“And if you’re still breathing, you’re the lucky ones

‘Cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs”

— “Youth” by Daughter

Weston and I are chatting happily about the debacle that is his ongoing kitchen reno in the gorgeous Tribeca loft he shares with Jeremiah when my editor, Doug, leans out of his office and points a blunt, cigarette-stained finger at me.

“Pierce. Got a minute?”

It’s not really a question. Doug Hoffman doesn’t ask questions, ever, which is kind of funny for a man in our line of work. He merely barks and informs like the grouchy bulldog he is. It’d be annoying if I didn’t trust him with my life.

I toss him a thumbs-up, then grab my notebook and coffee. “Catch up with you later,” I tell Westie as I head into Doug’s glass-walled corner office.

“Try not to get fired!” Weston calls after me.

I flip him off over my shoulder without turning around. I hear him laugh and call after me, “That’s not very ladylike, Ms. Pierce!”

I pause for a millisecond to check my reflection. Not that Doug would ever notice or care. After all, he shaves once a blue moon and always forgets that his ear and nose hairs need trimming, too. But a girl likes to feel composed when she’s talking to the higher-ups.

Things look mostly as they ought to. My red hair is long, smooth, and glossy, parted on the right. Freckles scatter like spilled cinnamon across my nose and cheeks. The blouse I picked out this morning, emerald to match my eyes, is neatly tucked into high-waisted black trousers. Gold studs in my ears. Mascara unsmudged. Nude lip gloss intact.

But there’s something strange underneath all of it today. No one else would ever be able to spot it. Lord knows I usually bury it too deep for that. I see it, though. A tightness around my eyes. A guardedness in the set of my mouth. The Fear, that old, familiar friend, is lurking right below the surface.

It doesn’t belong here. I’m in broad daylight, surrounded by colleagues, fluorescent lighting, and the comforting hum of a busy newsroom. Fear shouldn’t be here.

I blame the Man on the Train.

It’s his fault I’m unpleasantly stirred up this morning. Things are surfacing that should be buried deep. Locked rooms should stay locked, but because of him, the door cracked open and a little trickle of The Fear has slipped out.

With a stubborn stomp of willpower, I shove it all back inside and deadbolt the emotional door firmly.

I smooth my hair one more time, fix a confident look on my face, and step into Doug’s domain.

Doug’s already back in his chair, scrolling through something on his monitor, thick brows furrowed together into one big, hairy caterpillar marching across his forehead. He’s mid-fifties, stocky, bald on top with a gray fringe that Weston very rudely calls his “toilet bowl ring of hair.” He wears the same rotation of three rumpled, white oxford shirts and has never once, in the two years I’ve worked under him, expressed an emotion stronger than mild irritation.

He’s the best editor I’ve ever had.

“Close the door,” he barks without looking up.

I close it and sit down in “Doug’s electric chair,” as some of the staff refer to the uncomfortable, plastic visitor’s seat Doug keeps in his office.

“Your Lazarev thing,” he begins without preamble. “Where are we?”

I flip open my notebook even though I don’t need it, seeing as how I know every detail by heart. “Okay. So. Lazarev Global. Massive conglomerate, headquarters in Midtown. Import-export, real estate, shipping, finance, everything under the sun. If it can make a buck, they do it. The head honcho is Lukas Lazarev—he’s chairman. His son is Kirill, goes by Kir. He’s the CEO. On paper, they’re clean as a whistle. Philanthropic, even. Galas, hospital wings, the whole nine yards.”

One end of Doug’s unibrow rises up. “But off paper…?”

“Off paper is where it gets interesting.” An excited flush rises to my cheeks. “There’s been talk for years. Rumors, mostly. Message boards, anonymous posts, disgruntled former employees. The word that keeps coming up is Bratva.”

Doug grunts. “I’m familiar. Russian mob. Nasty group. Ran across ‘em a few times back when I worked your beat in the 1980s.”

“Right. Specifically, the allegation is that Lukas Lazarev isn’t just some billionaire with a shipping empire; he’s the big dog. The pakhan. Mob boss of mob bosses. Runs one of the last old-school Bratva families still operating out of New York.”

“And you got this from…?”

