“I’ll listen now.” Antonio leaned forward and reached for the carafe on the table, poured one cup of black coffee. Ivan knew it was for him when Antonio added three spoons of sugar, as he knew he took it.
Grumbling that it was a poor substitute for Scotch, he took the cup from Antonio, at once taking a gulp, letting its contents scorch his throat.
Antonio sat back, leveled his gaze on him dispassionately. “So are you going to talk, or are you again going to be the elusive son of a bitch who never told even me anything about your past?”
Ivan snorted. “As if you were any better. You found out everything about your family and kept it to yourself, hatched this moronic vengeance plot that is now costing you the love of your life. If you’d told me, I would have probably saved you from making that catastrophic mistake.”
“Yeah, sure. You would have saved me from myself.”
“As I recall, I did, on a few notable, potentially fatal, incidents.”
Antonio’s frown took on a defensive edge. “I didn’t want to share specifics until I felt I had something worthwhile to share. Besides, it’s different. I didn’t spend the last thirty years hiding the truth about my past from you. I didn’t know anything about it until recently. But you came to The Organization old enough to know everything about yours.”
“Touché.” Ivan’s grunt acknowledged the inequality of their positions. He’d always felt Antonio didn’t like that he kept him, of all people, in the dark. But he’d never pushed.
He was pushing now. And maybe it was just as well. Maybe he needed to purge the poison bottled up in his system. And who better to help him do it but his best friend and the world’s leading healer?
When he didn’t start talking at once, Antonio started to rise. “Seems you do need a shot of sodium pentothal to help loosen that calcified tongue of yours.”
Ivan barked a mirthless laugh at his friend’s threat and gestured for him to settle down. “I’ll talk without a truth serum. But when I do, you’ll end up doing what I demanded. So maybe you should just save yourself listening to the heap of crap that is my life story and just do as I say.”
Antonio sat back, waving nonchalantly. “What’s new? I’ve been taking your crap since I was eleven. Talk already. But whatever you say, there’s no guarantee it’ll change my mind.”
“Oh, it will.”
“No guarantee.”
“All right, fine. Here goes, then.” At Antonio’s encouraging nod, he felt he got a glimpse of his oldest and closest friend again. It made it easier to start. “I was born Konstantin Ivanovich in Russia before the collapse of the Soviet Union.” He paused as understanding flared in Antonio’s eyes. Every member of their brotherhood had explained why he’d adopted his current name, except Ivan. “Yes, that’s why I chose my name. Very predictable.” He inhaled, went on. “During the upheaval leading to the collapse, my father found himself in a dangerous position. He’d inherited his job as a bookkeeper in Russia’s organized crime and he needed out—out of the mob, and of the country. There was one great opportunity where he could take our family to the United States, and it all depended on me.
“I was only twelve, but I had long been recognized as a prodigy of computer programming. My abilities had meant a lot to my father’s bosses. But he said there was this international organization offering children of exceptional abilities a unique opportunity to grow their skills to unprecedented levels, in return for developing the next level of technologies. If I joined them, they would use their influence to send my family to the United States.
“Everything was concluded quickly, and I was proud and eager to go in return for a safe and free life for all of us. My parents assured me I’d join them once I finished my two-year stint with The Organization and they’d established new identities. I soon realized that would never come to pass.”
Like all the boys The Organization took, he’d realized after the first hellish weeks that he was a slave they had no intention of letting go, one they’d turn into a mercenary and lethal weapon.
At first he’d refused to be of any use to them no matter how much they tortured him, hoping they’d let him go. They’d only been too glad to escalate their abuse.
He exchanged a look with Antonio, filled with all the memories of their similar ordeals. “At one point I felt my mind and spirit breaking. I contemplated ending my life...and then you approached me.”
Antonio had been a year younger, had introduced himself as Bones, as they’d been forbidden to use anything but the code names The Organization had given them. Antonio had already been selected for medicine because of his aptitudes—he’d been there since he was four. His friend had imparted on him the wisdom of his years with The Organization, convincing him to play along, so he’d become valued and be given privileges.
Then Antonio had offered him a lifeline. He’d asked him to join the brotherhood he belonged to. It was a group of boys selected and led by Numair, The Organization’s top recruit, the older boy who’d been only known as Phantom then. Their secret brotherhood had become seven members when a year later their youngest member, Rafael, or Numbers, had joined them. The other three had been Raiden, or Lightning, Jakob, or Brainiac...and Cypher. None of them knew what he called himself now.
But when they’d been together, he’d taken their same vow: to become as skilled and knowledgeable as possible, so they’d one day escape, become powerful and wealthy enough to rule their own empires and bring down The Organization.
But meanwhile, they’d been The Organization’s slaves and mercenaries, hired out to the highest bidder to execute any level of atrocities that no one else could: assassinations, sabotages, even starting revolutions, coups and wars.
It had taken over fifteen years to enact their escape plan. After they’d disappeared to build new personas, they’d surfaced to take the business world by storm and built Black Castle Enterprises, each presiding over his own segment of the global empire. Ivan ruled the cyber development world in ways that made his rivals call him Ivan the Terrible.
After they’d become established, and had begun untraceably dismantling The Organization, most of his Black Castle brothers had made finding their families or heritage a priority. Since most had come to The Organization too young to remember much, tracing their roots had been a lifelong endeavor. Ivan, though, knew his family and his brothers and had been certain that with his cyber reach, it would be the easiest thing in the world to find them once again.
But to his brothers’ surprise he’d elected not to contact them. And he’d never told anyone, even Antonio, why.
He told him now. “I never told you this, but joining the brotherhood, and having your friendship, was what saved my sanity. Saved my life. You gave me a reason to live after my family’s desertion made me want to give up.”
A sharp breath expanded Antonio’s chest. “You think...?”
“I know. The people I would have gladly laid my life down for, traded my life for theirs.”
Antonio’s eyes filled with the empathy of the profound connection they’d shared from that first day. “That’s even worse than what my family did to me.”
Antonio’s aristocratic Italian family had thrown him away at birth, discarding their daughter’s illegitimate child from a nobody. The Organization had taken him from the orphanage he’d ended up in. It seemed he considered abandoning a newborn to an unknown fate a lesser crime than giving up a grown son to a definitely hellish one.
Ivan exhaled. “Not that I can’t excuse my parents. We could have all been killed, or worse, and I was their only bargaining chip. They were forced to make a choice between two evils. Sacrificing me was