Because It Is My Blood

by Gabrielle Zevin

  I walked into the foyer, where I dripped all over their marble floor.

  After a minute, Keisha returned with a towel and Mr. Kipling.

  Mr. Kipling’s face was concerned. “Anya, what is it? Has something happened?”

  I told him that I needed to speak to him alone. “Yes, of course,” Mr. Kipling said. He led me into his home office.

  One wall was covered in pictures. Mostly, they were of his wife and daughter, but there were pictures of my father and mother, and me, Natty, and Leo, too. I noticed one or two of Simon Green.

  I took Imogen’s journal out of the bag and set it on his wooden desk.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Imogen’s journal,” I said.

  “I didn’t know she kept one,” Mr. Kipling said.

  I told him that I hadn’t known either. “She says things in it”—I paused—“things about you.”

  “We were friends,” Mr. Kipling said. “I can’t know what you’re talking about unless you tell me.”

  “Did you and Imogen kill Nana?”

  Mr. Kipling sighed heavily and put his balding head in his hands. “Oh, Annie. Galina wanted us to. She was suffering so much. She was in pain all the time. She was losing her mind.”

  “How could you do that? Do you know what Nana’s death led to? Leo getting in the fight with Mickey at the funeral, and Leo shooting Yuri Balanchine, and Leo getting shot himself. And me having to shoot Jacks. And me having to go to Liberty. And everything. Everything terrible that happened began with Nana’s death!”

  Mr. Kipling shook his head. “You’re a smart girl, Annie. I think you know it started long before.”

  “What do I know? I know nothing! I’ve been in the dark for a year now. You left me that way.” My face was flushed and my throat was raw. “You betrayed me! Nana and Imogen are probably in Hell! And you are going there, too!”

  “Don’t say that. I would never betray you,” Mr. Kipling insisted. “The truth is, I worked for Galina before I worked for you. How could I deny her?”

  “You should have come to me.”

  “Your nana wanted to protect you. She didn’t want you involved.”

  “She wasn’t in her right mind. She didn’t know what she wanted. You said so yourself. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “Annie, I love your family. I loved your father. I loved Galina. I love you. You must know that I did my best. That I did what I thought was right.” He moved around his desk to put his arm on my shoulder but I shook him off.

  “I should fire you,” I whispered. My voice was husky, and I was on the verge of losing it altogether. I’d been yelling at people all day.

  “Give me a stay of execution. Just this once,” Mr. Kipling pleaded. “I love you, Annie. I love you like my own flesh and blood. There are other lawyers, maybe even better ones. But your business is not business to me. Your business is my life and my very heart. Your father was the best man I have ever known, and I promised him I would take care of you in any way I could. You know this. If ever I betray you again, even inadvertently, you have my permission to fire me immediately. God as my witness, I will fire myself.”

  I turned to look at Mr. Kipling. He was holding his arms out wide, a gesture of beseeching. I moved closer to him, and I let him embrace me. For a variety of reasons, I could not bring myself to mention Simon Green.

  XVI

  I ATTEND CHURCH

  ASIDE FROM FUNERALS, I had not been inside a church since Christmas Eve. At first, I had had perfectly good reasons for my truancy—hiding, Liberty, house arrest—but even after I was free, I found that I didn’t want to return. It is probably too strong to say that I had lost my faith but I can’t think of another way to describe it. I had been pious for so long, and where had it gotten me? Leo was dead, and faith-wise, I might as well have been seasick in a cargo ship in the middle of the Atlantic.

  (So, why was I going to church that Sunday? Did I hope to rekindle the dying embers of my faith? No indeed, readers.) The reason I was going to church was decidedly ungodly. I hoped to run into Sophia Bitter. I had decided that Charles Delacroix, my foe, was right. The best way to settle the question of Sophia’s involvement was to put it to her directly. Even if she lied to me, that lie would tell me something. And she couldn’t try to kill me in a church.

  Natty had told me to wake her so that we could go to church together, but I didn’t want her or anyone else with me. I set out early so that I could walk down to St. Patrick’s instead of taking the bus.

