Katsu Fiend

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-83541-536-8
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

From a Goodreads Choice and Stoker Award® winning author, Succession meets The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry in this taut, fast-paced tale of sibling betrayal as the three heirs - the golden boy, the ferocious middle sister, the dilettante youngest child - to a powerful syndicate rush to fill the vacuum after their father falls critically ill, not realising the demonic forces he kept at bay. Some families have skeletons in their closets. This one has a demon in its boardroom. When Maris Berisha was nine years old, she heard something scratching at the walls of her family's penthouse. It felt like something malevolent was there, watching them. The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they've always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They're blessed. At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family-Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris's most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora's job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn't get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.

Alma Katsu's books have been nominated for and won multiple prestigious awards including the Stoker, Goodreads Readers Choice, International Thriller Writers, Locus Magazine, the Western Heritage Awards, Spain's Celsius 232 festival, and appeared on numerous Best Books lists including NPR, the Observer, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Goodreads, and Amazon. She has written two spy novels (RED WIDOW and RED LONDON), the logical marriage of her love of storytelling with her 30+ year career in intelligence. She also writes novels that combine historical fiction with supernatural and horror elements. THE HUNGER (2018), a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party, was named one of NPR's 100 favorite horror stories, was on numerous Best Books of the Year lists, sold rights in 17 languages, and continues to be honored as a new classic in horror. Her first book, THE TAKER (2011), was named one of the top ten debut novels of 2011 by Booklist. Ms. Katsu is also a contributor to the Washington Post Book World, where she reviews thrillers. She has relocated from the Washington, DC area to the mountains of West Virginia, where she lives with her musician husband Bruce and their two dogs, Nick and Ash.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Katsu, Alma

Leseproben

NOW

Maris luxuriates in her office on the penultimate floor of a Midtown high-rise. Her family name—BERISHA—beams over the city in giant, glittering letters.

The sign outside the door reads Special Adviser to the Chief of Strategy.

Her desk is a huge sheet of glass anchored with piles of papers and reports, scattered with a few high-end tchotchkes. A Clichy millefiori paperweight, a handful of insanely expensive fountain pens that she never uses. There are two laptops, closed, but no monitors, nothing to spoil her bird’s-eye view of Upper Manhattan. There are no photographs. No sentimental mementos, no talismans of affection to offer comfort during stressful moments.

Maris wears a smart Prada pantsuit. Her dark, wiry hair is tamed as best it can be to look professional, if not sleek. She sits with her chair rocked back at a leisurely angle, the heels of her Louboutin boots resting on the edge of the desk.

On the phone in Maris’s hand, a nearly naked man writhes on pale pink sheets. She recognizes those sheets. They are on her bed, where she left the nearly naked man a few hours ago.

He is handsome and painstakingly fit. Skin stretches tautly over the peaks and valleys of his chest and abdomen. He’s like a statue of a Greek god toppled on its side and wrapped in a pink toga.

If a statue came to life to masturbate.

“Are you watching this, baby?” he whispers. A single, perfectly oiled lock of black hair falls over his forehead. He closes his large doe eyes and slips a hand under the waistband of his pin-striped Parke & Ronen briefs.

She recognizes the underwear. They were a present from her.

Of course I’m watching, you slut. “I’m at work,” Maris growls. “I don’t have time for this—”

A lazy grin. “What do you mean, you don’t have time? You’re the boss lady.”

“I’m not the boss lady.” Yet.

She doesn’t turn it off, though. Ricardo is right. No one is going to stop her. No one ever comes to her office, not to demand so much as a minute of her time. Her father may have given her an impressive job title, but no one knows exactly what she does, including Maris herself. Which means she is free to do whatever she wants.

And the best use of her time at this very moment, it seems, is watching her little amuse-bouche jerk off.

She doesn’t say anything as he performs for her, moaning and writhing and arching his back, but it’s having the desired effect, making her tingle in all the right places. She’s thinking about calling it quits and trotting the five blocks to her apartment to join Ricardo on that massive, aircraft-carrier-sized bed . . .

And that is exactly when the glass door to Maris’s office flies back and her assistant, Keeley, bursts in.

Maris fumbles to shut off the phone.

Usually, Keeley keeps her expression completely neutral in front of Maris, but at this moment, her face is lit up like a child’s at Christmas. “Maris, you’re wanted in your father’s office—now!”

The words Maris has been waiting to hear.

She’s out the door in the blink of an eye, jogging toward the elevators. “What’s this about?” she asks Keeley, who tries to keep up with her boss on thick, stubby legs.

“They didn’t say. Just that you’re needed in the conference room.”

