Emperor of Rage: Chapter 41

The air feels damp, the sky overcast as I make my way through the narrow streets of the East End of London.

Everything about this city reeks of history, of power passed down through bloodlines and alliances. So it’s the perfect place for someone like Adrian Cross to run his empire—a crime family steeped in old-world tradition that both respects its allies and crushes its rivals with the same quiet efficiency.

I stop in front of an unassuming old pub—the Ten Bells—which on most tourist maps is marked as the alleged location where Jack the Ripper found most of his victims.

Seriously.

What those maps don’t mention is that it’s also the seat of power for the Cross crime family—yes, even today, though it’s an empire worth billions at this point. But, although I’ve never met him personally, I gather that Adrian is a man of traditions.

Whatever. That’s not what I’m here for. I’m here for answers.

Adrian agreed to meet because of our mutual link: my uncle, Lars.

Back in the day, a group of them—it was more than just Uncle Lars and Adrian—called themselves the Kings and Villains. It was sort of a collegiate secret society, a bit like Yale’s “Skull and Bones” or Cornell’s “Quill and Dagger”.

Lord’s College of London has—had, at least—the Kings and Villains.

My uncle used to tell me about them—vaguely, at least. How they all met and somehow became friends, despite coming from different walks of life. Some came from “good” moneyed families with connections and that sort of shit. Others, like Adrian, came from the grimy criminal streets without much more than they could steal. But all of them were destined to take over their own piece of the world.

Right now, I’m standing outside the Rome of Adrian’s Empire.

A large man in a black suit nods as I approach the pub, like he already knows who I am. He pats me down, though I’m not stupid enough to be carrying anything walking into this place. Then he gestures at the door behind him.

“Go on through, Mr. Ulstäd.”

That’s a “yes” on knowing who I am.

Inside the ancient pub, a bartender looks up and subtly nods his chin toward the back.

“Mr. Cross is upstairs, mate.”

I nod, heading past him to the door at the rear of the pub. Down a back hall, I find a staircase, and up that, I head down another dark hallway painted all black, until I get to a black door with gold filagree on it.

I roll my neck.

I’m here because the enormous amount of information that Oren sent me—which is what Freya saw the other day before she broke in front of me, almost killing me—proved to be almost too much.

Scratch that. It was definitely too much.

Too full of dark history and shadowy half-truths. Rumors that seem like they could be fact, and “facts” too absurd to be anything but hearsay.

Oren is the best at his job. But that job isn’t to filter shit. He grabbed literally everything there was to grab—hidden or otherwise—on Kir, William, and my own family, and sent the whole steaming, towering pile of it my way.

Freya was the first victim when that pile crashed down. So that’s why I’m here: to sort through the rubble and uncover the truth.

It’s not even about me anymore. Or Kir, or William fucking Lindqvist. I don’t give a shit about any of that now.

I’m here for her. Because I know Freya. And I know the pain and hurt I saw in her eyes the other day, when her spirit that I love so much broke right in front of me.

I need the truth because without it, I’ll lose her forever. And that isn’t an option.

I rap my knuckles on the black door with the gold filagree.

“Come in,” a deep, English baritone rumbles.

I twist the knob and step into a sumptuous, dim, elegant office. A tall man with dark hair is standing by a fireplace, wearing an impeccable three-piece charcoal gray suit and holding a drink in his hand. He turns to let his stormy blue eyes lock with mine.

“Mal,” Adrian murmurs quietly, shaking his head. He walks toward me as I shut the door behind me, shaking my hand with a firmness I can appreciate. “I knew one of these days our paths would cross. Please, have a seat. Drink?”

I shake my head and skip the pleasantries. “I need to know about Kir Nikolayev, William Lindqvist, and my family.”

Adrian raises an eyebrow, his scotch halfway to his lips as he smirks. “Is that all?”

“Dealer’s choice on the order in which I get that information, but yes. I need to know how my uncle knew them both, and how they knew each other.”

“Straight to business, I see.” He chuckles to himself, shaking his head. “So very like your uncle.”

He nods to the deep forest green couch behind me. I take a seat on it as Adrian sits across from me in a kingly looking chair, leaning back and studying me for a moment before he speaks again.

“Lars was a good man, Mal. I respected him. He was one of my best friends.” He shakes his head, sighing. “What happened to your family was truly monstrous. I’m sorry.”

“He used to tell me stories about the Kings and Villains,” I growl. “I know it was a school social group, but was it also Mafia affiliated?”

Adrian smiles quietly, shaking his head. “No, m’lad. It really was just a ragtag collection of men from all walks of life and both sides of the coin. The linchpin was Thomas Ashford. Then there was me, Noel Ransom, Braddock McCreed, Kristoff Zima, Oliver Prince, Maddox Rook, and of course, your Uncle Lars.”

“Just a club,” I mutter skeptically.