  I did not pay attention during the service. From the balcony, I had spotted Sophia Bitter. She sat about halfway toward the front and was wearing a red hat with a spiderlike ornament. Mickey was not by her side.

  As soon as Mass was over, I ran down to the gallery to talk to Sophia Bitter.

  “Sophia,” I called.

  She turned unhurriedly, like she was dancing a waltz. At eye level, I could see the hat wasn’t a spider but two crimson bows sitting atop each other. “Anya,” Sophia greeted me. “How lovely to see you. Forgive me. I was on my way to confession.” Sophia moved closer to me and kissed me on both of my cheeks. Her lips were warm and sticky with lip balm. I asked her where Mickey was and she said that since Yuri’s death, he’d been going to his father’s church if not skipping Sunday Mass altogether. “Well,” she said, “I must get in the confession line.”

  I asked her if something weighed particularly heavy on her soul.

  Sophia cocked her head to the side and smiled a little. She paused to look me in the eyes, which I made sure to keep friendly and blank. “This is humor, yes?”

  I made my voice as light as a butterfly. “Cousin Sophia, the strangest thing happened. I was on Museum Mile, and a man was selling chocolate. Of course, I asked him if he had Balanchine Special Dark. It’s my favorite, you know. And since Nana died and Jacks went to prison, no one ever brings it by the apartment.” I paused to look at Sophia. Her expression was as empty as my own, but I thought I saw her pupils dilate slightly. What had Dr. Lau said about dilated pupils? “So, I bought this bar and I forgot all about it until my boyfriend, Win—you remember him?—wanted chocolate. But when he took off the Balanchine wrapper, you’ll never guess what was underneath. It was a Bitter chocolate bar. I thought, ‘Bitter. That’s Cousin Sophia’s family. How strange that a Bitter bar should end up under a Balanchine wrapper.’”

  Sophia opened her mouth to speak, and for a second, I even thought she might have a perfectly logical explanation for what had happened. Other churchgoers were passing us by. She closed her mouth decisively. She smiled more broadly than before. “All this honey,” she said with a snort.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this honey. There must be a bee, Anya.” Sophia adjusted her ridiculous hat and then she appraised me with narrowed eyes. “So, we are seeing each other for the first time,” she said. Sophia took off her gloves. “What a relief this is. Of course, I am aware of the oversight that you speak of. It has happened before. The workers are supposed to take off both layers of Bitter wrapping but they’re lazy, Anya. Sometimes they forget.”

  “But why are you passing off Bitter chocolate bars as Balanchine?”

  Sophia didn’t answer my question. Instead she made a funny clucking sound with her tongue, almost like the sound of a rattlesnake’s tail.

  “Did you arrange to have Natty and me killed?”

  Sophia said nothing.

  “Did you kill Leo?”

  “A car bomb killed Leo. That is what Yuji Ono says. And I had nothing to do with that.”

  I tried to control my voice. “So you did arrange to have Natty and me killed?”

  “What if I said that I had only arranged to have you killed? Would the insult be less? You are a silly girl, Anya Balanchine. Yuji Ono spoke so highly of you, and I have found you nothing but disappointing.”

  “I don’t care if you like me. I just need to know whether to kill you or not.”

  Sophia let her bottom lip
fall into an expression of mock horror. “It is Sunday, Anya. We are in church!” She paused. “No one died except Leo, so maybe you could take what happened as a warning.”

  “What about your own cousin? Theo is very sick.”

  “He shouldn’t have tried to intervene. I have always hated that side of my family, and they have always hated me.” It couldn’t have been true. Why would they have been so kind to me, who they had been led to believe was Sophia’s friend? “But all this is in the past, Anya. What are you going to do now? If you kill me, that would be a waste of your efforts. My relatives from Germany will come for you and Nataliya, and we Bitters will make you Balanchines look like bunny rabbits.”

