by Nicole Fox
He glances up at me. “You mentioned you wanted to talk to me.”
“Yes,” I say. “My car is in the shop.”
“I’ll drive you to the cemetery,” he offers, his shoulders slumping as he relaxes.
“Were you worried?” I ask.
“I considered the fact that you might be angry with me about bringing up the idea of moving on,” he says.
“You thought I’d punish you?”
“It seems to be your approach to many things lately.”
I scowl. “I might consider it then. Let’s go.”
Ravil is a cautious driver. He slows down at every intersection, drives at the speed limit, and keeps the radio off. It drives me insane, but he cannot be made to do anything different. I have tried.
I flip over the third page of the contract. The electricians for the 19th Street Hotel might think they can dig deeper into my pocket, but I’ll destroy that idea long before they can take another penny from me.
“We found the Balducci girl,” Ravil says. “She’s there.”
“Good.” I close the folder. My plan is coming together. In due time, Gianluigi will regret every second he ever even thought of my name.
“But, respectively, I believe our best approach is a cautious one,” Ravil says. “Your methods … some of the Bratva don’t agree with them. They think you choose the scorched earth option too often. They think we should be more diplomatic and use threats as a first resort rather than outright brutality.”
I throw the folder into the back seat. “And what do you think?”
“I know you,” he says, picking his words carefully. “We grew up together. You’re my brother in every way except blood and we wouldn’t be where we are without you. I’ll follow you into the deepest bowels of hell. But this involves a lot of moving pieces, a lot of assumptions, and innocent people. I don’t think it’s the prudent choice.”
“None of the Balduccis are innocent,” I say. “And we’re talking about brutality. I didn’t ask about your opinion on the Gianluigi situation.”
Ravil pulls the car into the cemetery’s parking lot. He parks under a willow tree. In front of us, the headstones are scattered over a small hill like feathers cast off from a bird. He unbuckles his seat belt slowly, keeping his gaze forward.
“It seems to me,” he says. “That you’re quick to pull the trigger when a threat would work. We’re powerful enough that, as long as people know we consider their actions to be disrespectful, they’ll back off. I don’t consider violence to be the best response to everything.”
He grabs the door handle.
“No,” I say, undoing my seat belt and snatching the flowers from the back seat. “I consider your actions to be disrespectful. You can stay here.”
I open my door, stepping out, before turning back around.
“You’re right about one thing, though,” I say, turning to him. “We wouldn’t be where we are without me. We wouldn’t be this powerful. Brutality is the reason people will bend to our will. Don’t question my authority on this again.”
A grim pain flickers across his face followed by a quiet acceptance. “Of course, Maksim.”
I leave him, and all of the heavy history between us.
I built this Bratva from nothing. Many men have tried to take it from me. They have resorted to poison, hidden blades, and black-clothed assassins wielding silencers in the night. Not one has gotten to me yet.
But they have gotten close. So very, very close.
And when they did, they took something precious from me.
The headstone cost nearly ten thousand dollars. The sculptor made the granite angel with the soft angles of my dead wife’s face. The flowers engraved into the face of the headstone are chamomile—the national flower of Russia.
I spared no expense, because I wanted all who come here to see her headstone and know that what was taken from me was more than a wife—she was a monument to my success. She was the jewel in my crown.
“Hey, Nat,” I say, kneeling down at the gravesite. I trace her name with a fingertip. Natalie Akimov. I let my hand trail back down to her last day—November 10, 2018.
When I heard about her murder, I was standing in front of my hotel. I’d just welcomed a famous basketball player to the master suite. I stepped out, nearly reaching my car before I noticed Ravil, standing slightly to the right of the car’s trunk. He was wearing a gray suit and was staring straight through me. His face was ashen and his body trembling with a weakness I’d never seen in him before.
Everything that happened afterwards felt like a nightmare.
He stepped up to me. His hand rested on my arm. The words came out slow and lethargic. For all his stalling and his euphemisms, the meaning was the same: My wife was dead.
When I finally managed to get my mind around that—not that a man ever really can—I accepted that truth. I asked him how it happened. He was hesitant. It came out even slower than his condolences, another form of Chinese water torture. It was a car bomb. They couldn’t confirm it was the Balduccis, but the Balducci predilection for that method was well-known. He didn’t mention that it was my car. He didn’t mention that I was likely the real target. He didn’t need to say that I was the reason Natalie was torn to pieces.
The Balduccis saw something that I prized above all else, and they turned her into a crime scene. Gianluigi took what was mine.
And when I finish what I have started, he’s going to know exactly what that feels like, tenfold.
I prop the roses I brought against the arm of the granite angel. One of the petals falls off, fluttering down to rest in the angel’s palm.
As I walk away from the headstone, I keep my gaze steady and try to breathe. As soon as I get back into the car, Ravil will keep talking about shit I no longer care about, as if talking ever helped anybody. I don’t need more talk. I just need some goddamn silence.
I see his silhouette in the car. He turns, sees me coming, reaches to twist the key in the ignition.
And the moment he does, the car explodes.