I recognize most of the names he just spouted. Oliver Prince might have become more of a recluse in recent years, but the man was…probably still is…one of the wealthiest, most shrewd businessmen in the entire UK. So is Noel Ransom. Kristoff Zima rings a bell as the number two for the Tsavakov Bratva family. Braddock McCreed is a former MP, for fuck’s sake. And of course Adrian—head of one of the most powerful crime families in the world.

These are seriously heavy hitters. And they were drinking buddies together in fucking college?

Adrian shrugs. “Just a club, I promise you. Were we there for each other, of course, when we could be. But that’s it. No illuminati grand scheme of world domination.”

“Why call yourselves the Kings and Villains?”

“Because in each of us,” Adrian growls, “in all men, there is both king and villain. It’s up to the man to decide which he’ll be.”

“It’s not always up to the man,” I mutter through clenched teeth. “Sometimes the world chooses for you.”

“Then you choose again, for yourself,” Adrian fires back. “No one is stopping you. Your uncle would have agreed with me there. But you’re not really here to talk about my college drinking friends, are you?”

I take a measured breath and look at him carefully.

“How did my family run so afoul of William Lindqvist? My uncle did business with him, but only infrequently. When he did, though, it was fruitful to both.”

It’s one of the things I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. Lars and William weren’t friends or anything. But they did business together, and both profited from it. Until the day William’s men stormed onto our property and started shooting.

Adrian frowns as he glances away.

“Answer me,” I growl.

A small smile lifts his lips as he glances back at me. “You really are your uncle’s nephew.” He sighs. “It’s not that anything changed between William Lindqvist and Lars. It’s that things changed between William and Kir.”

Okay, this is making even less sense.

“What the hell would that have to do with my family?”

“Nothing,” Adrian grunts. “Yet everything. The problem was, after William discovered the affair, he also found out that Lars had been aware of it.”

“Affair?”

Adrian pauses, looking at me strangely. “I assumed you knew.”

Irritation rises up the back of my neck, tightening my molars as I level a look at him. “And why is that?”

“Well…because you were raised by your uncle…and of course your uncle knew, what with him being so close with Kir…”

I freeze, a ringing sound starting to whine in my ears.

“My uncle didn’t know Kir Nikolayev.”

Adrian shakes his head slowly. “I’m afraid you’re wrong there. They were friends. Close ones, in fact.”

“What?”

“They were introduced by Kristoff Zima, who was friendly with both of them. Kristoff, as I’m guessing you already know, given the expression on your face when I mentioned him before⁠—”

Yeah, there’s a reason Adrian is an underworld king. He doesn’t miss shit. I’ll give him that.

“—is Misha Tsavakov’s number two. Has been for years, even worked for Misha’s bastard father before that. That’s how he and Kir know each other, through the Bratva world. And he knew Lars through the Kings and Villains.”

I try and process that one: Kir and my uncle were fucking friends.

How the fuck did I never know that?

My brows furrow. “Go back to what you said before, about the affair.”

Adrian’s mouth tightens, and a pained look crosses his face as he looks into the fireplace next to us and brings his glass to his lips.

“We don’t pick whom we fall for. Life would be much simpler and human history far less bloody if that were the case.”

“Who had the affair,” I growl.

“Kir,” Adrian growls quietly. “And Petra Lindqvist.”

The whining sound in my ears grows louder.

“What?”

“I don’t know the specifics, but I do know Kir and William had some business together, and I assume that’s how Kir met the…ah…forbidden fruit. It didn’t last long, as far as I know, but there was a child,” Adrian says sadly, shaking his head. “Your uncle knew about it, but kept quiet.”

My eyes blaze, my voice low and dangerous. “And then William found out.”

The look on Adrian’s face says it all. My heart wrenches, my gut twisting. The urge to smash the room to pieces is almost overwhelming.

“Is that why he killed my entire fucking family?” I hiss darkly.

Adrian nods his head slowly. “I’m afraid so, son. William wanted to mete out punishment on Lars for keeping the affair from him when he knew. But he also wanted to hurt Kir, for obvious reasons. He had Kir’s sister, Polina, and her husband, Daniil, killed. Though he seems to have missed their son, Kir’s nephew, Damian.”

My teeth grind as Adrian looks into the fire again.

“But that wasn’t enough for William. He was angry that Kir didn’t have a family of his own—a wife, children—for him to mete his revenge out on. So William picked the next best thing.”

Oh God…

“Your family,” Adrian says quietly. “He killed them to hurt Kir.”

Everything goes numb and cold. My mind is wrenched back through time, to that horrible, shivering moment when I climbed out of the pool wet, cold, and alone to find my home in flames and my family lying in pools of their blood.

Adrian exhales sharply. “William wanted to hurt Kir—deeply. Killing Kir would have been too easy. Killing your uncle Lars, and your entire family? That was a much better revenge. William knew that Kir and Lars were close. He wanted Kir to live with your family’s blood on his hands.”

