TASTE OF SIN

The deal had gone clinically clean. No blood, no raised voices, just the silent, surgical transfer of power. That always pleased Marek more than any spectacle of violence ever could. Efficiency was the only art he respected.

They exited the steel-and-glass monolith in a loose, practiced formation. The city’s cacophony—honking cabs, distant sirens, the low hum of a million lives—folded back around them. His men, Ivan and Viktor, flanked him, talking just loudly enough to sound like ordinary businessmen.

“Did you see his hand shake when he signed?” Ivan rumbled, a bear of a man with a surprisingly gentle voice. “Like a leaf in a storm.”

Viktor, all sharp angles and watchful eyes, snorted. “He’ll be on a plane to Zurich by dawn. A sudden desire for ‘mountain air.’” He mimed quotation marks with his fingers.

Marek’s mouth curved, the barest hint of a smirk. It was all the encouragement they needed. “Give it a week,” he said, his voice a low, calm baritone. “He’ll sell his stake to his oblivious brother and publish a think-piece on ‘entrepreneurial succession.’” The image was so perfectly, pathetically human.

They were still chuckling, a rare sound of genuine amusement in their world, when a force of pure, distracted fury collided with Marek’s chest.

*Thump.*

“Oh, for *fuck’s* sake—!”

It was less a person and more a tornado of black cashmere, flying dark hair, and righteous indignation. She rebounded off him as if hitting a marble pillar and landed hard on the unforgiving pavement with a gasp that was more outrage than pain.

Time didn’t stop. Marek’s world simply recalibrated.

Instantly, the loose formation tightened. Ivan and Viktor didn’t lunge; they *shifted*. Hands moved subtly toward inner pockets, postures coiling from relaxed to ready in a microsecond. The laughter died, replaced by a silent, lethal focus.

The woman sat up, a whirlwind of muttered curses. “You granite-assed mother—ow.” She shoved a wild cascade of jet-black hair out of her face, her movements jerky with anger. Then she looked up.

Marek looked down.

Her eyes were the first thing he registered. Large, almond-shaped, and a deep, warm brown, they were currently blazing with irritation. They were rimmed with smudged, dark kohl that made their intensity almost theatrical. She blinked, long lashes fluttering, and her gaze darted past him to Ivan and Viktor.

Fear, sharp and primal, flickered in her eyes for just a second. She saw the suits, the stillness, the quiet threat that radiated from them. She swallowed.

Without taking his eyes off her, Marek lifted his right hand and made a minute, dismissive flick with his fingers.

Ivan and Viktor hesitated for a fraction of a second—their boss was on the ground with a potential threat—but discipline was absolute. They melted away, retreating to the shadow of a building awning, becoming part of the city’s backdrop once more.

The woman let out a shaky breath she’d been holding. “Okay,” she said, brushing grit from her trousers. “So. Hi. You and your… choirboys have a nice day?”

“You were running,” Marek observed, his voice devoid of accusation. It was a simple statement of fact.

“Walking with aggressive purpose,” she corrected, finally looking at him properly. She took him in: the custom-made charcoal suit that spoke of money, not fashion; the sharp, ageless planes of his face; the eyes that were neither warm nor cold, but simply *observant*. “Emotionally sprinting. There’s a difference. My feet were merely along for the ride.”

He held out a hand. It was large, clean, with faint scars across the knuckles. She stared at it for a beat, then placed her smaller one in it. Her skin was warm. He pulled her up with a single, effortless motion that was both powerful and oddly elegant, as if he were used to handling things of great value and great risk.

She didn’t thank him. Instead, she took a moment to look him up and down with an appraisal that was almost insultingly frank.

“Right,” she said, as if coming to a conclusion. “Can you help me with something completely fucking ridiculous?”

His lips twitched. Amusement, a rare visitor, stirred. “The nature of the ridiculousness would determine that.”

“I’ll literally do anything.”

A heavy pause hung between them.

She winced, plump lips pursing. “*Christ*. Not *pervy* things. Jesus, man, don’t make it weird. I just met you. I have standards. They’re low, but they exist.” She blew a stray strand of hair from her mouth again, the gesture somehow both frustrated and endearing.

A genuine, almost-laugh threatened in Marek’s chest. He banked it. “What do you need?” he repeated, more intrigued now.

She dragged both hands down her face, smudging the kohl further. She was, he noted dispassionately, strikingly pretty. Not classically beautiful, but vivid. Her face was all expressiveness—those wide eyes, the full mouth now twisted in exasperation, a faint dusting of freckles across her nose.

“Okay. First, a vital question. How old are you?”

He cocked a single dark brow. “Is that relevant to the ridiculous thing?”

“Humor me. Please. Just… bear with me for a second. I’m having a day.”