  She put her arms around me and whispered in my ear, “I had nothing to do with Leo’s death. That was my husband. He is sentimental and an idiot. When you didn’t agree to marry Yuji, Mickey took the opportunity to find out from Yuji where Leo was and he had him killed.” Sophia took a step away from me, then she moved back in to kiss me on the mouth. “What a waste. Yuri Balanchine was an old man, and Leo wasn’t bothering anyone in Japan.”

  “I don’t understand. Why kill any of us? None of us are active in Balanchine Chocolate.”

  Sophia laughed. “Do you know what the problem with Balanchine Chocolate is? Not that it is organized crime but how very disorganized your family is. There is no reason that a company as disorganized as Balanchine Chocolate should enjoy such dominance in this market. Do you have any idea how difficult it has been for me? I thought if I married your cousin, I’d have some chance to get everything running again…”

  Bitter Chocolate had been failing for some time, she said. The German market was too competitive and the only way to save the Bitter business was to move it into other territories. The perceived unrest in Balanchine Chocolate since my father’s death had made America the obvious choice. She and her high school chum Yuji Ono had conceived of a plan where the two of them could create chaos in the American market and then swoop in to split up the results. She came up with the poisoning. Sophia’s wedding to Mickey Balanchine had been another bit of strategy, devised by Yuji Ono. The tainted Balanchine supply would need to be replaced with something—why not Bitter brand? There were warehouses filled with uneaten Bitter chocolate.

  There had only been one problem: at some point, Yuji Ono had changed his mind about wanting to destroy the Balanchines.

  Here, Sophia rolled her eyes. “He saw potential in you. And he convinced Mickey to see potential in you, too. So instead of running Balanchine Chocolate into the ground, Yuji Ono became intent upon saving it. For you, Anya. As wrongheaded as I thought that was. And I was stranded here in this awful city, married to this dull man. And so I did what I could.”

  “You still haven’t said whether you tried to kill Natty and me.”

  Sophia shook her head. “You are both alive, aren’t you? So what difference can failed attempts possibly make? Bygones, I’d say.”

  “Your cousin was almost killed! My friend Imogen died! And for what?” I put my hands around her neck, but I did not squeeze and she did not scream.

  “For all the usual things, Anya. For money. And a little bit for love.” She paused. “What if I promised to leave? What if I went back to Germany and had my marriage to Mickey annulled? You can deal with him for the death of your brother without me. Or you can just decide to call it a day. One father for one brother. What if you and I never saw each other again?”

  “Why shouldn’t I just kill you?”

  “Here? In St. Patrick’s Cathedral? A good Catholic girl like you? I’ll believe it when I see it.” Sophia laughed. “You won’t kill me because you are not a murderer. That is what I said to Yuji Ono after I met you the first time. The child may be brighter than her cousins but she doesn’t have the stomach for our line of work.”

  “That isn’t so.”

  “You think you’re tough because you sliced off that assassin’s hand. It isn’t tough to injure someone when you really ought to have killed him.

  “Right now, liebchen, the smart move would be to take that machete from under your coat and stab me through the heart, too. But you won’t. I don’t envy you. Daughter of a cop and a criminal. How your heart must war with itself. So, you’ll let me go. You think you’re still deciding but it’s already done.”

  I took my hands from around her neck, and she began backing down the aisle away from me.

  I ran to her and pressed the machete into her side, the blade only piercing her cashmere coat.

  “Damn. I liked this coat,” Sophia said.

  “Just tell me one thing. Who helped you? You couldn’t have arranged the poisoning by yourself. You must have had someone over here. Was it Fats?”

  She shook her head no, and her spider hat bobbed up and down.

  “Was it Yuri? Mickey? Jacks?”

  She squinted as if that would help her see me better. Her lips came together for something like a smile. “The young lawyer,” she whispered.

  “Simon Green … Simon wouldn’t.”

  “Simon did. He hates your father, Anya. And he hates you, too.”

  “I don’t believe you. Simon Green doesn’t hate me.” I could not help but think of what Jacks had said to me.

  “People have reasons for everything under the sun.” Sophia shrugged. “All our cards are on the table. Why would I lie?”

