Maya had known the Leon family for over ten years.
Andrew, the older brother, was two years ahead of her in school—quiet, low-key, with solid grades, and good at sports. When they were small, he used to run over to the Hansen apartment to play. Little Maya had never paid him much attention; her nose buried in her books, she was completely indifferent to the existence of small boys. As they got older and Maya's reputation grew impossible to ignore, Andrew seemed to fold inward. He stopped coming over.
Not that Maya would have objected if he had. She'd have treated him exactly the same as before — which is to say, she'd have ignored him completely. That would have been worse, she reflected.
Jamal was different. She'd always had a soft spot for him. He was round-faced, chubby-cheeked, and quick to smile—genuinely endearing, even by the unsentimental standards of Hell's Kitchen. Before James came along, Maya had treated him like a little brother. She still did. She'd been running interference for him at school for years, making sure nobody bothered him.
She'd figured out Jamal was a little different years ago. The kid had even snuck into her room once and tried on one of her skirts. Maya hadn't made a thing of it. Twenty years from now, she knew, this would be a much more ordinary story.
But this was the Black community in 1993, and the calculus was brutal: Black men in America already faced enough. Add a second stigma on top of that, and life got significantly harder. From that angle, Lucius beating his son wasn't senseless cruelty — it was his version of trying to protect him. Misguided, yes. Effective, no. You can't beat someone's nature out of them.
Maya extended her perception to check. Lucius was hitting hard enough to sting — but every strike was landing on meaty, padded areas.
The families exchanged a few brief words of concern, confirmed Jamal was physically all right, and said good night. James was still working diligently on Maya's pinky finger the whole walk back.
1:30 AM. Maya's bedroom.
She should have been asleep. Instead she slid out from under the covers, pulled on a hooded tracksuit, and sat on the edge of the bed to pull on a pair of black stockings.
Tonight she was going to take a look at Bloody Rose Frank's base of operations.
Laced up, she eased open the small window beside her bed and dropped through it without a sound. What followed looked like parkour to anyone who might have been watching from ground level — she ran straight up the exterior wall from the second floor to the rooftop, defying gravity entirely, threading past window ledges and drainage pipes. From a distance, she would have looked like a grey-black marble bounding upward along the side of the building.
She stood on the roof of the twelve-story building, hoodie up, stocking-footed at the edge. Cold moonlight fell around her. Wind moved across the rooftop. Somewhere far below, a car horn sounded and faded. She looked around. Nothing but empty rooftop in every direction. Some view.
She looked out across the skyline toward the Twin Towers, several kilometers away.
Twelve stories still isn't high enough. She made a mental note to climb the Towers properly, one day.
Then she jumped.
Forty-some meters of open air lay beneath her. Her body traced a clean arc through the dark and landed silently on the roof of the building opposite, rolling into momentum. She was sprinting before she fully stood, vaulting over water tanks and heating ducts without breaking pace. At the next rooftop edge she didn't slow — she launched across seven meters of gap and hit the wall of a thirty-story building at a forty-degree angle, feet finding purchase, and ran laterally across its face before catching the ledge and hauling herself up.
Building by building, she crossed the neighborhood, ignoring all geometry and terrain.
She arrived at a sixteen-story apartment building across from a seven-story structure that was still lit up despite the hour. That was the place.
About twenty meters of street separated the two rooftops.
Maya closed her eyes and let her perception sink into the building across from her, starting from the bottom floor and rising.
—what the hell, you win every hand, you cheating son of a—
—one more drink, hic, this one's not bad—
—this stuff, hiss, this doesn't feel — hiss — pure enough—
—f—, f—, f—
—harder, come on—
—please, please just let me go, my family doesn't have money, you won't get anything from them, please—
—Jimmy, where's the boss?
—Boss—
Maya focused. All her attention went to the second room on the left of the top floor.
There were two men inside. One was a lean, pale, middle-aged white man in a neat suit, gold-wire glasses on his nose, sitting behind a desk with a lamp on, working through papers—the composed, cultivated air of an advisor. From the fragment of conversation she'd caught, this was Jimmy.
The other—the one who'd asked—was a big, powerfully built Black man, heavy gold chain, tattoos up to his close-cropped hairline.
"The boss is in Mexico closing a deal," Jimmy said, without looking up. "Hasuo's last shipment came in thirty percent short. Mr. Gardes had to go handle it personally. What's the matter, Wade?"
"Fisk wants to meet the boss." Wade said it flatly, like it was nothing.
Jimmy's hands stopped moving. When he spoke again, his voice had gone dry. "Wilson Fisk? What does he want with us? We've always stayed out of each other's way."
Wade rubbed his forehead. "You think they told me? Get word to the boss. Whatever he decides, that's on him."
"Troubled times." Jimmy closed the file. He wasn't going to get any more reading done tonight. "Fine. I'll contact the boss. You go explain the situation to Fisk's people. He'll be back within two weeks at the latest."
"Two weeks? That's a long time."
Jimmy looked at Wade for a long moment — just long enough for Wade to drop his gaze. Then he said, quietly, "Some things, Wade. Not knowing them is actually better for you. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good." Jimmy paused, then shifted: "Before the boss left, he put you on the Lillian situation. Any progress?"
The expression on Wade's face changed. He gave Jimmy a long, complicated look.
"I wasn't going to bring this up. Really. But since you're asking — " He grimaced. "Jimmy. Back in the day. You had a thing with Lillian too, didn't you."
Jimmy's composure cracked. He lurched forward, gripping the desk, coughing violently.
When he finally recovered enough to breathe, he shot back: "How do you know that? Did Lillian tell you? She's refused to say a word about anything—"