“Forty-five.”

Relief washed over her features so dramatically she seemed to sag. “Oh, thank *God*. Okay. Great. That’s… legal. Ethically questionable maybe, but not illegal. Socially disastrous, which is perfect, but not jailbait. Phew.”

Marek slowly folded his arms. “And you are…?”

“Twenty-four,” she said, the words starting to tumble out in a heated rush. “And my father, the human personification of a midlife crisis, just brought his twenty-year-old girlfriend to his fucking ‘I’m-still-young’ birthday party.”

She began to pace a short, tight line in front of him, her hands gesticulating wildly.

“She’s blonde. Not like, ‘oh, she has blonde hair’ blonde. Like, *aggressively* blonde. The kind of blonde that comes with a warranty and a side of existential dread. Fake tits, a laugh that sounds like a dolphin being stepped on, and I’m pretty sure her degree is in Instagram Influencing.” She stopped, whirling to face him, her eyes blazing. “And this creature has invited her entire Delta Nu sorority to *our* family bungalow. They’re currently drinking my mother’s seventy-dollar-a-bottle Pinot Noir and taking duck-faced selfies in front of her framed divorce decree, which my dad, the prick, left on the mantel ‘as a joke.’”

She took a step closer, her scent—bergamot, vanilla, and sheer adrenaline—hitting him.

“And I,” she said, jabbing a finger in the air, “want to give him a taste of his own fucking medicine.”

“What medicine is that?” Marek asked, his tone still mild, as if discussing the weather.

“The medicine of public humiliation,” she declared. “With witnesses. The kind that doesn’t leave a mark on the skin but absolutely *evaporates* the ego. I want him to feel like the cheap, sad cliché he is, in front of everyone he’s trying to impress.”

He waited, silent. He was a master of silence; it made people pour themselves into the void.

She clasped her hands together under her chin, the picture of desperate theatrics. “So. Be my date.”

The silence stretched, thick and electric. A pigeon cooed on a nearby ledge.

“For the *party*,” she added hurriedly, her cheeks flushing. “Just show up. Look like… like *that*.” She waved a hand at all of him. “Be older. Be terrifying in a quiet, expensive way. Smile like you know where the bodies are buried—because, let’s be honest, you probably do. Just stand there and make him feel like a boy playing dress-up in his daddy’s suit.”

“Why me?” Marek asked, the question genuine.

She looked at him, her head tilting. The fear from earlier was gone, replaced by a sharp, assessing intelligence. “Three reasons,” she said, holding up fingers. “One: you look like you could dismantle a man’s entire self-worth with a well-timed sigh. Two: you don’t look like you need my money or my virtue, so you probably won’t try to fuck me later as a ‘thank you.’ And three…” She leaned in slightly, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “You’re the first person I’ve hit today who didn’t yell at me. It’s a low bar, but you cleared it.”

A beat of stunned silence passed.

“Also,” she rushed on, the moment breaking, “I cook like a fucking dream. I’m not just saying that. I will make you lasagna. The real shit. Three kinds of cheese, homemade pasta sheets, sauce simmered for eight hours. You get the whole corner piece—the one with all the crispy cheese. None of that dry, sad, cafeteria bullshit.”

That, finally, earned her his full, undivided attention. Food, real food, was one of his few uncomplicated pleasures.

“And tiramisu,” she added desperately, seeing his interest. “The kind that makes you question your life choices. I’ll dust the cocoa in the shape of your initials if you want.”

“When is this party?” he asked.

Hope exploded across her face, bright and unchecked. “Tomorrow. Eight p.m. Silver Springs Avenue. Twenty-two B. The big, tacky bungalow with the pretending-to-be-modern sculpture out front that looks like a tangled paperclip.”

He tilted his head, studying her. “You’re remarkably confident asking a stranger for this.”

“I’m not confident,” she corrected bluntly. “I’m desperate. There’s a *vast*, canyon-like difference. Confidence is quiet. Desperation is accosting well-dressed potential psychopaths on the street. See the distinction?”

Marek’s lips threatened to curve into a real smile. He controlled it. “How old is your father?”

She grimaced as if tasting something sour. “Forty-one. My parents had me when they were kids themselves. They divorced two years ago. He was cheating. A lot. With… variations on the blonde theme.”

Her voice lost its frantic energy, dropping into something lower, more painful. “My mother… she tried to disappear without dying, you know? Just… quietly folded herself up until there was almost nothing left.”

Something dark and familiar shifted behind Marek’s eyes. He’d seen that kind of vanishing before.

“And now?” he prompted, his voice softer.

