PROLOGUE
‘HEY, SHISHKA.’
Daniil Zverev stiffened as he walked into the dormitory and heard what his friend Sev had just called him.
It would seem that shishka was now his new name.
Russian slang could hit just where it hurt, and tonight it did its job well.
Big gun.
Bigwig.
Big shot.
Daniil watched as Sev put down the book he had been reading.
‘We were just talking about how you’re going to go and live with the rich family in England, shishka.’
‘Don’t call me that again,’ Daniil warned, and picked up the book and held it over his head. He made to rip the pages out but, as Sev swallowed, Daniil tossed it back on the bed.
He wouldn’t have torn it—Sev only occasionally had a book to read—but Daniil hoped he would heed the warning.
‘Did you find any matches?’ Nikolai looked up from the wooden ship he was painstakingly building and Daniil went into his pocket and took out the handful that he had collected when he had done his sweeping duty.
‘Here.’
‘Thanks, shishka.’
Daniil would do it; he would smash Nikolai’s ship. His breathing was hard and angry as he stared down his friend.
The four boys were, in fact, far more than friends.
Yes, Daniil and Roman might be identical twins and Nikolai and Sev no relation, but all four had grown up together. With their dark hair and pale skin, they were the poorest stock amongst the poor. At the baby house they had stood in their cribs and called to each other at night.
Daniil and Roman had shared a crib.
Nikolai and Sevastyan had slept in their own on either side of the twins.
When they had graduated to beds they had been moved to the children’s orphanage and placed in the same dormitory. Now, in the adolescent wing, they shared a four-bedroomed room.
Most considered them wild boys, troubled boys, but they were no real trouble to each other.
They were all they had.
‘Touch my ship...’ Nikolai threatened.
‘Don’t call me shishka, then. Anyway, there is no need to—I’ve decided that I’m not going to live in England.’ Daniil looked over at Roman, his twin, who lay on his bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. ‘I’m going to say that I don’t want to go. They can’t make me.’
‘Why would you do that?’ Roman asked, and turned his head and fixed his brother with the cold grey stare that they shared.
‘Because I don’t need some rich family to help me. We’re going to make it ourselves, Roman.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘We are,’ Daniil insisted. ‘Sergio said...’
‘What would he know? He’s the maintenance man.’
‘He was once a boxer, though.’
‘So he says.’
‘The Zverev twins!’ Daniil was insistent. ‘He says that we’re going to make it...’
‘Go and be with the rich family,’ Roman said. ‘We’re not going to get rich and famous here. We’re never going to get out of this hole.’
‘But if we train hard we’ll do well.’ Daniil picked up the photo by Roman’s bed. Sergio had brought his camera in one day a couple of years ago and had taken a photo of the twins and, because the others had nagged, he had then taken one of all four boys.
It was the photo of the two of them, though, that Daniil now held up as he spoke to his brother. ‘You said that we would make it.’
‘Well, I lied,’ Roman said.
‘Hey...’ Sev had got back to reading but, even though he had just teased Daniil, he cared for him and could see where this was leading. ‘Leave him, Roman. Let him make up his own mind.’
‘No.’ Roman sat up angrily. Things had been building for months, since they’d first been told about a family who wanted to give a good home to a twelve-year-old. ‘He wants to blow off his one chance because he has this stupid dream that he can make it in the ring. Well, he can’t.’
‘We can,’ Daniil said.
‘I can,’ Roman corrected. ‘Or at least I could if I didn’t have you dragging me down.’ He took the picture of the two of them out of Daniil’s hand and tossed it across the floor. There was no glass in the frame, but something broke then. Daniil felt something fracture somewhere deep inside.
‘Come on,’ Roman said. ‘I’ll show you who can really fight.’
He got up out of the bed and there was a buzz around the dormitory as the twins eyed each other.