Crooks & Kings: A Wild Bunch Novel Read online

Or rather, she didn’t have an answer.

  Despite the filth and grime outside, however, their small two-bedroom flat was clean, a task Christophe helped her with. Between him and his siblings, junk could accumulate quickly, and if they all wanted to sleep comfortably without worry of mice and cockroaches crawling over them in their sleep, he had to make sure of it.

  But while Daniela cared more about keeping the bugs away, his papa, Frederik, was more concerned with who they needed to keep out.

  Frederik was a big man who always wore a frown of disapproval as he sat by the door, an old pistol resting on his bent knee. He was always careful with it, never leaving it within reach of Christophe or his siblings—especially Ana, who tended to pick up anything within reach—but he didn’t try to hide it.

  In their neighborhood, it was better to be safe than sorry.

  “You don’t know these men,” Frederik said with determined narrowed eyes, as though he could keep the bad men out with sheer will alone. “We don’t give them what they want, they’ll try to take it—once was enough.”

  Despite having lived there all his life, Christophe had only had a few run-ins with the gangs Frederik spoke of, but those few had been enough to incite Frederik’s rage.

  Daniela always told him to ignore it.

  “Christophe,” Daniela called, drawing his gaze from the snow outside to her as she stepped out of the kitchen with his baby sister in her arms. “I need you to run to the market for me.”

  As the oldest, he was always given errands to run, and usually, he didn’t mind, but as cold as it was in their little flat, it was colder outside.

  But he didn’t complain as he stood and accepted the leu—money—she gave him, along with the list of items he needed to pick up.

  “Hurry back,” she told him, ruffling his hair. “I’ll be making supper soon.”

  Nodding, Christophe hurried to the room he shared with his brothers and dressed quickly, tucking his feet into well-worn boots then shrugging on his coat and scarf.

  “I want to go with you,” Dumitru said as he looked up from the picture he was drawing, a broken crayon clutched in his small hand.

  “It’s too cold for you,” Christophe said with a shake of his head. “You can go next time.”

  Dumitru pouted but didn’t argue further as he watched Christophe walk back out.

  Cold air bit at his face the moment he was out the door, and by the time he was a kilometer down the road, his hands were numb, and his nose was chafed.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d traveled to the market alone, so the owner knew him, waving as he entered the store and grabbed one of the bent baskets that sat at the front of the store. It didn’t take him long at all to find everything he would need and take it up to the registers.

  Standing near the front windows, he could just see his building in the distance, fog shielding much of it.

  Until there was a bright flash of light, and the ground beneath his feet shook.

  A woman to his right gasped.

  A man cursed in shock.

  But Christophe hardly paid attention to either as he looked out the door and saw the plumes of black smoke curling into the air coming from his building.

  He didn’t finish his purchase. Instead, he left the basket where he stood as he fled, dread curling low in his stomach as he ran all the way home.

  Each step brought him closer, and each inhalation made his chest tighten as the smell of smoke grew thicker.

  It wasn’t until he was just down the road, a block away at most, when he saw more of the orange flames licking out the windows and the screams coming from within.

  In the span of seconds, he watched his world end.

  The truck came at dawn.

  It was hard not to notice it, considering most of the cars in Ferentari were junkers with the paint stripped off them and a hubcap or three missing. This truck, though … Christophe didn’t think he had ever seen paint so bright.

  And over the blanket of snow that covered the ground, the black paint gleamed brighter.

  But it wasn’t the sort of truck that inspired his curiosity. The very sight of it made him wary.

  He had seen others like it before, ones that hadn’t stayed for long periods of time, rather for a day at most, and the next day, a child was always gone. Even some of Christophe’s friends had disappeared after these trucks came into the city.

  This time, the truck was here for him.

  He was too numb to care.

  His mama and papa, his beloved sister and brothers, they had been consumed in the fire—taken from him within the blink of an eye.

  Grief whipped through him, but despite the agony he felt, he couldn’t find the tears to shed.

  Numb.

  He was numb.

  “Where is the boy?” the man in the gray peacoat asked, his voice carrying.

  Christophe sat in an old striped armchair that smelled questionable, but he didn’t complain, merely stared down at his hands as if they were the more interesting things in the world.

  Miss Kovek stepped out of the doorway, allowing the man farther into the apartment.

  Even still, Christophe didn’t look up.

  Mama would have thought it was rude.

  His papa would have told him he was too trusting not to check who had entered a room with him.

  But Christophe didn’t care anymore. Not really.

  It wasn’t until he felt a cold, bony hand squeezing his shoulder that he finally looked up into the eyes of a man whose smile was a little too cheerful, and who appeared a little too immaculate, unlike Christophe’s well-worn clothes.

  “Christophe?” the man said as if he didn’t already know his name. “I’m very sorry for what’s happened.”

  Everyone said this in varying forms since the fire—since he had lost everyone he loved. But he still said nothing.

