one here to kill the beast and serve it for dinner.
We all watched quietly as a Cape buffalo chomped leaves from a bush less than fifty yards away. Dad’s friend, Pierce Carmichael, was the first to raise his rifle while grinning ear-to-ear. Dad pointed and whispered something as Pierce slowly aimed his gun. The beast must have heard us because it turned its head and stared right into Carmichael’s eyes. Jet black orbs that matched the animal’s skin narrowed in on us, daring any one of us to make a move. It all happened in slow motion. The buffalo shook its head as if in warning, its solid black horns moving from side to side as a puff of dusty air flared from its wide nostrils.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
It was like watching glass shatter just before red wine spilled all over the floor.
The buffalo charged. Its massive frame headed straight for us, but not one of us moved. No one took as much as a single step backward. Then a shot cracked through the air, quickly followed by another. Birds scattered from the tree branches. Dust filled the air.
And my father clapped Pierce Carmichael on the back and grinned at him as if he’d just secured the deal of a lifetime.
He’d never looked at me that way. Not once.
I clapped Carmichael’s other shoulder. “Five more seconds, and we’d be pulling your spleen up out of the dirt.” I winked. “Good thing you have steady hands.”
Dad shot me a glare, and I flashed him a smile.Fuck you, old man.He wanted to know if I had the balls to hunt? I was ready to whip my dick out and put them all to shame.
The professional hunter tagging along with us pulled his camera out of his backpack and took some obligatory shots of Pierce squatting next to his two-shot kill. Dad jumped in the pic for good measure.
Fuckers. Both of them.
I stopped giving a shit about Pierce Carmichael the day I walked in on one of their brotherhood meetings and heard him talking about putting price tags on women.