ARIEL
The newsroom usually calms me. It’s ASMR for journalism nerds: keyboard clatter, printer groans, the acidic tang of burnt coffee clinging to the back of my throat.
Today, though, it’s all just making me think of sex.
Sasha driving into me as a printing press shudders beneath us.
Ink on my hands, smeared on his chest, as we fuck on top of lies.
No matter how many times I try to redirect to get actual work done, I keep ending up back in the same horny-ass headspace. Needless to say, not productive.
It doesn’t help that I’m hiding. Instead of my normal cubicle, I’m balancing my laptop on my knees as I hide in the very back of a little-used conference room. I know my colleagues read the Patriot Press’s story, or at least heard enough about it to imagine the details. News junkies gonna news junkie, and what’s better than hot, scandalous gossip about your coworkers?
But as long as I don’t hear their whispers, I can pretend they aren’t real. And as long as they aren’t real, I can let Sasha’s promise keep me sane.
I’ll always protect what’s mine.
He said it. He meant it. I can trust in that.
I’m elbow-deep in fact-checking Lora’s piece on subway rats when a shadow falls across my desk. “Gina, I already told you, I’ll—”
“Koukla.”
I jump hard enough to send my laptop flying. My uncle Kosti looms over me like a specter in a three-piece suit, reeking of cigar smoke and Acqua di Giò. His salt-and-pepper beard can’t hide the tension around his mouth.
“You look like hell, darling.”
I shudder and stand. “What are you doing here?”
He sets a cup of coffee down on the conference table. “Can’t an uncle visit his favorite niece?”
“Not when you look like that.” I frown. “What’s wrong?”
He sighs and scratches uncomfortably at his beard as he looks around at the cluttered, lifeless conference room. “Let’s go up to the roof to talk.”
Winter wind claws at my cheeks as the door clangs shut behind us. Kosti paces the gravel-strewn rooftop, his oxfords crunching over pigeon droppings and stubbed-out cigarettes. Then he stops and turns to me.
“You need to leave, Ari.”
I bark out a laugh. “You’re my travel agent now? Where should I go? I hear Thailand is nice this time of year.”
“This isn’t a joke, koukla. I wish it was, but it’s not.”
My frown deepens. It’s not like Uncle Kosti to be so serious. But the crow’s feet in the corner of his eyes are drawn taut and the sad smile doesn’t reach his eyes. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. “What’s going on?” I ask quietly.
He just shakes his head. “The details don’t matter.”
“Of course they do!” I cry out. “God, I’m sick of everyone deciding things for me. My dad, you—can’t someone just tell me about these fucking ‘details’ and let me make my own choices for once?”
Kosti grabs my shoulders, his grip bordering on painful. “Listen to me, Ari. There are things happening. Movements in the dark. Leander’s making deals even I don’t fully understand. And Sasha—”
“What about Sasha? Whatever’s happening, he can handle it.”
His jaw works. “This isn’t about his strength; it’s about yours. When things go boom, they don’t give a damn about who gets caught in the blast. And the Serbs very much want to make things go boom. Do you understand? They’re hunting, Ariel. Dragan Vukovic is hunting.” He leans closer, voice dropping to a graveled whisper. “And your man is the prize buck in hunting season.”
Fear sluices down my spine. I shake him off. “You’re lying.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.” He pulls a manila envelope from his coat. Inside glints a Canadian passport bearing my face beside the name Emily Carter. A plane ticket flutters in the breeze—one-way to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. “The last thing I want is to see you in a casket. After Jasmine… Well, an old man’s heart can only take so much. I loved you girls like you were my own daughters. So let me protect you as if that’s exactly what you were. If Leander won’t…” His face hardens. “I will do what’s right.”
The world wobbles on its axis. For one dizzying moment, I see it—me, vanishing into some Vietnamese hostel in the jungle while Sasha burns. My fingers brush the passport’s pebbled surface.
Two weeks ago, I would’ve kissed Kosti in sheer joy and started packing.
Now? Now, I see Sasha stabbing a crowbar in the maw of anything that would ever try to take a bit of me.
I see him in an apron, spooning sauce on top of pelmeni.
I see him glowing beneath Parisian lights as buskers played songs like the whole world conspired to make a moment perfect for us and us alone.
“Why now?” I ask.
Kosti’s throat bobs. “Because I held you the day you were born. Because I couldn’t save Jasmine. Don’t make me bury another niece.”
The heater next to us burps out sticky exhaust. “Uncle Kosti, Sasha’s… different,” I say. “He’s not my father.”
Kosti laughs bitterly. “No. He’s worse. At least your father’s evil is predictable.”
I shove the envelope back into his chest. “You’re wrong about him.”
“Ari—”
“No. I’ve made my choice. You’re wrong. He’s not Leander. He’s not Yakov, either. He’s not a monster, Uncle. He’s… trying. We’re trying. And we’re going to make it.”
Kosti stares at me in disbelief. “Christ, Ariel. You’re in love with him.”
It’s not a question. I open my mouth to deny it—default to sarcasm, deflection, anything—but the lie curdles on my tongue. Instead, I think of Lamaze class giggles smothered against his shoulder. Of him fixing Mom’s broken clock and showing a little girl how to draw swing sets just so.
“Yes,” I say proudly. “I am.”
Kosti mutters something in Greek I haven’t heard since Jasmine’s empty casket funeral. Then he adds, “Love makes you stupid, Ariel. Stupid gets you dead.”
“So does fear.” My thumb finds the scar on my palm from the Met gala bathroom. “I spent fifteen years hiding. Look where that got me.”
My uncle turns to light a cigarillo. The flame trembles in his cupped hands. When he faces me again, the lit tip makes the bags under his eyes look stark and purple.
“Things that once seemed solid are breaking. If your father’s alliance with Sasha wobbles… “ He exhales smoke like a dragon. “Sasha will choose his men. His power. Not you.”
I grip the icy railing. Below us, taxis swarm like angry beetles. “You don’t know him.”
“Don’t I?” His laugh rasps. “I was there when Leander made the deal. Your man didn’t ask about your favorite color or whether you wanted kids. His first question was about shipping lanes.”
I clench my teeth to ward off that old, familiar siren song in my head. The paranoia that my father cursed me with. “Things have changed.”
“Nothing ever changes. Don’t you know that? Wake up! Before you get hurt! This can end only one of two ways, Ariel: You lose your life, or you lose your soul.”
Wind whips hair into my mouth. “Things change,” I say again. “He’s changed me. Let me change him, too.”
Kosti’s eyes glisten. He pulls me into a hug that feels, for the briefest moment, like old times. “Stubborn as your mother,” he mutters into my hair. “But so it goes. When it all goes to hell, though… call me. The tickets will be ready for you.”
