Maksim: A Dark Mafia Romance (Akimov Bratva) by Nicole Fox (read aloud .TXT) 📕

“That’s it,” I say. “It must be genetics.”

“You look, uh, Mediterranean,” he says. “My ex was Mediterranean. Greek, you know? Are you Greek?”

“No.” I move to get around him again. He grabs onto my arm to stop me, his arm brushing up against my chest.

“Don’t be such a bitch. We’re just having a nice conversation,” he says. “You don’t need to treat every man like a creep. If I were a creep, I would have copped a feel.”

His hand moves before I can stop him, squeezing my left breast. As he leers, I clench my fist—thumb on the outside to avoid breaking it—and jab it into his throat.

Bull’s-eye.

God, that feels good.

The shock hits his expression in slow motion. First, the eyes go wide in shock. Then the pain waves ripple through, and his eyebrow crinkles. Blood rushes to his cheeks, turning everything a nice, embarrassed pink.

It’s a freaking masterpiece.

When he keels over, hands grasping for a throat that deserves a hell of a lot more than one wimpy punch, I lean over with him and hiss, “Don’t ever—fucking ever—touch anybody without their consent again. Got it?”

I stand back up without waiting for an answer. A few people are eyeing me now. I continue walking down the street, the old courage returning to me. New York City isn’t quite Olympus and it sure as hell isn’t Chapel Hill.

It’s a beast of its own kind.

But it’s a beast that can be tamed.

The office of the Fifth Avenue Journal is a sophisticated mixture of glass and steel. Cold pillars and artfully exposed beams crisscross the atrium, but even the towering plants dotting the open space can’t hide the fact that it feels like you’re being watched. The massive photos along the back walls don’t help that feeling, either.

The photos depict various investigative reports that the Fifth Avenue Journal broke—from the photo of an old woman’s bruised arms at an abusive nursing home to photos of several young women in a room, their faces partly covered in shadow, but the same tattoo clearly visible on all of them. That story unveiled a transnational human trafficking organization and cut it off at the knees.

I walk up to the front desk. A young blonde woman with her hair pulled into a bun is typing at her computer. She glances up at me.

“How may I help you?” she asks, continuing to type. Behind the desk, the Fifth Avenue Journal’s countless awards for investigative journalism are proudly presented behind glass.

“I just got hired,” I say, a little too much excitement in my voice. Tone it down, girl. Act like you’ve been here before.

“Congratulations,” she says. “You must be Cassandra Balducci?”

I nod, but she’s already grabbing a card key and a lanyard with an identification badge. She slides them across the desk. I take them.

“Thank you,” I say. I pull the lanyard over my head, letting it settle over my chest. It makes me feel like a freshman in college again, but since I’m new, I don’t want to constantly be scrambling to prove that I deserve to be here.

I step onto the elevator, pressing the button for the fifth floor. As the elevator ascends, I can’t help but smile. It’s finally real. Everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve wanted for so long. I’m going to be an investigative journalist at one of the most prestigious news publications in the whole freaking world. And I did it all on my own. I studied, I applied, I passed up friendships and relationships, I missed out on a lot of experiences, but it all built up to this moment.

I. Am. Here.

I fiddle with my ID, running a fingertip over my last name. I remember my father pressing the idea that he could help me get into a better college, a better major, a better career field, if I just let him help me. At the time, it was tempting—to save on debt, to stall doubt, to rebuild the damaged bridge between us.

But now, I know I didn’t need him to get me on this elevator. This belongs to me and that will always mean more to me than anything he could have given me.

My heart starts to beat faster as the elevator doors open.

The chaos on the fifth floor is palpable. There is constant movement—people with cell phones attached to their ear as they pace around, or standing over their computers, furiously typing like their life depends on getting the next word out. I hear snippets of conversations as I pass by desks.

“He said they dropped the lawsuit on the twenty-fifth—”

“—they won’t allow the International Labor Organization to get any statistics, but the company’s gotta know their view on child labor laws and—”

“—a load of bullshit. His wife wasn’t even in the country the whole second week of February.”

The whole place is a who’s who of investigative journalism heavy hitters. There’s George Holland, owner of two Pulitzers and a beard that would make a Viking jealous. Two desks over is Melissa Brady, who called an African dictator a “charlatan” to his face and looks like she could crush watermelons with her thighs. I have her Princeton commencement speech practically memorized. When I nearly reach my new boss’ office, I see Jacob Silton, who broke the Kromsky scandal all by himself, run past me, holding onto a large plush toy with its stuffing poking out of the back of its head.

The sight of the toy tugs on something ugly in my mind, but I push the dark thoughts out of my head. Today is a good day. Nothing is going to change that.

When I reach my destination, I knock on the door.

“Come in.”

In comparison to the rest of the chaotic floor, it’s eerily quiet and organized in Tom Harden’s office. There’s only his desk, his laptop, two chairs, and Tom Harden himself inside.

“Please close the door,” he says, his eyes focused on his laptop before he starts to type again. “I can’t concentrate with all of that