When The Mafia Lord Falls

6. Six Years Later

Six years later.

***

Mondays were never great, but this one?

This one had ‘career-ending disaster’ written all over it.

I paced around my kitchen, clutching my coffee mug like it held the answers to all my problems. On the phone, my mom was doing her usual best to calm me down. Her voice carried the kind of effortless cheer that felt both comforting and wildly out of touch with my current mood.

"Maeve, stop overthinking," she said. "You’ll handle whatever comes your way. You always do."

“Sure, Mom,” I muttered, watching the coffee swirl in my mug. “Handling it is exactly what I’m known for. Like when I found Jayden cheating on me with another man, and months later, I married him.”

“For a good cause, I know.” My mother reminded me. “You have Sia with you, and I’m sure it was hard being pregnant alone, and with your demanding detective work, too, no less. But, here you are. You make me proud, Maeve. I know you can get through this problem too.”

“Mommy, you can do it!” Sia’s little voice squealed in the background.

I could hear the distinct sound of something clattering to the floor. My five-year-old daughter was the only ray of hope in me after my crumbling career and disastrous divorce last year.

"Thanks, kitty," I said, trying to smile through the panic rising in my chest. “Mommy’s going to need all the luck you’ve got today.”

Mom chimed in, her tone entirely too breezy. "Just keep your chin up. And for heaven’s sake, stop drinking so much coffee. It’s bad for your heart."

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for the pep talk, Mom. Love you both.”

Hanging up, I sighed. Coffee might not fix everything, but it sure as hell wasn’t the reason I was one bad meeting away from unemployment.

I practically went on autopilot to my work.

Compass Media was my new home, my new identity. Leaving the force hadn’t been an easy decision, but it had been a necessary one.

The trauma of that night still haunted me. I’d been chasing down corruption for months, following the trail of a few bad detectives who were working with the mafia for bribery.

One fateful meeting, everything went wrong.

I fired in self-defense when things escalated, and in that moment, I ended up taking one detective’s life while another was left in a coma.

The department didn’t believe me. They called it a mistake, blamed me for the loss of one officer and the near-death of another. They tried to sweep it under the rug, labeling me as reckless and irresponsible, as if my instincts had been wrong. But I knew I’d done what I had to do, what any righteous cop would have done.

Still, they tossed me aside like I was the one who betrayed the badge.

The weight of that betrayal crushed me. I couldn’t go back to a system that didn’t trust me, didn’t believe in justice when it was inconvenient. I needed something that would let me expose the truth without all the politics and the corruption. That’s when I decided to leave the force and start over.

I took a short course in journalism, and with my investigative skills and sharp mind, I was quickly accepted into Compass Media. Now, here I was, doing what I’d always wanted—chasing down the real criminals, this time with words instead of a badge.

However, my career here was also on a slim thread.

The newsroom hit me like a wall of sound and judgment the second I walked in. Phones rang, keyboards clattered, and the usual buzz of conversation was alive. Until it wasn’t. Conversations stalled mid-sentence, and I could feel the weight of stares following me to my desk.

As I slumped into my chair, whispers flitted around like smoke.

“That’s her,” someone murmured near the breakroom.

“Do you think she’ll get fired?”

“No idea. But if he gets sued, she’d better.”

Lovely. Nothing like a little public shaming to really get the creative juices flowing.

I stared blankly at my laptop, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. I’d triple-checked every source, combed through every detail of that story. So how did I end up here, one bad fact-check away from writing puff pieces about organic dog food?

“Hey, Maeve,” my coworker Gavin called from his desk. “What’s it like knowing you might tank the whole paper?”

I didn’t even look up. “Not as bad as it’s going to feel for you when I shove your lunch into the shredder.”

Sarcasm. The only armor I had left.

With a deep breath, I pulled out my notes and started combing through every painful detail. If I was going down, I’d make damn sure I went down swinging.

By the time my editor, Brenda Shaw, called me into her office, I was ready for the firing squad.

“Maeve,” Brenda began, slamming a stack of papers onto her desk with the force of a judge delivering a verdict. “Do you know what this is?”

“Do you really want me to guess?” I asked, keeping my tone light.

“It’s the fallout from your article,” she hissed, her voice barely contained. “An entire correction notice for that so-called ‘investigative exposé’ you wrote, turned out to be riddled with inaccuracies. Do you have any idea how bad this makes us look?”

