Chapter 23
JILLIAN
“I see your true colors / Shining through”
— “True Colors (feat. Faux Fix)” by Richie Kohan
I push through the revolving entrance and take in the lobby.
Like the exterior, it’s glass and steel as far as the eye can see.
Chandeliers made of fancy corrugated steel in contorted, futuristic shapes revolve from chains set into the ceiling far overhead.
Security guards in dark suits stand at two checkpoints, flanking a bank of turnstiles that separate the entrance from the elevator bank.
There’s a long reception desk to the left, curved and white, with the Lazarev Global logo mounted on the wall behind it in brushed silver letters.
A pair of receptionists sit behind it, both blonde, both in black. They look interchangeable.
The floor is polished to a mirror finish. When I glance down, I can see my own reflection as I walk toward the desk.
I approach the receptionist on the left. Her blonde hair is pulled back so tight that I consider for a moment informing her about the risks of traction alopecia. If nothing else, I should offer her some Advil from my purse, because she has got to have a wicked migraine.
“Hi!” I say, slapping on my best non-threatening smile. “My name is Jillian Pierce. I’m a reporter with the New York Times. I was hoping to speak with someone from the CEO’s office regarding a story I’m working on.”
Her face ices over. She looks at me the way you’d look at someone who wandered into the wrong building. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I don’t,” I reply apologetically. “I was hoping to set something up in person. Or, if someone from the press team is available today, I’m happy to wait.”
“One moment.” She picks up a phone and dials a four-digit extension.
I can hear it ring twice before someone picks up.
She turns away from me and speaks quietly, one hand cupped around the mouthpiece.
I catch fragments. “Reporter … New York Times … CEO’s office.
” Then a longer pause where she’s listening.
She hangs up and turns back to me. “Someone from the communications team will be down shortly. You’re welcome to have a seat.” She gestures toward a cluster of low leather chairs near the windows.
“Great. Thank you.”
I retreat to a corner and sit. The chair is exactly as uncomfortable as it looks.
I guess that’s all you can expect from hard leather stretched over some kind of frame that was designed by someone who was clearly unfamiliar with basic human anatomy.
I cross my legs, uncross them, cross them again, but nothing makes me feel any less cramped.
It’s a busy building, but quiet as the grave.
Self-important worker bees in expensive clothes moving with purpose toward the turnstiles, badges out, not looking at each other.
Nobody talks. The only sound is the low hum of climate control and the occasional beep of a security badge clearing the gate.
Rae’s up there somewhere. I thought about texting her and checking in, but I didn’t want to risk someone catching us talking and assuming she was snitching on her bosses to the Times. She’s got enough going on without me bringing more grief down upon her head.
I look up. On the far wall of the atrium, opposite the elevators, there’s a portrait. It’s massive. Must be eight feet tall and framed in a handsome dark wood, mounted above a marble ledge with a single orchid on it. The painting shows Lukas and Kir Lazarev, side by side.
Lukas is on the left. Silver hair, silver beard, built broad enough to fill most of the frame on his own. His suit is dark. His hands are folded in front of him. He looks like a man who has never once been told no.
Kir stands to his right. He’s younger, leaner, dark-haired. Handsome in a way that even a shitty corporate portrait can’t hide.
Father and son. Chairman and CEO. And, if I’m right about any of this, something much worse.
That’s why I’m here.
More specifically, I’m here for three reasons.
The first one is simple: It’s my job. Doug gave me a firm end-of-the-year deadline and Bartlett is circling to pick up the scraps should I fail.
If I don’t start making moves, I’m going to lose the biggest story of my career to a guy who once misspelled “indictment” in a headline.
I worked too hard for this. For fuck’s sake, I paid my own way through journalism school and clawed my way into the Times newsroom through sheer talent and willpower.
I’ve spent weeks buried in shell companies and corporate filings and dead-end phone calls, and I’m not about to hand all of that to Mason fucking Bleached Blonde Bartlett because I was too scared to ask tough questions to a scary corporate guy.
The second reason is bigger. Somewhere underneath all the marble and glass and brushed silver lettering, a woman is dead and nobody has answered for it.
Elena Lazareva had a life. She had a son.
She had whatever dreams and plans people have before someone takes all of that away.
And if Giovanni Ochoa was right and those bones in Astoria are hers, then she’s been waiting eighteen years for someone to say her name out loud in a room full of people who’d much rather she stay buried. I can be that someone.
And then there’s the third reason, which is the one I don’t want to examine too closely but which is probably the most honest of the three:
I need to work. I have to be doing something, because the rest of my life right now does not make any fucking sense at all.
The rest of my life involves a masked man climbing through my window and putting me on my kitchen floor, and then my hallway wall, and then my bed, and me letting him, and me wanting him to, and me lying awake afterward wondering what’s wrong with me that I can’t stop.
Work is the antidote to that. It’s the last thing left I’m still in control of.
