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

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 mangos, 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.

I shake my head and steel myself, taking a deep breath. “There’s no baby. It’s just a prank. My, uh, friends are weird like that. Some people say they’re married to their job, but they think I treat my job like a baby. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to confuse you.” It sounds convincing to my ears, I think. I hope.

“Oh no, that’s actually quite funny,” he says. “Besides, you got chocolate, fruit, and flowers from it. Sounds like a good