  “Without any living relatives …”

  The man was still talking, and even when Christophe looked up, he could see the man’s mouth moving, but he didn’t hear a word he said.

  Not until the end.

  Not until he heard the name of the school.

  “The Moldoveneau School for Boys,” the man said again, as he noticed the way he perked up at the name.

  But it wasn’t out of excitement.

  His mama had talked at length about the state of the government-run orphanages, but this school, in particular, she had always gotten a faraway look on her face that made Christophe wonder what put it there.

  Wherever this school was, Christophe knew he did not want to go there.

  “Why can I not stay here?” Christophe asked, looking at the man first before turning his attention on the woman, Mariana, he had known since he could remember.

  She was a plump older woman with thick black hair and small brown eyes. Her son, David, was one of Christophe’s good friends.

  Mariana regarded him sadly, knowing her words weren’t what he would want to hear. “I wish we could, Christophe, but we’ve no money here.”

  He shook his head hard. “I won’t be trouble. I promise.”

  “There’s no need for promises, Christophe,” the man said, patting his knee. “I believe you’ll be well behaved at our school.”

  His heart was racing again, fear once again curling inside him. He wasn’t above begging, even as he felt foolish, rushing over to hug Mariana, tears forming even as he knew there was no hope.

  “Here are the papers,” the man said, passing her a thick envelope, one with the Romanian emblem along the top left corner. “We’ll be taking him now.”

  Whether she wanted to change her mind or not, she wasn’t given the chance before the man whistled for two men in the hallway—two men who were significantly bigger than he was. It took no effort at all for them to take him by his arms and drag him from that room, even as his screams echoed.

  Forced into the back of the truck, Christophe had no choice but to go along with them.

  He didn’t realize as
they drove away, the buildings, trees, and trash of his childhood slowly disappearing, that it wouldn’t just be him taken that day. He couldn’t count the number of boys who climbed into the back of the truck beside him, all crying and cowering as he had.

  He didn’t feel as bad then.

  Riding back there, Christophe wrapped his arms around himself tightly, his head hunched on his shoulders as he tried to fend the cold away by sheer will alone. The other boys around him didn’t fare much better, and he was sure the one on the end with the suspiciously blue-tinged skin wouldn’t make it to the school.

  Hours had to have passed before they turned down an uneven road, the night sky and canopy of tall trees concealing the path they took.

  By the time they were rolling to a stop, Christophe had cared more about getting inside the looming building to get warm than remaining outside and afraid at the strangeness of the place.

  A metal sign was affixed to the wall next to the front entrance with the name of the school and the year it was established brandished in copper.

  Very soon, the men who had brought them were driving away, and different men took their place.

  Men who looked like the things of nightmares.

  With batons in hand, they reminded him of the politie—police—in the capital, but these scared a little more than the others. He didn’t like the look in their eyes.

  Christophe and the others were all hoarded into a dark room that smelled of mildew and earth, and without saying a word, the guards left. He tried to see through the shrouding darkness to at least see who was in the room with him, but besides the small window at a very high point on the wall, not much light illuminated the space.

  His back to the wall, he slid down until he was sitting, the chill of the damp floor soaking through his thin pants. Being cold was becoming nothing new to him, but something about the barren room he was in made him feel like the cold was seeping into his bones.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to picture his mama in her colorful skirts, welcoming the memory as quickly as it came, but with it was images of burning flames and soot.

  His eyes opened again.

  “Where are we?” a boy to his right asked.

  He was a bit easier to see because of the blond hair that his father would have deemed too long for a boy to have. Only a few years younger than Christophe, he didn’t look as fearful as he should have been.

  Christophe shrugged, though the other boy couldn’t see it. “I don’t know. The school.”

  But where the school was, he wasn’t sure.

  “We’re in the forest,” another said, this one to the right of the blond. “Didn’t you see the trees?” There was a roundness to his flushed and chafed cheeks.

  Two others sat close to them, one who sniffled and cried openly, and the other … he barely moved at all, his gaze fixed on a spot on the wall across the room.

  “What do the trees matter?” the blond asked, blue eyes narrowing.

  The brown-haired boy’s frown deepened. “Follow the trees and look at the stars—they tell you your way home.”

  They went back and forth, neither able to provide an answer to the questions they all wanted to know—where were they, and when were they leaving?

  But silence swept the room as the three escorts returned wearing uniforms of dark pants, collared shirts, and work boots that seemed to shake the floor as they walked. Their expressions didn’t change as the boys quickly scuttled out of the way, bunching together to keep as much distance from them as possible.

  Christophe stayed where he sat, more secure with the wall at his back.

  “Pay attention,” one of the men said, his voice like thunder.

  Growing up in Ferentari, he knew plenty of men with softer voices who were far more terrifying, but that fear had grown after years of dealing with the men.

  Looking at him, Christophe didn’t doubt he would learn.

  They weren’t meant to focus on the three of them but rather the man who was entering the room in a sharp suit, a cane under the firm grip of his right hand.