So I sit in this terrible chair in the lobby of Lazarev Global with my notebook open and my pen ready, and I wait for someone to come downstairs and talk to me.
I don’t have to wait too long before a woman in a gray pantsuit appears from behind the turnstiles.
She has a fashionably sharp bob and no jewelry except for a thin gold watch around her dainty wrist. She walks toward me with a practiced smile that says, I deal with people like you for a living and I’m very good at making them go away.
“Ms. Pierce? I’m Vera Sorokina, communications director for Lazarev Global.”
I stand and shake her hand with a firm grip. “Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Sorokina. Thanks for coming down.”
“Of course.” She very pointedly doesn’t invite me to join her anywhere. “Unfortunately, Mr. Lazarev’s schedule is completely full today. And for the foreseeable future, frankly. But I’m happy to take down the details of your request and pass it along to the appropriate team.”
I know the game we’re playing, and so does Vera here. We both know that that’s what she’s supposed to say, and I’m supposed to answer that she’s a damn fool if she thinks I’ll give up that easily.
“I’d really prefer to speak with someone from the CEO’s office directly,” I try.
“I understand. But all press inquiries go through my department first. That’s just how we do things here.” Her smile doesn’t budge. “If you can give me a sense of what the story’s about, I can make sure it gets to the right people.”
I pull out my notebook, more for show than anything else. “I’m working on a piece about Lazarev Global’s corporate structure. Specifically, some questions around subsidiary holdings and property acquisitions in the New York area. I’d love to get the company’s perspective.”
Vera doesn’t flinch. “We’re always happy to provide comment on our business operations through the proper channels. If you email me your questions, I’ll coordinate with our legal and executive teams and get back to you within a reasonable timeframe.”
“A reasonable timeframe being…?”
“That depends on the nature of the questions.”
“And if I told you the story has a tight deadline?”
“I’d say we’ll do our best to accommodate that, but I can’t make promises on behalf of the executive team’s availability.” She tilts her head. “You’re welcome to send everything to my email. I’ll make sure it lands on the right desk.”
She’s good. Every answer is polite and completely useless. She’s a wall made of pleasantries, and she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Is there anyone else I could speak with today?” I persist. “Even informally?”
“I’m afraid not. But I do have a card.” She produces one from her jacket pocket and holds it out. “My email’s on there.”
I take the card. “Thanks. I’ll be in—”
I stop mid-sentence because a man just stepped out from behind the turnstiles on the far side of the lobby.
He has dark hair, swept back off his forehead.
In his light gray suit, he looks like his limbs go on forever, like he could easily reach up and touch the atrium ceiling above us.
It’s his posture and attitude that stand out most of all, though.
He moves through the world like he owns every square inch of it.
Probably because he does.
Because that’s Kir Lazarev.
Vera follows my gaze and her composure dips. “Oh,” she says regretfully. “What an odd coincidence. That’s Mr. Lazarev now.”
I watch him walk, like he stepped down out of the portrait and came to life. He hasn’t noticed me yet. He’s still talking to the man in glasses at his side, who is nodding rapidly at whatever Kir is saying.
“Ms. Pierce,” calls Vera, “I really do think the best course of action would be to—”
“Absolutely,” I agree, already moving past her. “But since he’s right there, I might as well just introduce myself. Save everyone a step.”
Vera makes a small, strangled noise behind me, but I’m two steps ahead of her as I stride across the lobby floor.
The CEO of the company I’m investigating just walked into my line of sight like a gift from the journalism gods, and I’m not about to let Vera Sorokina and her reasonable timeframe stand between me and a face-to-face with Kir Lazarev.
I’m rehearsing the opening line in my head. Something casual but direct. Mr. Lazarev, I’m Jillian Pierce with the Times, I’d love just two minutes of your time. Keep it short. Keep it friendly. Don’t spook him.
I’m maybe fifteen feet away when Kir turns.
Not toward me, but away. He angles his body to face the man in glasses more fully, and as he does, his head leans to the right and his collar shifts. The back of his neck is exposed above the line of his shirt.
What I see there kills me in my tracks.
There are scratches. Four of them, raised and scabbed and angry red against his skin, running in parallel lines from just below his hairline down past the collar. They’re fresh. A day old, maybe two. The skin around them is still irritated, still healing.
I know those scratches.
I know them because I’m the one who made them.
Friday night, in my hallway, with my back against the wall and glass crunching under his boots, he said again and I dug in harder, curling my fingers and dragging my nails through fabric and then through skin. I felt it tear. I felt the warm, wet smear of blood under my fingertip.
Those are my marks on Kir Lazarev’s neck.
My feet stop. I’m standing in the middle of the lobby floor and I can’t move. My notebook is in my hand and my pen is in the other and I can’t feel either of them.
It’s him. The man in the mask.
Kir Lazarev. CEO of Lazarev Global. Son of Lukas Lazarev…
… is the man who came to kill me.