Page 143 of 10 Days to Ruin

“Now? It’s midnight!”

His grin is all wolf. “You think truth keeps business hours?”

Sasha kicks open the door markedEDITORIAL, revealing a ghost town of abandoned desks. My fingers trail over Marty DiLaurentis’s empty chair as Sasha spreads his arms wide.

“It’s all yours,” he announces.

I turn in a slow circle—the cracked whiteboards, the dusty computers, row after row of gravestone filing cabinets. Everything the light touches is mine.

“First order of business,” I say, voice steadier than I feel. “We’re changing the name.”

Sasha leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. “To?”

I think for a moment, but when the answer comes to me, it’s like it was always meant to happen like this. I meet his gaze. “The Phoenix.”

Something warm flickers in his eyes. “Little birds rising from the ashes that made them. Fitting.”

He bends down to kiss me, but when he starts to pull away, I grab his face. “Sasha… thank you. For believing in me.”

I feel his grin in the kiss. “You made it impossible to do anything else.” He pats my butt and then turns to go. “I’ll let you get settled in. I won’t be far, though. Call me if you need me.”

I blow him a kiss as he leaves.

Outside, the world is quiet and still. But here, in this broken little kingdom of lies? Something new quickens.

I crack my knuckles, power up Marty’s old computer, and start typing.

48

ARIEL

The offices ofThe Phoenixstill look like the wrong end of a subway rat, but at least there’s now a potted ficus in the corner.

In the newspaper business, we call that “progress.”

I’m eyeballs-deep in rewiring a printer that predates the dinosaurs when Gina’s voice slices through the hum of fluorescent lights. “Holy shit, Ward. You turned a trash fire into… a slightly less smoky trash fire.”

I spin around, grease smeared across my cheek. Gina and Lora stand in the doorway holding cardboard boxes labeledGAZETTE CRAPin Sharpie. Lora’s already got her sensible cardigan sleeves rolled up.

“First day of work and you’re already late,” I say, grinning.

Gina drops her box on an empty desk with a thud. “Traffic was a bear. Also, I stopped to flip off the Gazette building.” She eyes the exposed wiring dangling from the ceiling. “Are we sure this place isn’t gonna give us all tetanus?”

“Tetanus builds character.” I wipe my hands on my jeans. “Welcome toThe Phoenix.We’ve got Wi-Fi, questionable plumbing, and…” I gesture to the far wall where I’ve taped up my first front-page mock-up—a scorching exposé on city council kickbacks that John would never let me pursue. “Unbridled journalistic rage.”

Lora peers at the headline. “You spelled ‘embezzlement’ wrong.”

I blush. “I haven’t hired a copy editor yet. We’ll work on that.”

With that, we dive in. I’d love to pretend that it’s a fun, laugh-filled montage scored to some peppy pop song, but the reality is that it’s a long, hard slog that makes little discernible progress no matter how much effort we throw at it. The truth of the matter is thatThe Patriot Pressemployees made their workspace into a reflection of their magazine: a pile of utter garbage.

The dumpster out back gets filled. Mold gets scrubbed away. Cockroaches are cursed out by Gina and then hit with lethal doses of what she calls her homemadeGet The Fuck Away From Mespray. It’s shockingly effective.

By the time the afternoon sun is slanting through the windows, we’re all exhausted. But morale is surprisingly high. Turns out hard work is rewarding when you’re doing it for your own higher calling.

As we’re taking a break, Sasha strides in like he owns the place—which, I suppose, he technically does. Feliks trails behind him balancing three coffees and a box of donuts, and behind him come two-dozen or so Bratva men who look wildly out of place in a sea of cubicles.

“Wonderful,” Gina mutters. “The emotionally constipated brigade is here.”

---