10 Days to Ruin

ARIEL

I blame Superman for the way my life turned out.

If The CW hadn't cast Tom Welling as Superman in Smallville, it would've been different.

If Tom Welling didn't have cinnamon roll eyes and the bone structure of a sex god, it would've been different.

If I hadn't been a hyper-impressionable twelve-year-old girl caught deep in the vicious chokehold of puberty when the season four premiere of Smallville aired, then I wouldn't have been so jealous of Lois Lane getting to see Tom Welling naked that my crush on him immediately and violently transferred to a girl crush on her, and then I wouldn't have wanted to be a reporter, and then I wouldn't have gotten this job at The New York Gazette, and my editor wouldn't have sent me to this gala, and I wouldn't be in this situation I'm in.

But The CW did cast Tom Welling.

Tom Welling did have cinnamon roll eyes and the bone structure of a sex god.

And Lois Lane did get to see him naked in season four.

And so all of the other things did happen, one domino colliding into the next, shit rolling downhill, and so now, I'm cloistered in the men's bathroom at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, hyperventilating and bleeding from a cut on my hand and wondering just how the fuck I'm supposed to go back out there and do my job.

The woman in the mirror doesn't have any more of an idea than I do. She's staring back at me helplessly. Green eyes, auburn hair, punching well above her weight class in a Diane von Furstenberg dress she stole from her best friend's closet.

"What're we gonna do?" I try asking my reflection. She just mouths the question back to me, that useless tramp.

I sigh and look down at my hand. If you thought the Met would be ritzy enough to ensure their door handles were free of jagged, rusted edges, you'd have thought wrong. I just opened up a good two-inch gash in my hurry to slam the stupid thing behind me after I charged in here, because the women's bathroom had a line two dozen deep, because of course it did.

I've got my other hand clamped on top of it to stop my life juice from splurting everywhere. But the blood is starting to well up between my fingers and it's making me a teensy bit queasy.

I don't do blood. I don't do stitches. I don't do grievous wounds or even particularly bad bruises.

When you grow up the way I did, you see enough of that stuff to last a lifetime.

But I'm by myself in here and no one is coming to my rescue. So with a big, brave inhale, I peel away my good hand and take a look at⁠-

"Nope. Nuh-uh. Nooo thank you." My reflection agrees with me-that's a nasty cut. If I spend even a millisecond longer looking at it, I might pass out.

Wouldn't that be a headline? Reporter Faints in Men's Bathroom While On-Duty; Cracks Head Open On Sink; Funeral Sparsely Attended. Honestly, I'd have to laugh-it would be undeniably hilarious if my obituary got a byline before I ever actually got one myself.

In my defense, I haven't had many opportunities to actually, like, do the job I was hired for. My six months at the Gazette have thus far been spent primarily going back and forth to the Starbucks on the corner. I'm not sure if it's an intern thing, or a rookie hazing thing, or just a Hey, you're a woman, therefore you're on coffee run duty thing. But whatever the cause, I've had precious little opportunity to do what I took this job for.

Reporting. Telling stories. Shining little lights into the dark, cramped corners of the world, because I know better than almost anyone what goes on in those corners.

That in itself is a little bit ironic, if only because I've worked like hell to get out of those corners. Didn't I leave home the first chance I could? Didn't I change my name? Didn't I sever (almost) all contact with the man who raised me in those corners?

I did. I did. I did.

The real irony, though, is that the very first chance I get to do some real reporting... is on that man himself.

That's right: Leander Makris, New York's infamous crime boss and head honcho of the city's Greek mafia, is the star of my article.

He's also my dad.

I didn't know he'd be hosting this gala until I showed up tonight, but when that slap from reality landed, it did so with a vengeance. Thus the tears, and the fleeing into the wrong bathroom, and the hyperventilating, and the reminiscing about how Tom Welling led me all wrong and if I ever get my hands on him I'm gonna kiss him and then kick him, possibly not in that order.

"Breathe," cautions my reflection. "You're starting to look a little crazy."

She's not wrong. Gina, the best friend from whom I stole the DVF dress I'm wearing, did my hair in fancy braids for the night (albeit only after I bribed her into it). One is starting to come loose, though, and I lost an earring at some point in my flight to the bathroom. Between those things and the blood starting to trickle down my fingertips, I really do look like a nutcase.

At least nobody else is here to witness my⁠-

"Shit."

The door handle that sliced me starts to turn. I move faster than I've ever moved in my entire life as I sprint into the nearest stall, slam the door, and hike my feet up on the toilet so no one sees that there's a woman in heels and painted toenails creeping her way around the men's bathroom.

The door creaks inward.

Footsteps ring out. Male-I mean, obviously, they're male, given the fact that we're in the men's bathroom, but there's a heavy thump and a kind of power in the stride that can only come attached to a Y chromosome.

Thump.

Thump.

I stare at the gap underneath the stall door. My breath is held hostage in my lungs and I'm doing the best I can to get my heart to stop beating so damn loudly as those feet come into sight.

And then they stop right in front of me.

I used to play a game with my mom when I was little-before she left, before she told Baba, I can't do this anymore and kissed me on the cheek and took her one duffel bag with her-where we'd sit outside coffee shops and make up stories about the people who passed by.

Little old lady in a pillbox hat that Jackie O. would've been jealous of? Secretly a fairy princess, my mom would whisper in my ear. She's been hiding out in our world while her one true love fights a war to make their kingdom safe for her again.

A young, scruffy man busking on the corner for dollar bills dropped into his guitar case? That's an angel, she'd tell me. He accidentally fell off a train in heaven and he's gotta earn enough money to buy his ticket back home.

The hot dog vendor was a genie. The breakdancers on the subway were forest nymphs. Every rat scurrying past on the sidewalk was a poor little boy under a witch's spell who just had to find a way to break the curse.

But these shoes? This man?

That can only be a devil.

It's in the flawless gleam of the oxblood leather loafers. The way the charcoal gray pants cuff, ironed to razor-blade perfection, floats above his ankle. Those socks, black as midnight.

And when he speaks, I know it for sure, because the voice those ankles belong to is like anointing oil poured over broken granite.

"Mne plevat'," he growls in a harsh, ice-cold rumble. "Ya khochu, chtoby ty nashel yego i ubil."

The bathroom is graveyard quiet, but I can hear only mumbled squeaking from the other end of the phone call. The man in the oxblood shoes doesn't let his friend finish before he interrupts.

"Should I repeat myself in English so the message is clear? 'I don't give a fuck. I want you to find him and kill him.' Don't call back until it's done."

The beep that follows ends the call.

I realize when the edges of my vision start to burn and blacken that I haven't breathed since the man walked in. I can feel sweat beading up on my temples and my armpits. But I just have to hold out a little longer, a little longer, a little fucking longer, because if the man will just leave, then I can...

Oh, no.

I see it as it's happening-fast enough to understand, but too slow to do anything about it.

The blood that's been leaking down my knuckles forms a diamond at the tip of my pointer finger. Wells up. Swells up. Stretches...

And then it falls to the checkerboard tile floors with a tiny, a soft, but an utterly undeniable plip.

Silence follows.

Then: slowly, slowly... those oxblood shoes turn to face me.

"Whoever's in there," the devil snarls, "open the door before I break it down."