I can’t breathe for a moment. My entire body goes cold, and the room around me warps as it all sinks in. The massacre that took everything from me—my family, my childhood—wasn’t an act of greed or power. It was personal. A twisted act of vengeance against Kir.

The cards start to fall into place. The intel Oren dug up about the hit William had out on Kir, and how after my family’s death, that hit just—faded away.

It all makes terrible, monstrous sense now. William Lindqvist didn’t want Kir dead anymore after that. He wanted him to suffer, remembering the blood of my family. Remembering Lars’ body, hanged and burned. Remembering my mother and sister, raped, tortured, and murdered.

He destroyed my family to punish Kir.

I sit there in stunned silence, my mind swirling with rage and disbelief. All this time, I thought Kir might have been involved in the slaughter. But the truth is even worse. Indirectly, he was the reason behind it all. My family was murdered because of him.

I stand to leave, but Adrian’s voice stops me cold.

“You didn’t ask about the girl.”

I pause, turning to face him. “Girl?”

Adrian’s lips curl into a grim smile. “Petra’s daughter from the affair.”

My blood runs cold.

“Petra Lindqvist had the baby?” I whisper, dread clawing at my throat.

Adrian looks me dead in the eye, his words dropping like a bomb. “She did. And she raised her as if she were her and William’s daughter. Kir never even knew she existed—Petra’s choice, to keep the girl safe from her own husband.”

Everything goes still. The entire world around me turns quiet and cold as the reality plunges into me like a vicious blade.

This can’t be happening.

“You know I’m telling you the truth, lad,” Adrian says quietly. “And I think you already know who she is.”

It feels like I’m hurtling toward a black hole, being swallowed by nothingness and dropping into free-fall.

“They named her Freya.”

The weight of the revelation crashes down on me, threatening to crush me. I can barely breathe, my mind reeling, trying to process what this means.

Trying to process that Freya is Kir’s fucking daughter.

I don’t quite remember what I say to Adrian by way of goodbye, just stumbling out of his office, my hands shaking, my heart pounding so hard it feels like it’s going to explode from my chest. The street outside is loud, chaotic, but all I can hear is my heart pounding in my ears.

Freya. Kir. My family.

It all blurs together in a chaotic mix of blood, history, and loss.

Just then, my phone rings. I glance curiously at Annika’s name on the screen before I answer.

“Annika—”

“Is she with you?” she snaps coldly.

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t think I’m still not going to rip you in half for hurting her⁠—”

“Annika—”

“But right now,” she says coldly, “I need to know if she’s with you…wherever the fuck you’ve skulked off to.”

Something cold drags up my spine.

“Where’s Freya, Annika,” I growl quietly.

“That’s what I’m asking you!”

The cold sensation becomes a blade, the edge sliding over my skin.

“You really, really hurt her, Mal,” Annika spits through the phone. “And you and I are going to have words about it. Big ones. But right now, I need to know if she’s with you, because she’s not answering her phone. Neither is Hana.”

The tip of the cold knife sinks into my flesh.

“What the fuck do you mean they’re not answering their phones?”

“They went out to Kiyamachi Street. Then Hana texted saying they were going to meet up with some hacker friend of Frey’s I’ve literally never heard of. Now they’re not answering their phones, and neither is Kir, and I’m freaking out⁠—”

My phone vibrates with an incoming call. I glare at the screen when I see Jonas’ name flashing across it.

Yeah, no. That little Nazi shit is at the bottom of my “things to deal with right now” list. I have no idea why he’d be calling me outside of the anniversary of the day I killed Kasper, and I don’t fucking care.

“She’s not with me,” I growl. “I’m not even in Japan right now. And I—” I frown. “Did you say Kir isn’t answering his phone either?”

“No!”

My phone dings with a text. Annoyed, I yank it from my ear to glare at the screen.

Jonas

You’re going to want to take my next call, brother.

The whining sound in my ears from earlier ramps up to a howl. Without another word, I hang up on Annika as she’s yelling at me for being a bastard to Freya. The phone rings immediately, and sure enough, it’s Jonas again.

“If you’re looking to skip and dance down memory fucking lane,” I snarl, “believe me, Jonas, I am not fucking interested⁠—”

Then I hear it. Not a barbed reply. Not a witty, poisonous comeback.

Just screaming.

My whole world goes dark, my blood turning to ice in my veins.

It’s Freya.

The world starts to collapse around me. “Freya!” I roar into the phone, my voice splintering with rage and panic.

A low, quiet chuckle rattles through the line, cold and mocking.

“Maleqqi…”

The voice purrs my full name, the name I stopped even responding to when Kasper twisted it to his own ends.

“Jonas—” I seethe. “Jonas, I’m going to⁠—”

“I’m going to hurt her, Maleqqi. And you’re going to listen while I do it.”

The line goes dead.