A shock wave slams into me, knocking me off my feet, as a sound tears into my ears. Dirt erupts around me in ten-foot plumes. I lift my head, temples throbbing with what must be a concussion, to see hellfire rising up around the car. It’s a charred mess. The front half of the vehicle is completely gone.
Ravil.
I run to the car, straight to the driver’s side. Most of the door is disintegrated. I reach inside, the flames licking at my skin, but the heat is too intense. I jerk back, the flesh on my arms singed. When I look again, I see that there is little left of him.
My friend is dead.
I push the thought back and remain standing beside the car, the heat stinging my skin. I should walk away, call someone to pick me up before I’m spotted, but I wasn’t around when Natalie was killed. I need to bear witness to Ravil’s death.
I correct myself: his murder.
The Balduccis. They were not satisfied with what they had already taken. They came for more, and they got what they were after.
Retaliation can’t wait another moment. Nothing else is as important as this. If they want to take everything from me, I’m going to take even more from them.
I stare into the flames until all I see is red.
4
Cassandra
I have forty-eight hours to propose a topic to Harden.
The last two weeks have passed by as quickly as gossip in this office. I sit down at my cubicle, sipping from my coffee. I have a hundred or more tabs open on my browser. There have been three murders of women with blonde hair within the age range of eighteen to thirty-one, so I got my hopes up for a juicy serial killer lead, but it looks like at least one of the murders was perpetrated by a stalker and another one by a jealous boyfriend.
Prices have been rising astronomically for a rare antiviral medication patented by a pharmaceutical company called SM & OV Drug Inc, but everyone and their freaking mother has written about questionable pharmac
eutical companies at this point in world history.
I found murmured complaints against a relatively popular pop singer who allegedly pirated material from local artists, but that’s not even in the same zip code as the Mafia in terms of public interest.
There’s a city politician who’s allegedly taking bribes to shepherd risky buildings through the inspection vetting process, but one of the other journalists is already on that story.
So, in short, I’ve got nothing.
I slowly move my mouse upward, and, with a rising tide of guilt sweeping through my stomach, switch over to my word processor.
The pages are filled with exactly what Tom wants me to give him. The dirt on the Balducci criminal empire, told from the inside.
The first time I learned that my family was notorious, I was eight years old. Another kid in my elementary school, whose father was a police officer, started calling me Killer Cassie. He’d jump out of my way in the hallway and mock-shriek like I’d just tried to shank him. After a couple of months, I gave him what he was really after—a one-two punch in the balls.
Needless to say, it didn’t do much to quash rumors.
I remember coming home with my father after we left the principal’s office. I expected righteous fury and a long-winded story involving some Greek gods or something like that.
What I got instead was the truth.
You need to keep your head down, Cass, he told me. You can’t draw unnecessary attention to our family.
So much for the father who told me that only warriors prosper, only the strong survive. In his place was a man ordering me to live in the shadows.
Actually, a lot of what my father taught me was bullshit. But to his credit, he didn’t lie to me about our family after that day. I learned about all of it as I grew up—the car bombs, the enemies, the drugs, the girls, the weapons. And the money. So much fucking money.
I learned that my father was the first Balducci don who didn’t have a son. I learned what was expected of me because of that, that our lineage depended on me to carry on their blood, as if the weight of that responsibility wasn’t likely to crush me completely.
When your father has two halves—a public self and a violent, criminal self—it’s hard not to compartmentalize. To me, he wasn’t Gianluigi Balducci, infamous don, the hidden hand behind who knows how many dead bodies and crime in this city. He was just Dad. Long-winded, reserved, boring old Dad.
Until the day that he wasn’t anymore.
I click back to an article on potentially malfunctioning steering wheels as some of the other reporters pass by. I shouldn’t call them “other reporters.” I haven’t reported anything of consequence, and I’m about to fail at my first real professional hurdle.
Because I’ve finished a first draft, but no matter how hard I’ve coached myself, convincing myself it doesn’t feel brave, it doesn’t feel right, and it doesn’t feel like real journalism.
It feels dirty.
I return to my research, praying that I’ll find something that can get me out of Tom’s trap. Anything at all: deceit, corruption, scandal, murder. I’ve got a whole world’s worth of ugliness to comb through, and yet, somehow, it’s my own family that’s demanding my attention.
Hours later, I’m so tired I can barely see the laptop screen in front of me. I rub my eyes, but it doesn’t help much.
“You must be Cassandra.”
The man’s voice comes from behind me. I spin around, my fight-or-flight instinct kicking in, but my body relaxes as I see a portly man with a button-up shirt and suspenders smiling at me behind my cubicle.
“I am,” I say, standing up.
He shakes my hand. “I’m Arthur Lawson. I’m sorry it took me so long to introduce myself, but I was knee-deep in a story.”
“Oh, Mr. Lawson!” I exclaim. “No, that’s completely understandable. I heard about your funeral home killers story. I can’t even believe that whole thing.”
“They seemed like a completely normal couple, too,” he muses. “But, anyways, if it weren’t for that, I would have dropped by sooner. This industry can be a bit cutthroat, so I like to show people that not all journalists are narcissistic assholes. Most are, just not all. That being said, I heard some rumors that you and Tom didn’t start off on the right foot. He can be very—how should I put this … single-minded in his pursuits.”
