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Prologue
Nine years ago
Anton watched quietly as his father slit the nun from breastbone to navel with a blade.
Bright red blood oozed from her filthy, tanned skin, causing his bastard brother's birth whore to wail and Anton's stomach to churn.
She would not die from the wound, he acknowledged, as his brain worked hard to comprehend this unnecessary suffering his father was causing the mother of the bastard.
Of course, she would eventually die, the captured traitors always did, but it might take a week for infection to set in and take her life.
Still, to Anton, this seemed unnecessary.
She was suspended from the ceiling by her wrists, with her legs bound at the ankles and stretched apart, contorting her body in an obscene and painful looking X-shape.
There was no honor in this.
She was a woman of god, and while he and his brothers did not pray to a man in the sky, Anton did not feel comfortable watching the desecration of a religious servant.
It made him feel uneasy.
It made him feel less of a man.
Yegor and Vasily, his brothers, reveled in delight at the sight of her naked body, wanting more than anything to join their father in inflicting pain on the holy woman.
Anton frowned when his brothers chanted and encouraged their father and the older men to inflict more torture on the poor, defenseless creature at their mercy.
Of course, no one dared say a word against his brothers.
They were the princes of The Order and held a higher rank to all of the men in this room with the exception of their father – and him.
Anton was the eldest son, Fabio's firstborn, and a grown man now, which made him the heir.
Maybe not anymore, he pondered thoughtfully.
Something about this bastard was acutely important to their father.
Fabio had been searching for his bastard baby since he was five days old and the birth whore had stolen him away from right under his nose.
Anton remembered the fury that had overtaken his father when he discovered his baby son had been snatched away before his reckoning day – a sacred rite of passage from the code.
He also remembered the countless servants of god that had been tortured in this very room, thousands of them, from the four corners of the world, in Fabio's search to find her.
Finally, after thirteen years of relentless hunting, he found them both hidden away in a dilapidated church, in a remote village in Mexico, living in poverty and clothed in rags.
Anton would never admit it, not to a soul, but he was quite impressed with the nun's ability to evade captivity for as long as she had.
She had traipsed the bastard prince all over the world. Hiding him in churches and convents all over Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, and even her birth land of Mexico.
Foolish woman to return to Mexico,he thought to himself. She would have had a better chance back in Europe, where his father's contacts, while still in force, were not as prominent.
Fiercely protective of his birth whore, the bastard, who, at only thirteen years old had garnered quite a name for himself with the local gangs, had single-handedly knifed no less than six of Fabio's armed men in his attempt to protect his mother.
Six fully-grown, armed men!
Important men.
Men Anton had looked up to.