I clear my throat. “An unsavory character named Giovanni Ochoa. He’s a morgue attendant at the city medical examiner’s office. He reached out to me a couple weeks ago on Signal and said he’d had something come through his office that triggered a lot of alarm bells in his head. But…”

“Don’t ‘but’ me, Pierce,” scowls Doug. “I hate ‘buts.’”

I refrain from the obvious joke. “But… he wants cash.”

Doug rubs the bridge of his nose. “How solid is this guy? Is he worth it?”

I nod affirmatively. “I think so. He seemed solid. Nervous, sketchy, but solid in the ways that matter. I haven’t been able to verify everything he said yet, but what I have been able to check so far tracks. Lazarev Elder—that’s Lukas—was married up until eighteen years ago. His wife died. They kept it all very hush-hush, said it was an illness, and everyone was happy to leave it at that. Ochoa is saying, Not so fast. He’s gonna give me more info next time we meet, so long as I promise⁠—”

Doug raises a broad hand. “Pause right there. You said Ochoa seemed solid. Past tense.”

I take a breath. This is the part I’ve been dreading. “I haven’t heard from him in four days.”

At that, he raises his doleful eyes up from his pockmarked desk to glare at me. “Elaborate. Quickly.”

“He was supposed to meet me last week,” I explain with a cringe. “But he didn’t show. I called, texted—nada. Tried again all week long, but his phone goes straight to voicemail now. I went by the ME’s office this morning before work and talked to the front desk. They said he called out sick on Monday and nobody’s heard from him since.”

“So,” Doug summarizes, “your key source ghosted you before delivering proof that any of the outlandish accusations he’s made against one of New York’s most prominent, powerful, and allegedly mob-connected families are true. Pierce…”

“C’mon, Doug!” I cry out, leaping to my feet. “People get cold feet, sure. It happens. But I swear, Doug, this guy was… he was ready. He wanted this story out. That’s not the profile of someone who just changes his mind and disappears.”

An anxious moment passes. Doug drums his fingers on the desk. “Or it’s exactly the profile of someone who realized he was in over his head and decided to pull the ripcord.”

It takes all my willpower to shrug a casual shoulder. “Could be. I don’t think it is, but it could be.”

More tense waiting. Then he asks, “Have you filed a missing persons?”

I shake my head. “I’m not his family. And it’s only been four days. NYPD won’t do anything with that.”

“What about his family?”

“Dead and gone, the lot of them.”

Doug exhales through his nose. “Again, just to be sure I understand: Your one source on a story alleging that a vengeful billionaire is secretly a Russian mob boss who might’ve killed his wife is currently MIA.”

“That’s a painfully succinct and accurate summary, yes.”

He picks up a fat fountain pen and taps it against his palm a few times. He’s thinking. I know better than to interrupt him when he’s thinking.

“Alright,” he sighs finally. “Here’s what we’re gonna do: You keep digging. But quietly, goddammit, do you hear me? Don’t go knocking on either Lazarev’s door, don’t go poking around their offices, don’t do anything stupid.”

I give him a megawatt grin of pure, radiating innocence. “When have I ever done anything stupid?”

He gives me a silent look that could kill a bird right out of the air.

“Okay, fair,” I concede.

“Find Ochoa,” he continues. “That’s priority numero one. If your guy’s just spooked, talk him off the ledge and get him back on the record. If he’s gone for real…” He trails off and sheathes the pen back in the cup on his desk. “Well, then we’ve got a different kind of story, don’t we?”

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “We do.”

“In the meantime, I need you to build this out from other angles. Financial records, property filings, corporate structure. Anything you can get through legitimate, legal channels that won’t get this paper sued into the Stone Age.”

“Got it.”

“And Pierce?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful with this one.” He picks up his coffee and takes a long slurp. “I mean that.”

“I’m always careful, Doug.”

“No, you’re not,” he retorts. “That’s why I said it.”

I leave the building late in the evening with a fresh coffee buzz and a renewed sense of purpose. Doug’s blessing, grudging as it was, is all I needed. I’ve got a story. I’ve got a lead. I just need to find my missing source.

And I’m very good at finding things.

The November air assaults me as I push through the revolving doors and out onto the streets. I pop my headphones in and crank my Spotify Discover Weekly loud enough to drown out the city. First track up is Megan Thee Stallion, bright and bubble-gum poppy, and it’s exactly the right pick.

