Tomorrow I’ll mail the Magnum to my favorite dirty cop at the Chicago PD. Not because I like snitching—I don’t. It’s the principle of the thing.
I was willing to give Poe one last payday as long as he left Iggy alone after that. I’d always choose to make an ally over an enemy.
But Poe refused to make a deal. So he’s gotta pay the consequences.
Giving Sabrina one last glance to make sure she’s okay, I head back inside the factory. I send Beckett out to help Anders with clean up, and then I make it back up to the rooftop just in time to watch Iggy take his bow. As far as I can tell, the music was loud enough to drown out the gunfire. Or else people thought it was part of the backing track—it’s all the rage to use “found sounds” these days.
The rest of the night passes in blissful peace. Clips of Iggy’s performance go viral on every possible platform. When his album drops at midnight, “Deathless Life” gets a hundred thousand downloads in the first hour.
Victor Kane texts me a photo of Iggy’s contract with his signature scrawled in ink across the bottom.
Iggy and I celebrate by taking a bath in the champagne fountain.
“Thank you, man,” Iggy says, toasting me with a glass he’s too drunk to notice is already empty.
“You’re the talent,” I tell him. “I just had to shine a spotlight on you.”
Iggy sets his glass down, trying to focus his bleary stare on me.
“Why don’t you come with me, man? Come to L.A.?”
“I will,” I say. “But not yet. I’ve got two more years of school.”
“What do you need a degree for?” Iggy says. “You’re already a fuckin’ genius.”
“It’s not the degree,” I say. “It’s the connections.”
As close as Iggy and I have always been, I haven’t told him what Kingmakers is really like. I can’t tell anyone who isn’t a mafioso themselves.
The island is isolated and restrictive. Each student can only bring in a single suitcase. The list of forbidden items includes alcohol, drugs, and most electronics.
At Kingmakers I do exactly what I did in high school, but on a much grander scale: I’m a broker. I provide contraband, smuggled onto the island via a network of fishermen and locals.
I’ve been hustling since I was twelve years old, saving up every penny in pursuit of my ultimate goal.
I want to be an actual Kingmaker. The appointer of stars. Creator of music, fashion, and cinema.
I don’t want to be Justin Bieber—I want to be Scooter Braun.
I have no desire for celebrity. The real power is the man behind the curtain. The producer at the epicenter of global culture.
I want to find a hundred Iggys, and I want to drop a thousand albums. I want to produce the next Avengers franchise. And I want to control the billions of dollars of endorsements and ads attached to all of it.
There’s one crucial factor of this dream: I have to do it on my own.
I’m building my empire without a penny of my parents’ money.
I want to stand on top of the mountain without a single asterisk next to my name.
The American Dream is to be a self-made man.
And that’s why I started my bank account at zero, no trust fund, no cheats. Every dollar I earn goes into that account—every hustle, every deal. I’m at $9.8 million now, money earned by my own meticulous, ingenious, and even reckless labor.
The commission I earned off Iggy’s Virgin contract will put me almost at $10 million.
I think $12 million is the number I need to launch my empire in Los Angeles. I have it all planned out—the Malibu mansion I’ll rent, the office space I’ll lease on Wilshire Boulevard. The parties I’ll throw and the fish I’ll reel in one by one.
I can see it all perfectly in my mind.
Two more years at Kingmakers, and then I’ll join Iggy in La La Land.
The Uber drops me off at my parents’ house at 5:20 in the morning.
It looks more like an Apple store than a house—a transparent prism of glass propped up on stilts, so that half the floor overhangs the lake. Privacy be damned, no curtains or blinds block any of the windows. You can see right inside the rooms to my father’s sleek, modern furniture and my mother’s bold paint-spattered art on the walls.
I can see my mom sitting at the kitchen table drinking her morning coffee, wearing her favorite ratty old Cubs T, her hair twisted up in a bun with a pen stuck through to hold it in place.
She glances up as soon as I come in the house, her brilliant smile breaking over her face like she’s been awake for hours, and not twenty minutes at most.
“There’s fresh coffee in the pot,” she says. “Unless you’re planning to go to sleep in a minute.”
She’s poring over a bunch of documents that look like real estate transactions. Probably some new development with Uncle Nero. As soon as one’s finished, he’s onto the next.
“I’ll just have one of those,” I say, snitching an apple slice off her plate.
“Congratulations,” she says to me.
“For what?”
“Iggy’s song. I checked the charts as soon as I woke up.”
I can’t help smiling. I never told my mom anything about the drop party or the single coming out. She’s a sneaky fucker, just like me. Always gathering information.
“He’s going to L.A.,” I say.
“That’s great,” my mom replies, with real pleasure. “He’s a good kid, he deserves it. You should be proud of yourself, Miles.”
Satisfaction is the enemy of success. I’ll be proud of myself when I’ve got the whole damn world at my feet.
“You’re a good friend,” my mom says.
“I took a nice commission out of the deal,” I tell her, grabbing another apple slice.
“I know why you did it,” my mom replies. She’s looking at me in the way she always does, like I’m the best person in the world. Like she can’t help grinning just from the sight of me.
This is not deserved. I can be a selfish asshole. A real piece of shit. My mom doesn’t care—she’d always pick a volcano over a pleasant mountain stream. To her, the only sin is to be boring.
“Are you packed for school?” she asks.
“Just about.”
Meaning I’ve packed zero items into my suitcase, but I have considered doing it.
My mom snorts, not fooled for a second. “I bought a couple fresh uniforms for you.”
“What size pants?”
“Thirty-four long. You’re still growing.”
She stands up so she can ruffle my hair. She has to go on tiptoe to do it. I put my arms around her waist and hug her, lifting her off her feet. She laughs and tries to hug me back, but I’m squeezing her too hard.
“It’s a dark day when your kids could send you to your room if they really wanted to,” she says.
“Don’t worry,” I tease her. “I’m still scared of Dad.”
“Thank god,” she says.
I’m not actually scared of my dad. I might be if I only ever saw him on his own, with his electric stare and his way of barking orders that seems to snap men to attention like they’ve been hit with a whip. But then my mom sidles up to him, taking little jabs at him, making him laugh when you’re sure he’s never cracked a smile in his life. And you realize he’s got a soul after all, however hard he tries to hide it.