Maksim: A Dark Mafia Romance (Akimov Bratva)

Arthur Lawson has five different smart speakers in front of him, each droning on in metallic tones. Another journalist named Allison stares at various syringes, muttering about venous air embolisms.
She stops as she notices me passing by. “Hey, Cassandra!”
“Hey,” I say, continuing toward my desk.
“Tom wants to talk to you.”
I stop, desperate for more information than a casually uttered death sentence like that, but she’s already focusing on her syringes again. I take a deep breath and change course towards Tom’s office. Better get it out of the way sooner than later.
As soon as I’m within a few feet of his office, the door jerks open. Amelia Bloomer steps out of the office, her face a deep red as tears well in her eyes. She keeps her head bowed, but I still see the tears escape down her face.
I adjust my blouse awkwardly. I close my eyes, trying to get in a five-second meditation, but all I can hear is Allison muttering, “Too much air to be accidental.”
I open my eyes and step into Tom’s office. I paste on a smile.
“I heard you wanted to talk to me,” I say.
He nods without looking up as he continues typing on his laptop. “Come here.”
As I walk toward his desk, I imagine what I’d tell my daughter in this situation. Chin up—confident, but not arrogant. Be certain in your words, but not so certain that they’ll come back to sink you.
Tom stops typing. “Did you see Amelia leaving?”
“Yes,” I say.
“She was just fired. Do you want to know why?”
A thousand sarcastic answers cross my mind. I think about my daughter again. Don’t let your own words sink you.
“I have no idea, sir,” I say.
“Amelia told me that she was going to investigate Magnus Airlines for allegations that they overcharge non-US citizens. And she is. But she’s also been spending a fair amount of time investigating allegations of sexual assault too. I didn’t approve that. She didn’t ask. She decided on her own that her gut instincts overrode my experience and my wallet.” He shrugs. “So, she’s gone. It means the initial investigation will take a lot longer as I’ll have to get somebody else to cover it and I’ll have to hire someone new to replace her. But I’d rather spend tens of thousands of dollars replacing her than have someone disrespecting me. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely,” I say, biting my tongue hard enough that I taste copper.
“You’ve run out of time to choose a topic,” he says. He glances at his laptop. “Are you going to write about your family or are you going to be standing in the unemployment line?”
“You don’t need to worry about me, but I’m not going to write about my family,” I say. He glances at me, a flash of indignation on his face. He thinks I’m not playing his game, but I’m just playing it at a more complex level. High risk, high reward. My father told me only to make these kinds of moves if I was desperate and right now I’m so far at the bottom, the only thing I have left is my dignity and this job. I might as well try to keep both.
“I’m going to expose the entire mafia network in the city.”
I see the doubt on his face, but it slowly dawns into greedy enthusiasm. He thinks he’s won, that I’ve submitted. That I’ll inevitably end up using my family for information.
That means I can use him while he believes he has the upper hand.
Both Tom and Maksim think I’m a tiny prey animal, ready to surrender to their whims. But they haven’t had the experiences I’ve had.
They aren’t ready for what I’m about to bring to their doorsteps.
Either of them.
In NYC, there are four major mafias. There’s Dos Gatillos, the Puerto Rican mafia, who mostly stick to the South Bronx. The Polish mob run things in Greenpoint. The Balduccis occupy various sections of the West Side of Manhattan. They’ve been battling for territory for years with the fourth and most powerful organization, the Akimov Bratva.
I sit in the public library, digging for more background on each of the four families, but I keep returning to the Bratva. To Maksim Akimov.
Maksim’s parents died in a car crash. There’s no information for when he became the Bratva boss—unlike several other Mafias, it seems no one has snitched on their boss—but the Akimov crew notably started gaining power about twelve years ago. They shifted gears from small-time to big deal, and they stopped running from the Balduccis. Instead, they started fighting, and the Balduccis became the ones doing the running.
I raise my head over the library’s cubicle. There are a few college students, an old man reading in an armchair, and a mother with a couple of children nearby.
Paranoia is getting the best of me. I’m not a Balducci. I’m not running from these Akimov thugs.
But it’s best not to be a sitting duck.
I pack up my laptop. As I walk through the library, I keep checking around me. Nobody is looking at me, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m on someone’s radar. When I leave the library, I weave through the crowds of people on the street. I take out my phone, pretend to dial a number, and hold it up to my ear.
“Hey,” I say. My mind blanks. How long has it been since I talked to somebody that didn’t involve my classes or my job? My mind drifts back to my daughter. “I’ve missed you. I’ve got so much to tell you. I have a lot to explain.”
I swallow. I look over my shoulder. Nobody.
“I just, uh, first I want to know how you’ve been doing. If you’re happy,” I say. “I just want to make sure you’re happy. I want to know … I mean, I’d prefer if you were here, but it makes it easier if I know you’re happy.”
The silence on the other side of the phone is hard to deal with.