Page 3 of Beloved
Scrambling and hysterical, I pushed him off, still wailing as I opened my eyes.
To stare into the vacant eyes of my assailant, half his head blown off.
CHAPTER 1
Kazimir
Three years later…
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
Oscar Wilde
In Russia, I was calledD’yavol. In Italy,Il Diavolo. And in America, where my reputation had recently grown, the devil.
Even the family’s name in Slavic meant the same. It was as if I was born to be a monster, a bloodthirsty creature with no regard to decency or humanity. If anyone believed the name troubled me, they were wasting both time and energy within their feeble minds.
To the caged animal inside, the moniker was a boost in reputation, adding to the fears and trepidations of all those who opposed our family’s power. And even with others who had the common sense to stay far out of our reach.
With no conscience, I couldn’t care less about impressions or feelings, and rarely did I feel or express a single emotion.
Except for today.
Today, my family and the people of Moscow had lost a great man, a powerful man. A man who’d spent his entire life serving the people. I smirked from the thought. At least that’s what the priest had said in part in his lengthy eulogy.
Now, standing in the ruthless, unforgiving man’s office on a wintery day, staring at the flakes of snow littering the ground, instead of embracing despair, all I could feel was rage. If the situation were different, his death caused by betrayal or violence, the pure white snow would already be blanketed in a wash of crimson.
But that wasn’t the case, his life-ending heart attack a product of a lifetime of excess, gluttonous behavior he’d been warned about for years. My father had never taken advice from anyone, especially not his doctors.
How appropriate that the day of my father being buried in the ground snow had fallen, April’s warm weather giving way to ice crystallizing the surface.
“Chashche vsego gromche vsekh govoryat mertvyye.”
The dead often speak the loudest.
My cousin Dimitri chuckled. His father, my uncle, had used the phrase as much as my father. We’d both been told the saying was an old Russian proverb, but as kids with more time on our hands than common sense, we’d tried to test it and failed. That didn’t take away from the vitality of the statement. Even with dying by natural causes, there were still stories to tell.
If my uncle were alive, he’d be painting the streets in gallons of blood to find the cigar dealer. That’s how close they’d been.
My cousin was studying the various photographs in sterling silver frames on the mantel. The two dozen pictures were a perfect representation of a family’s legacy. Baby pictures. Graduation pictures. When I’d become a soldier in my father’s army. Every celebration was commemorated with smiles and laughter.
Behind a cloak of evil and lies.
Dimitri shook his head while picking up one centered in the middle. I knew it well, a photograph that was difficult for me to look at, impossible for Mikhail, and just another jab in Stash’s side since he’d only recently joined the family. One big happy family.
At twenty-one, I’d finished college, graduating in two and a half years from Cambridge, had racked up several brutal and necessary slayings, and had enjoyed my share of virgin beauties.
Stash rarely drank, was a straight-A student and I’d yet to hear him swear, but he’d asked me directly before the funeral if he could become part of the regime. Why not have him jump into the fire?
“That was our first and last vacation as one big happy family,” Dimitri said with both sadness and guilt in his voice. “Do you remember when Pops tried to use the outdoor grill at the villa and caught the house on fire?”
I laughed, although the sound was terse. “Yeah, and our fathers had to play fireman. They argued for the remainder of the trip about whose fault it was.”
“Almost the entire trip,” my cousin said, gingerly returning the frame.
When the entire room remained quiet, he lifted his head, studying me. We both blamed ourselves for the events that had cut the vacation short and forever altered our family. That’s one reason Uncle Boris had split the family in two, moving his half to the United States, an expansion my father had wanted no part of.
Now, my cousin was Pakhan in New York while I was about to take the helm in Moscow.