  As he stopped in the middle of the room, watery gaze scanning over each of them in turn, Christophe thought he saw madness there.

  “Welcome, my boys,” he said with a wide smile, gesturing around them as if they were in a castle and not a musty basement. “You may address me as Professor, and I assure you, we will have the best of fun.”

  When Christophe caught sight of yellowed teeth, he didn’t believe that statement at all.

  “Hey, what about that promise you made me?”

  Christophe’s voice snapped her back to the present, so lost in his words, she hadn’t realized her cheeks were wet and her sight blurry.

  She didn’t think she would cry, no matter what he told her, but when he spoke of his family, he’d gotten a faraway look on his face, ghosts dancing in his eyes, and that was all it took.

  His voice had never wavered, but he’d grown restless, and if not for the way his fingers tapped out a cadence on the bed beside him, she might have thought he was reciting something he read instead of telling her a story about himself.

  And just knowing the way he was trying to detach himself only made her hurt for him worse.

  No one should have to see what he did that day, and even if there was no way to know for sure, just the idea of him having heard his family’s screams made her stomach twist into knots.

  “I’m not crying,” she said, her voice breaking at the end as she furiously wiped at her face.

  He brushed a tear from under her eye. “I haven’t even gotten to how I got the scars, mea dragă.”

  Before, she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to handle what he told her about the scars, but now, she knew that what he told her next would only get worse.

  Mariya had heard horror stories of orphanages, especially in Eastern Europe. Temuri had often spoken of them when he told her stories of his life back in Moscow. His best childhood friend had grown up in an orphanage, and his description of them had been horrifying.

  Seeing the scars on Christophe, she knew his stories would be worse.

  He didn’t like apologies, she knew, because whenever she offered one, he told her not to.

  She hadn’t caused the pain, he would say, so there was no need for her to apologize for it.

  Instead, she crawled over to him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and held tight, ignoring the way he went taut in her embrace.

  He might not have been willing to let her give him the words, but she could give him this—she could offer him comfort in the face of the cruelty he’d suffered.

  Mariya thought they would stay this way—her offering him comfort, him grudgingly accepting it—but then his arms circled her waist and drew her further into his lap.

  And if it were possible, he held her tighter than she did him.

  This was the moment, she was sure, he stole a piece of her heart.

  Chapter 9

  July 25, 2017

  He shouldn’t have opened his mouth.

  The moment he did, there was no stopping it. Often, he found whenever he talked about his time in Constanța, he never stopped at just the first day—the rest came out of him like word vomit.

  He told her of the beatings, of the guise of education since the place was technically a school, though his studies were punctuated by rounds of violence should he or any of the other boys get a question asked of them wrong.

  If nothing else came of it, Christophe hadn’t been ignorant of the world by the time Nix came that night and released them.

  But it didn’t matter in the end, really, given his profession. What had mattered was the beatings he had learned from.

  And the proper way to wield a whip.

  “The worst,” Christophe told her, some hours later once they were lying again with her head tucked under his chin, “was when he wanted us to discipline each other. We, my brothers and I, could handle it. There was a pact we’d made—unul pentru echipa. It means ‘one for
the team.’”

  Sometimes, they could volunteer to take the punishment for everyone.

  “If there’s a brave soul,” the professor had said with a wide smile, “willing to bear the brunt, please step forward.”

  Those were his favorite days, the professor. He relished in whoever would step to the front of the room where the infraction had taken place.

  Each of them would watch as whoever was the chosen one for the day would make the slow trek up, shaking all the way.

  Even as brave as he had been, used to the pain as it had become one never-ending loop, Christophe still trembled every time it was his turn.

  Invictus hadn’t.

  Some cried. Some begged and pleaded for parents who would never come. Others simply asked for mercy.

  Invictus, on the other hand, did none of that. As he made his way to the front, his lips moved soundlessly as he prayed.

  “I don’t understand why anyone would do this,” Mariya whispered, still clutching him as though afraid to let go. “You were only a child. All of you were.”

  “Tyrants don’t care whether you’re young or old—they only care which they can break.”

  “Did it ever stop?” she asked softly. “Did he do this to you the entire time you were there?”

  “Until the last year, yes.” Hope bloomed in her eyes, and he hated to crush it, but if she thought the professor had had a change of heart, he hadn’t. “Unul pentru echipa. One for the team, remember?”

  The color drained from her face. “You took on everyone’s punishment?”

  “I didn’t, no, but Sebastian did.”

  Sebastian—the only one of them not to make it out the day Nix seized it. He hadn’t been seen in days, and they had all assumed the professor had finally done what he said he would do.

  “Was he the oldest of all of you?” she asked.

  “A year older than me, actually. He was about to turn sixteen.” He could see the wonderment on her face. “You want to know why he would agree to this? He felt responsible.”

  Christophe never liked talking about Sebastian, not even with Aidra. Some days, Sebastian felt like his greatest failure, at least until Aidra.