  She turned and walked briskly out of the church. I wished I could have killed her, but Sophia was right: back then, I was still Catholic enough not to be able to do such a thing in church.

  I hesitated. I wondered if maybe I could kill her on the steps instead.

  I was about to chase after her when I felt something incredibly heavy hit me across the back of the head.

  Despite my upbringing, I must admit to taking the Lord’s name in vain.

  I turned in time to see a Bible coming straight at my forehead.

  Just before the smack, Sophia Bitter laughed.

  * * *

  I awoke in a hospital bed. What I felt was a mild amount of pain and an incredible amount of annoyance. I had let Sophia Bitter go. Who knew where she was or what trouble she would cause next? Also, I was nearly as tired of hospitals as I had been of Liberty.

  I needed to get going. I stood, feeling a bit woozy. I hadn’t been at the hospital long, so I was still in my clothes. I found my shoes (though not my machete) in the closet. I went into the bathroom to take stock of my injuries. There was a huge bump on my forehead and another one on the back of my head. I couldn’t see the second one as it was covered by hair. Other than that, I seemed to be in one piece.

  I poked my head out the doorway. There didn’t seem to be any nurses around, so I made my move. I walked down a hallway, then past the reception area. No one noticed me. In the waiting area, I could see Daisy Gogol and Natty. My sister’s face was red and tearstained while Daisy’s was pale and tense. I didn’t want to be stopped, but I also didn’t want them to be too concerned.

  I went up to them. “Shh,” I said.

  “Annie, what are you doing out of bed?” Natty yelled.

  “I’m okay, but I have to go,” I told them.

  “You’re not making any sense,” Natty said. “Who hit you? What happened?”

  “I’ll explain everything later. I’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t look fine,” Natty insisted. “You don’t look at all fine. If you don’t go back to that hospital room, I swear to God, Anya, I am going to scream.”

  I looked at the reception desk. Despite my sister’s increasingly hysterical tone, we still hadn’t aroused much interest. It was a busy hospital in a crime-filled city, and the staff was used to filtering out the cries of the agitated.

  “Natty, I have something I need to take care of, and it absolutely cannot wait.” I turned to Daisy. “Would you happen to have my machete?”

  Daisy Gogol did not choose to answer my question. Instead, she looked from me to my sister. “I feel awful, Anya. I shouldn’t have let you
go to church without me. I thought you’d be fine. It is church after all.”

  “It’s fine, Daisy.”

  “I understand if you need to fire me,” Daisy Gogol said.

  I didn’t want to fire her, but I did want to know if she had my weapon.

  “I do, Anya,” she said. “But I can’t give it to you.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. My job is to protect you, not facilitate you.” Daisy Gogol lifted me off the ground, as if I weighed nothing—and trust me, I did weigh something; I may have been small, but I was also dense (yes, occasionally in the other sense of the word, too)—and carried me back to the desk. “This girl has had a head trauma, and she’s gotten out of her room,” Daisy Gogol said to the nurse.

  The nurse looked insufferably bored with us, as if giant women toting around smaller women was a regular occurrence. She instructed Daisy to carry me back to the room, where a doctor would be in to see me shortly. As we were traveling down the hallway, I weighed my options. I could not overpower Daisy Gogol, but I was fairly confident that I could outrun her.

  She placed me on the bed gently, like I was a beloved doll. “I am sorry, Anya.”

  “I understand.”

  “But I do know a thing or two about head traumas, and you need to be monitored for the next day at least. Whatever has happened can surely wait until you’re thinking more clear—”

  I sat upright and pushed her as far as I could. I didn’t make much of an impact, but she was stunned enough that I had time to run out of the room. “Take Natty home!” I called as I fled.

  Since I didn’t have my machete, the first place I went was Fats’s speakeasy. I’d need backup before going to deal with Mickey and Sophia. “Annie, what brings you?” Fats asked.

  I had run from the hospital and I was scant of breath. “You were right. Sophia Bitter planned the hits. And I think she was responsible for the poisonings,” I said.

  Fats poured himself a shot of espresso. “Yes, that makes sense. Do you think Mickey was in on it?”