“Okay, first of all, inaccuracies? I followed the facts,” I protested. “And second, the story needed to be told–”

“Don’t.” Brenda raised a hand, cutting me off. “We’re supposed to be a beacon of credibility, Maeve. Instead, you’ve turned Compass Media into a punchline. Social media blowback has been a nightmare, and now the publisher wants your head on a platter. You’ve put us all at risk.”

Her glare bore into me, sharp enough to flay skin. “Do you have any idea what kind of position you’ve put this paper in? If we can’t recover from this, we’re done. I’m done. And as for you…”

She let the threat hang in the air like an axe over my neck.

“Brenda, I can fix this,” I said quickly, my pulse racing.

“Oh, you’d better.” She leaned forward, her voice cold and deliberate. “Because if you don’t, you’re out of here. And frankly, you’ll be lucky if anyone in the industry hires you again after this stunt.”

I inhaled sharply, knowing she was holding nothing back. But damn it, my article wasn’t a stunt. It was the truth.

It was supposed to shine a light on what really happened the night an off-duty officer killed a biker. The official report claimed the biker was a suspected illegal racer and drug dealer.

But my sources painted a different picture. The officer had been speeding recklessly, enraged after an earlier run-in with a group of street racers. He’d fired his weapon after forcing the biker off the road.

The biker wasn’t a criminal. He was a popular motovlogger with a loyal following, and he’d been recording that night. His camera, a GoPro mounted on his helmet, should have exonerated him. But the footage disappeared. Erased.

I’d followed the trail to the officer’s precinct, uncovering a disturbing pattern of cover-ups, but Brenda wasn’t wrong, some details hadn’t held up under scrutiny. The paper had to issue a correction when one of my key witnesses retracted their statement. It was devastating.

“Maeve.” Brenda’s voice snapped me back to the present. “If you want to salvage your career, there is only one thing to do.”

I swallowed hard. “You know I’d do anything for it.”

“Good.” Her lips pressed into a thin line before she slid another folder across the desk. The file name was printed at the top in bold ink.

Aurelian Morgenstein.

“So he’s… what? A dealer? Pimp?”

“Among other things,” Brenda scoffed. “My ear in the police department said that they had him on the radar for years. Anything you can dream up, they’ve got him on suspicion. Gambling. Murder. Fraud. Grand larceny. Grand theft auto. All the grands. Problem is, they can’t touch him.”

I frowned heavily at my editor. “If the police can’t get anything on him, why do you think I have a chance?”

“Maeve, with your sharp mind and years of experience as a detective, I’m sure you can dig up something. I know you will.”

A smirk played on my lips, “Or you’re just using me. If I can handle this, it’s a win. But if I fail, you can just throw me down like you’re about to, anyway.”

“You’re getting it.”

“Fine. I might as well go down with a bang.”

Brenda smiled wickedly. “He owns a nightclub in East Park. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Big, gaudy thing.”

I lifted one of the pictures from the folder. It was the half-blurred image of a black Range Rover, parked on a curb and swarmed by black suits. The windows were tinted. White light bled from a sign above the street.

Evergarden. It read. And then below, in smaller, brighter letters: VIP Entrance.

I shrugged and passed the photo back. “Never heard of it.”

“Damn, girl. You’ve been in Grasberg for a year, and you never go there?”

“With all due respect, I have better things to do than loitering in a nightclub owned by a possible king of all pimps.”

Brenda shook her head. “I’ll be frank with you, Maeve. Everytime we sent journalists to interview him, he refused. In fact, no media has ever been able to get any word out of him.”

“You want me to go in there?”

“I want you to go in there.” Brenda nodded enthusiastically. “Interview him. Get a report on him. Hell, get a photo of him. Anything. I want you to make it big. Big enough to save your career, this company’s name, and make a splash in the media industries.”

I shuffled through the folder again and took another grainy and underexposed picture.

Aurelian Morgenstein stared back, surrounded by black – completely invisible save for a hard jaw and a high collar. But what caught my attention the most was the hand covering his mouth.

Something that looked like a tattoo peeked from his suit sleeve.

It reminded me of someone from five years ago.

A jet-black serpent inked on the back of his hand. Its forked tongue dripped on his middle finger.

A man who rocked my world for a day night and disappeared without trace.

Too bad the photo was low in quality, or I’d have confirmed whether he had a pair of piercing blue eyes or not.

Just like him.

Elian.