Page 89 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

“The odd thing is that when you check into it, you can see that there are no military academies in Albania. Unless it’s an unlisted military school, which isn’t impossible, but it’s unusual. Why not list it?”

“Right.”

“So he’s gone from the picture all those years from the age of twelve to today when he’s thirty-seven. That’s twenty-five years he was a ghost. What kind of military school keeps you twenty-four years? Was he in jail? Farmed out to another family? There’s a good deal of speculation on message boards, and I stripped some of the chat for you that framed the leading theories. There’s also a rumor of another brother, which I’m currently following up on. At any rate, approximately one month ago, he burst back onto the scene and promptly took his dear old brother out for a boat ride. Though, one assumes the brother didn’t go voluntarily.”

“Okay,” I say.

Darren glances up and down the street. “The details are a bit extreme?—”

“I want them.”

“Fair enough. So, they’re on this boat ride where he kills his brother andgouges out his eyes.”

“Excuse me?”

“Gouged them right out, probably with his thumbs.”

My blood races. “Is this for sure?”

“Nobody out there is disputing it. Luka Zogaj kills his brother, gouging out the man’s eyes, and throws the body into the water. Seabirds had pretty well ripped into the corpse before it was recovered, but the medical examiner was able to determine that it was a human-caused injury. They could tell by the cleanliness of the damage—if seabirds had pecked out Alteo’s eyes after death, the damage would’ve been more ragged, with uneven tears and peck marks on the surrounding facial tissue.”

My blood races as I remember his words, how he told me he’d gouged out a man’s eyes once. He wasn’t making it up. It was just his own brother.

A chill goes over me. “Any word on... why he’d do such a thing?”

“What reason could there ever be to gouge out another man’s eyes? I’m gonna go with being a sadistic madman.”

He has a point—what reason could there be? But deep down, I think Luka must’ve had some reason... right?

“Here’s where it gets interesting,” he continues. “The eye-gouging was foretold by a two-decades-old prophecy that stated the youngest Zogaj boy would kill the king and gouge out his eyes and ascend to the throne. As king.”

“Foretold? Seriously?”

“According to an analysis by a longtime commentator on all things Albanian clan, the prophecy was originally understood to mean that young Luka would kill his father. Most people think it’s why he was sent away wherever he was—to protect his father fromhim. Fast-forward all these years, both parents are dead, and older brother Alteo is running the clan. Luka comes back from being missing and kills Alteo, gouging out his eyes and becoming king. So ultimately, the prophecy came true; only the unlucky winner was his brother.”

Darren goes on about prophecies, telling me how superstitious the older generation still is and that this has carried down to some of the younger ones. Apparently, there are still crones in the old country cranking out prophecies.

I’m still reeling. He did that to his ownbrother. Why? Luka is a lot of things—brutal and intense and violent—but he’s also smart and deliberate. I’ve seen it. And he’s not a sadistic madman, so I don’t think I have that wrong. Maybe I don’t know his favorite color or his birthday or anything surface-level like that, but I know his scars. I know his heart.

“There’s a bit of time left on your clock,” Darren says. “I want to follow up on one more detail I uncovered, but that’s all for now.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

LUKA

In the days leading up to the Dragusha-Razvan meet, a few rooms at the Milaga are rented by men who look like tourists. One wears head-to-toe athleisure with clean white shoes, and another has an “I Heart NY” cap, but their eyes give them away. A man knows his kind.

Scouts from Aleksio. Maybe Razvan, if he has scouts. Doubtful.

The afternoon of the meeting, Orton and I sit at the coffee bar on the far side of the lobby, shooting the shit with a barista, who will make any kind of coffee you can dream up—and who will look the other way when Orton puts in a splash of raki.

We’re doing more than keeping an eye on things; sitting out here is a way of being transparent. Aleksio Dragusha and Razvan Bektashi are coming to our house, after all, so it’s up to us to demonstrate a certain amount of visibility if not vulnerability.

Albanian clan manners.

Aleksio’s probably been here for a while, but we would never recognize him. After all those years on the run, the man knows a thing or two about lying low.

The meeting is to start at two in the lavish third-floor meeting suite—very private and plenty of ways to get in unseen—a favorite for smaller, under-the-radar events like this. We’ve named this one the New Horizons group, and anybody who goes to the desk to ask where the New Horizons group is meeting is given the key card.

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