Tyrants

What This Book Covers

1. Chapter One - The Wound
2. Chapter Two - The Dream
3. Chapter Three - The Break
4. Chapter Four - The Rise
5. Chapter Five - The God Complex
6. Chapter Six - The Machine
7. Chapter Seven - The Children of the Machine
8. Chapter Eight - The Peak
9. Chapter Nine - The Fight
10. Chapter Ten - The Fall
11. Chapter Eleven - The Body Count
12. Chapter Twelve - The Echo
13. Chapter Thirteen - The Mirror

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE The Wound JOSEF WAS BORN Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili in a small Georgian town called Gori — not Russia. Not yet. Not even close. Georgia was a far-flung corner of the empire, a land of poets and priests, still soaked in blood from old rebellions. He was small. Sickly. One arm shorter than the other from a childhood accident. His father, Besarion, was a cobbler and a drunk. Violent. Unpredictable. He’d beat Josef’s mother. He’d beat Josef harder. Then vanish for days. Or weeks. Josef’s mother, Keke, wanted him to become a priest. That was her dream. She scrubbed floors to get him into seminary. It worked — he made it in. But he was already turning. He found books. He found...