Sold to the Bratva King novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: On the Record

By ten that morning, three clients had canceled.

One was a funeral home that had called me the best they'd ever used.

"It's not personal," the funeral director said on the phone. "The families read the paper. They don't want the mob in their mother's bedroom."

"I'm not the mob. I'm the woman with the respirator."

He hung up.

At eleven, the state certification board called.

A woman with a voice like a filing cabinet said my registration was under review. There were concerns about "criminal associations".

"Am I being charged with something?"

"No."

I sat in my garage office with the phone in my lap and looked at Zoya's sign.

NO JOB TOO GROSS.

My phone buzzed. Matvei.

I let it ring out.

Then a text.

Tell me what you need.

I typed back with my thumbs.

Nothing. Watch.

I texted Zoya next.

What does a person wear to yell at a newspaper?

She was at my garage in nineteen minutes with a plain black sweater, and signed something I knew now.

YOU.

The newspaper was in a glass building by the expressway, with a security desk and a lobby full of framed front pages.

I asked for the reporter whose name was on the story.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No. Tell him the Bratva King's maid is downstairs. He'll come."

He came.

He was younger than I expected, in a wrinkled oxford shirt, with a lanyard and a nervous smile.

I sat down across from him. Zoya sat beside me, typing on her phone in her lap so I'd have the words if I needed them.

"Who's your source?" I asked.

"I can't tell you that."

"Does she wear pearls?"

His face did something. He didn't answer, which was an answer.

"I'm going to give you a better story," I said. "On the record. My real name, and you can quote every word."

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