Keeley has fallen behind by the time Maris reaches the elevators. It’s only one flight up, but the special elevator will deposit her right in her father’s suite. The CEO’s suite. Maris is alone in the mirrored box, smoothing a few stray flyaways and checking her teeth and practicing her serious expression, the one she uses in the presence of her father’s advisers. The pleasant tingling grudgingly evaporates. What could Zef want? Maris tries to remember her father’s schedule, delivered by email every day by eight a.m. You’d think it would be exciting, running one of the largest import-export companies in the world, a company that rivals Koch Industries and Cargill, dwarfs Nucor and Daifuku. But Zef’s schedule was a daily disappointment: there were no tête-à-têtes with the G7 or midnight meetings with the mysterious cabal of CEOs purported to rule the world, and only rarely was he whisked away on the corporate jet. No, his schedule was much the same every day—one dreary appointment blurring into the next, and that’s if he comes into the office at all, as he often chooses to work out of his mansion a few blocks away—and so she stopped paying attention to it.

The doors to the special elevator open. Maris barrels through the waiting room and past her father’s executive assistant, a middle-aged woman named Cicely.

Cicely leaps up as Maris heads toward Zef’s office. “What are you doing, Maris?” There’s a warning high note in her voice. She fancies herself Zef’s watchdog.

“He asked for me,” Maris yells over her shoulder. She doesn’t slow down. She feels a drop of self-satisfaction, realizing that Cicely doesn’t know. Cicely likes to think she’s closer to Zef than anyone, that she knows Zef better than his own children. His wife.

Needless to say, on that glorious day when Zef is gone, Cicely will be history.

Maris passes glass walls that see into the conference room. There’s a group gathered around the table. Her father is in his usual seat at the head, hunkered down like a boulder. She is struck, as she is nearly every time she sees him, by how Middle Eastern he looks. The hawklike brow, prominent nose, piercing eyes. But he’s not; he’s one hundred percent Albanian, and he would tell you so proudly. (The birthplace of the blood feud! Zef likes to brag to strangers, but Maris is pretty sure this is not something to be proud of.)

To Zef’s right is Maris’s older brother, Dardan, first in line to inherit the throne. To Zef’s left is the head of their legal department, Walter Slocomb, a man who has worked for her father for as long as she can remember. On the other side of Walter is the head of corporate communications, Sally Bright. To Dardan’s left, Ajax Danielopoulos, the COO.

Their heads turn when they see Maris charge past them on the other side of the glass. Maris bursts through the last set of doors and stops to catch her breath, all eyes on her.

How prickly and cold those eyes are. You are not needed here, you are not welcome here. She is the odd one out again. Not part of the inner sanctum.

Not like Dardan.

She takes the seat at the opposite end from her father. His eyes are on her, too, but he’s not so forbidding.

“What did I miss?” Maris asks.

“We’ve got trouble,” Ajax answers.

Sally swivels toward Maris. The head of corporate communications is in her fifties, a large woman with short hair dyed platinum and oversized glasses. She dresses well, expensively, but her face sags like a wet paper bag. Surely plastic surgery could fix that, Maris thinks, but Sally Bright doesn’t seem the type. She is relatively new, having been hired away from a rival firm, and Maris hasn’t had a chance to get to know her. She has no desire to get to know her, anyway: spokespeople lie for a living. Maris has never trusted them.

“We just got word that a whistleblower will be testifying against Berisha before Congress tomorrow,” Sally says. Her face is all disdain, pinched mouth and furrowed brow. “He’s going to tell them that the company illegally bribed members of Congress to secure their approval for the takeover of Doma.”

Doma is short for Tovary Dlya Doma, a Russian import-export company. The purchase has been moving forward under the radar for months because this is not a good time to buy anything Russian. The war has complicated everything. When the possibility to acquire Doma came up, the general feeling at Berisha was that it shouldn’t be a problem. Doma isn’t an arms manufacturer. It doesn’t produce anything for the great and terrible Russian war machine. Doma is toasters and bedspreads and paper towels. Like most of Berisha International, Doma is a middleman, really. Dull as dishwater.

But that is not the whole story. After all, even soldiers eat toast.

“Who is the whistleblower? Do we know?” Maris asks.

Walter, the lawyer, grimaces. He looks rueful, almost apologetic. “I’m afraid it’s pretty bad. One of our lobbyists, a kid named Jack Hargrove. When he quit about six months ago, he told us he was leaving for other opportunities. These things happen.”

“And now he’s going to testify to Congress?” Dardan mutters. Everyone seems to be doing their best to ignore him.

“Why am I not hearing about this until today? The day before this traitor walks into Congress?” Zef erupts. A fist comes down on the table. Everyone jumps.

Walter gestures at the boss with his hands: Calm down.

“As Walter said, we had no reason to suspect that he was disgruntled,” Sally says. The lobbyists would be part of her department—though it appears Hargrove quit before Sally took over. No one could blame her.

“We should’ve kept tabs on him. Sloppy,” Zef shouts.

The main question someone should be asking—whether this allegation is true, if Berisha really paid bribes to senators and representatives to make sure the deal was approved—is not broached. Everyone knows the answer already.

“He didn’t do this by himself,” Ajax says. Maris has always liked Ajax, another longtime member of the team. She almost thinks of him as Uncle Ajax, he’s been around so long. He’s about her father’s age, has the same fireplug build,...