My mood has done a complete one-eighty from where it started the day. The Man on the Train feels distant now, and silly. A blip. I was tired this morning and my brain filled in the gaps with worst-case scenarios. That’s all. I’ll never see that creep again.

Why tourists insist on walking in a shoulder-to-shoulder, horizontal line across the sidewalk at the speed of continental drift remains one of life’s mysteries to me. I speed-walk around them and, without breaking stride, duck the outstretched arm of the guy dressed like Captain America trying to cajole me for a picture.

“Ay, Red! Smile for me! You’re way prettier when you smile!” some loser guy catcalls from the corner as I mercifully escape the death trap that is Times Square.

I make the light at Seventh, nearly get clipped by a bike messenger running the red, and flip him off without missing a beat.

I’m halfway down my block when I pass a couple huddled together on the stoop of a brownstone. Her cold-reddened face is tucked against his neck and his arms are wrapped around her like he’s trying to keep out the whole November night. They’re not doing anything. Just sitting there, tangled up, existing in each other’s space. She says something I can’t hear and he laughs, quiet and easy, and pulls her closer.

I break my rule and do the one thing New Yorkers should never do: I stop and stare.

I know I’m doing it, but I can’t bring myself to stop. Because I want that. That thing they so clearly have.

I want that so badly it makes my teeth hurt.

Not the boyfriend part, necessarily, nor the stoop, or the hug itself. I want the part where someone sees you, all of you. The ugly, frightened, broken-down parts you keep behind deadbolts and blackout curtains is revealed, and they stay anyway. They hold your gaze and they don’t look away.

I want the thing that terrifies me most.

That’s the sick joke of it all. I’ve spent five years checking locks, keeping the lights on, making sure nothing and nobody gets close enough to touch the real me. And underneath every single layer of that armor, there’s just a girl sitting in the dark, exhausted, wishing someone would break in and free her from the fear.

I tear my eyes away from the couple and keep walking.

The track changes. Megan fades out and something slower bleeds in through my headphones. Acoustic guitar, soft and sparse, then a woman’s voice, young and aching.

And if you’re still breathing, you’re the lucky ones. ‘Cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs.

“Okay, Spotify,” I mutter under my breath. “Depressing, much?”

I keep walking, but the song burrows in. It’s too close to something I don’t want to examine right now. The melody is pretty and sad, and it makes me feel like the singer somehow read my diary while I was sleeping. Corrupted lungs. Yeah. That tracks. That’s what it feels like sometimes—like I’m breathing through damaged tissue, getting air in, but it’s never quite enough, never quite clean.

It’s too cold to free my hands and change the song, so I let it play out as I round the corner onto my block. I nod hi to the doorman as I slip into my building and ride the elevator up to my floor. When I reach it, I unlock my door and shoulder it open.

Home. Thank God.

I kick off my shoes and leave them where they land. The coat goes on the hook and my AirPods get dropped on the counter. I shuck off the day’s work clothes, letting out a happy “Ahhhh” as I undo my bra and slam-dunk it into my hamper with a vengeance. Then I pull on my oldest, softest pajama pants and an oversized NYU sweatshirt that’s been washed so many times the lettering is barely visible.

Returning to the kitchen, I pour myself two fingers of whiskey from the bottle on the kitchen counter and take a sip.

That’s when I notice something strange.

My personal laptop is open on the kitchen table. I closed it this morning. I’m sure I closed it, because I always, always close it

My eyes roam to the left and snag on something else that isn’t right.

The chair is pulled out at an angle, too, not pushed flush against the table the way I leave it.

I set the whiskey down as The Fear starts to leak into my bloodstream, slow and toxic. I look at the living room. The throw blanket on the couch is folded differently. One of the cushions is turned the wrong way. The remote isn’t resting neatly in the basket; it’s hanging halfway over the edge of the coffee table like it’s thinking of taking a suicidal leap onto the hardwood floor below.

They’re all small things that nobody else would catch.

But I catch them. When you spend as long locking doors as I have, you’d never miss things like that.

I reach for my purse on the counter and dig around for my phone so I can call Rae to ask if she’s been here.

Before I can find it, though…

… the lights go out.

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