“Now he parades the girl around,” she said flatly, her gaze going distant. “Touches her lower back at the dinner table. Lets her call him ‘Daddy’ in that voice. He *winks* at his friends while she’s talking. It’s a performance. He wants a fucking trophy and an audience.”

She scoffed, the sound raw. “He’s probably in the kitchen right now, finger-banging his personal weather girl against the Sub-Zero fridge while I’m expected to smile and pass the fucking asparagus.”

This time, the laugh that bubbled in Marek’s chest was too sharp to completely swallow. It escaped as a low, choked huff of air, his shoulders shaking once.

She saw it. A triumphant, wicked little grin flashed across her face. “Ha! I made the monolith almost-laugh! Mark the calendar!”

Composing himself, he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Amy. Short for Amethyst Silver. Yes, it’s terrible. My mother was going through a crystal phase.”

The name hit him like a small, sharp stone. *Silver.*

His brow furrowed, the amusement fading into something more calculating. “Silver. Derek Silver?”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “You know him?”

“Know him?” Marek repeated, the words quiet and deliberate. “No. He’s a persistent gnat. He owns the *Freedom Press*. He writes… speculative editorials about my business projects. He has a fondness for words like ‘shadowy’ and ‘questionable origins.’ He’s a mosquito buzzing at a windowpane.”

Amy’s sharp smile returned, brighter and more satisfied than before. “Perfect,” she breathed. “Oh, that’s just poetic. This is better than I hoped.”

She took a step back, already mentally leaving. “Oh,” she added, tossing the words over her shoulder with devastating casualness, “and if you ever do decide to actually throw him off a building someday? I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles he tripped. I’ll be your alibi. I’ll bring lasagna to your jail cell.”

She gave a little wave without looking back and strode into the flowing crowd, her black hair swinging. He caught her final mutter, carried on the wind: “Fuck Delta Nu. Fuck you, Chloe. And fuck your champagne-peach lip gloss.”

Marek stood motionless on the sidewalk.

Ivan and Viktor materialized beside him, their presence careful.

“Boss?” Ivan ventured, his brow knitted in profound confusion. “What… what was all that? Is there a problem?”

Marek watched the empty space where the whirlwind named Amy had been. A complex cocktail of emotions—amusement, intrigue, a faint, forgotten spark of something like chivalric outrage—stirred under his disciplined ribs. It was not a feeling he could easily name or file away.

He turned to his men, a slow, predatory smirk finally touching his mouth.

“It seems,” he said, the words laced with a anticipation he hadn’t felt in years, “that I have a date.”

Viktor blinked. “A… date, sir?”

“Yes. Tomorrow. Eight o’clock.” Marek began walking again, his pace measured. “Inform the usual channels I will be unavailable. And, Viktor?”

“Yes, boss?”

“Find out everything you can about Derek Silver. Not the public file. The *other* one. The one he thinks is buried.”

“Understood.”

As they walked, Ivan, ever the pragmatist, mumbled, “Should we be concerned about this… distraction?”

Marek didn’t answer immediately. He was thinking about lasagna, about tiramisu, about the delicious, ridiculous prospect of watching a pompous man’s world curdle with one well-placed look.

“No, Ivan,” he said finally. “I don’t believe we should.”

For the first time in a long time, something that wasn’t a deal, a threat, or a calculation promised to be genuinely interesting. And Marek had always had a weakness for the interesting.

--

Marek’s penthouse was not a home. It was a command center disguised as a monument to minimalism. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a cold, sweeping panorama of the city’s glittering grid. The furnishings were sparse, precise, and achingly expensive—a curved steel sofa, a single brutalist sculpture, walls the color of weathered ash. Silence reigned, deep and absolute, broken only by the whisper of climate control.

He shrugged off his suit jacket, draping it over the back of a chair with automatic care. The encounter on the street played in his mind on a loop. Not the collision, but the aftermath. The girl—Amy—with her kohl-rimmed fury and her absurd, delicious proposition.

“*You look like you’d make him insecure in under thirty seconds.*”

He poured two fingers of a smoky, amber-colored whisky, not to drink, but to hold. The weight of the crystal was familiar, solid. He stood before the window, a silhouette against the city’s neon pulse.

“Viktor,” he said, his voice cutting the quiet. He hadn’t heard the man enter, but he knew he was there.

Viktor emerged from the shadowed hallway, a slim tablet in his hand. “The preliminary reports, boss. On both subjects.”

“Leave it.” Marek didn’t turn. “Summarize.”

Viktor cleared his throat, a soft sound. “Derek Silver. Forty-one. Owner and Editor-in-Chief of *Freedom Press*. Circulation is middling, but he’s leveraged a reputation for ‘muckraking’—his term—into minor cable news appearances. Aggressively social. Three marriages, two divorces. Current, Chloe Brown, is not his wife. He is…” Viktor paused, searching for the correct term. “Financially over-leveraged. The bungalow, the cars, the girl… it’s all facade. He has taken significant, quiet loans against his shares of the paper. The lenders are… impatient.”