“He’s a single-minded asshole,” I clarify.
He chuckles. “I suppose. He’s a brilliant man, and that seems to be all the virtue he needs for himself.”
“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t talk badly about him. I’m ecstatic that he hired me.” I pick up my pen, clicking it nervously. “I don’t know what you heard about the meeting …”
“Cassandra, we’re investigative journalists here. We’re used to fighting for every scrap of information we get. The only time that doesn’t apply is office gossip. Everyone is in everyone else’s business, so I know what he wants from you and I know you don’t want to do it.”
“I can’t write about my family,” I murmur.
“The Balduccis,” he says, the name rolling off his tongue like a curse. “I know. He was very excited when he hired you. We might start calling the day he hired you Balducci Day. Haven’t seen Tommy Boy that happy since the Gazette went bankrupt. Christ, how he hated those bastards.”
I force a smile, clicking the pen faster. “I just … I don’t want to make it because of my last name. Well, not ‘make it,’ I’m not trying to be cocky, but like, I don’t, uh—”
Arthur chuckles and leans against my cubicle. “I know what you mean. Tom … he’s a great boss in the way that once he assigns you to a topic he approves of, he’ll let you do what you want. There’s no hovering or sweating over the details. He doesn’t hire people who he’s not certain about. But if you don’t fall in line—well, he will ruin you. No other way to put it. He’s not going to see it as you being loyal to your family or your ethics—he’s going to believe that you’re trying to test his dominance over you. Even Tom himself will tell you that he has no problem holding grudges. Of all his manifold talents, that might be the one he’s most proud of. He’s had a couple of reporters who have crossed him in the past and they ended up blackballed from the industry. One of them even tried to work at the French restaurant down the block. Tom saw him and got him fired. Can’t even be a dishwasher in this city if Tom Harden has your number.”
I shudder. “He can’t have that much control over everyone,” I say limply, sitting back down, but I already know he’s right. The Fifth Avenue Journal has been my dream newspaper since the day I got into journalism school because it’s one of the top news publications in the world. But that also means that Tom Harden is a trendsetter to all the other news publications. If he tells the rest of the news world that I’m a pariah, they will happily throw me to the wolves just to curry a little favor with him.
A courier, wearing a yellow uniform, stops in between Arthur and me. He’s carrying a woven basket with a mountain of fruit in it.
“Cassandra Balducci?” the courier asks me.
I nod, and he thrusts the basket into my hands.
“Congratulations,” he says.
“Thank you?” I say, the response automatically slipping out.
“Is it your birthday?” Arthur asks with a puzzled expression.
I shake my head. I’m just as confused as him. My birthday is months away. Before I can even unwrap the fruit basket, another courier raps his knuckles against my cubicle.
“Hey, folks, anyone know a Cassandra Balducci?”
“That’s me,” I say, setting the basket of fruit on my desk. He grins at me, handing me a red glass vase filled with pink and white carnations. “Congratulations, Miss Balducci.”
He wheels around and disappears. I pivot the vase around in my hands, searching for a card. Nothing. I glance at Arthur, who appears equally confused.
“Maybe it’s for the job?” I search through the fruit basket, lifting up kiwis, papayas, and m
angos, searching for some indication of the sender, but the only thing in there is a business card for Benji’s Harvest Fruit Baskets.
A tall man with curly blonde hair wanders past the cubicle. The back of his shirt says Duty & Delivery with an image of a wrapped package underneath it.
“Balducci?” he calls out. “Does anyone know where Cassandra Balducci is?”
“She’s right here,” Arthur calls out. The courier turns around. He’s holding a glass jar in the shape of a heart that appears to be filled with chocolates.
“Here you go, ma’am,” he says.
I grab his arm before he can leave. “Who is this from?”
He stares blankly at me.
“Um.” He unlatches a small tablet from his belt. He clicks on the screen a couple of times. “Says here it’s from a Rick Blaine.”
Arthur makes a small noise in the back of his throat. I let the courier go. He scuttles off, nearly running into a small woman who stops beside my desk.
“The guy near the front said that you’re Cassandra Balducci?” she says. I nod, trying to see what she’s brought me. She holds out a card. My face is beet-red now. I can feel the eyes of the whole office on me.
“Is this from Rick Blaine too?” I squeak.
“Yep,” she says. “Somebody cares a lot about you.”
As she trudges away, I open the card and read it. My heart drops like a rock. It’s a repeat of the moment in Tom’s office, like all the air has been sucked out of the room for the second time. I’m hot, I’m cold, I’m sweating, I’m shivering. I feel the weight of the whole world crashing down on me.
“Congratulations on the baby,” Arthur reads from the card. “Wow. I didn’t know you were pregnant. You bounced back from the pregnancy body really fast. Is that inappropriate for me to say? I’m sorry if it is, but my wife took forever to get her body back after both of our sons. She complained about it like crazy. Is yours a boy or a girl?”
Thump, thump. Thump, thump. My pulse is pounding like a jackrabbit.