Marek took a slow sip of whisky. A gnat with debt. Predictable. “And his interest in my projects?”

“Superficial. He has no real sources inside our organizations. He pieces together public permits, corporate filings, and gossip. He writes sensational headlines because it generates clicks. He once described your acquisition of the old harbor warehouses as ‘a shadow consortium tightening its tentacles.’” Viktor’s voice was flat. “He is a nuisance, not a threat.”

“Until he gets lucky or becomes desperate,” Marek murmured. Debt and desperation were a volatile cocktail. “And the other file?”

A longer pause. Viktor shifted his weight. “Amethyst Silver. Twenty-four. Enrolled at the Culinary Institute. Top of her class, specializing in pastry and Italian cuisine. Her final project last semester was a deconstructed tiramisu that, according to her professor’s notes, ‘challenged the fundamental emotional expectations of the dessert.’ She works part-time at a high-end bakery called ‘Brioche.’”

Marek’s thumb stroked the edge of his glass. A culinary student. She hadn’t been bluffing.

“Her mother,” Viktor continued, his tone softening imperceptibly. “Eleanor Silver. Thirty-nine. Was a literary translator. Following the divorce, she exhibited signs of severe depression. There was… an incident eighteen months ago. A combination of prescription pills and alcohol. It was ruled accidental, but the hospital report suggests intent. She spent seventy-two hours on a psychiatric hold. She now lives in a care home. She rarely leaves. Amy visits her every other day without fail. She brings her food.”

Marek closed his eyes for a second. The image was clear and painful: the girl with the fierce eyes, packing up containers of lasagna or tiramisu, traveling across the city to feed a mother who had tried to vanish. The absurdity of her street-corner proposal took on a new, sharper hue. This wasn’t just about party humiliation. This was a frontline soldier in a silent war, armed with sarcasm and pasta sheets.

“And the father’s… companion?”

“Chloe Brown. Twenty. Not a sorority girl. She is, in fact, a junior journalism intern at *Freedom Press*.”

Marek turned now, a dark, genuine amusement flashing in his eyes. “He’s sleeping with his intern.”

“And promoting her to ‘lifestyle columnist’ based on her social media following,” Viktor confirmed, a hint of disgust in his own voice. “She writes a column called ‘Chloe’s Charge.’ It is primarily about spray tans and ‘dating an alpha visionary.’”

Marek set his glass down with a soft *click*. The pieces snapped together into a pathetic, perfect picture. A hollow man propping up his ego with a child’s admiration, while his real daughter, the actual grown-up in the room, fought to hold the ruins of their family together with flour and butter.

“She asked me to be her date,” Marek said, more to himself than to Viktor.

“I heard, boss.” Viktor hesitated. “It is… unusual. A potential complication. Her father writes about you. His debt makes him reckless. This connection could be used against you.”

“Yes,” Marek agreed. “It could.” He walked to the tablet, scrolling through the files himself. He saw Amy’s student ID photo. Her smile was different there—softer, less guarded. He saw the clinical language of her mother’s hospital report. He saw Derek Silver’s smug, grinning face on the society pages.

He made a decision. It was not logical. It was, by every metric of his world, foolish.

“Ivan will drive me tomorrow. Eight o’clock. Silver Springs Avenue.”

“Boss…”

“This is not a business engagement, Viktor. Consider it… field research.” Marek’s lips curved. “I need to assess the nuisance factor of Derek Silver firsthand. And I have been promised a corner piece of lasagna.”

Viktor knew better than to argue. He nodded. “Should we have background on the other guests?”

“No. I doubt I’ll remember any of them.” Marek picked up his glass again. “But do find out Derek Silver’s most sensitive pressure point. The one he thinks is invisible.”

“The debt?”

“Beyond the debt. The vanity. The secret he keeps from his ‘alpha visionary’ self-image.”

Viktor smiled thinly. “Understood.”

Alone again, Marek finished his whisky. The city lights blurred into streaks of gold and white. He thought of Amy’s voice, that crude, desperate poetry: “*Finger-banging his weather girl against the Sub-Zero fridge.*”

A low chuckle escaped him, echoing softly in the sterile, vast space. For the first time in a long time, tomorrow held an appointment that wasn’t about power, but about paradox. About seeing a gnat up close, and meeting the girl who wanted to swat him with a borrowed hand.

He looked at the student ID photo once more before the screen went dark.

“Amethyst,” he said to the empty room. The name, like the girl, was both beautiful and slightly absurd.

He was, he realized, looking forward to it.