Chapter 1: Clever Beauty
*New York City, somewhere in the Bronx—About 8 AM*
*
The sun shined softly on that specific morning. The light was everywhere but never hitting too much on people’s eyes. It could be described in a simple way: lovely. As sunlight lovely shines on the city, New York City to be exact, Daisy Neems is walking at the calmest of pacing.
She has an important meeting in a few minutes, a career-changer one! Daisy was wearing, along with a red and violet dress, her purse, an indigo-colored micro bag. She looks at her phone. It’s 8:04 AM. Just as Daisy would get her phone back into the bag, the phone buzzes. She takes a look. A contact named Chief sent a message saying “Remember: don’t let yourself go too much”.
“Don’t worry, Chief,” Daisy thought. “I can do this.”
Daisy keeps walking, confident since this was her breadwinner, but slightly nervous due to meeting a declared Onizov blood buddy. Just mentioning the surname Obnizov would send a little shiver down Daisy’s spine. She had connections with the mafia, aka the men she goes after, like the one she is coming for today.
As she walks, all different sorts of people can be seen: friend groups chatting, a kebab seller counting a small amount of money, three men talking in an alleyway, and what seemed to be a rat peeking out of a sewer, sniffing and returning to the dark pit.
Daisy’s phone buzzes again. She grabs it and sees it’s a message from a contact named “Honey”. Yes, quote-on-quote Honey. The message says “You comin’?” Daisy sighs, rolling her eyes, and just puts her phone back in her little purse.
As she stops by a restaurant, Daisy looks at her reflection in the window glass and fixes her hair position. She gets her lipstick out of the purse and gives her sweet little pussycat lips a more vibrant bloody-red shine. Daisy stops at the door, and is able to see, on a table right by the cashier’s desk, the one she was going to meet, none other than Quote-on-Quote Honey.
Daisy breathes in and out two or three times and enters the restaurant. Quote-on-Quote Honey sees her and secretly waves. Daisy responds to that mysterious and tired-looking fellow with a jolly but hidden wave.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Honey,” Daisy greets him. “You know how New York traffic is.”
“Yeah, I know,” Quote-on-Quote Honey mumbled, in a phlegmatic voice.
Quote-on-Quote Honey leaned forward to kiss Daisy, who shut his kissy lips with her finger, still keeping a joyful smile.
“Not yet, silly, I need what you promised,” Daisy whispered, cleaning her finger on her dress. “Besides, not here in open space. there are children here.”
“You were looking for a bad boy on Datr, now that you got one, you can’t let him go.”
Datr was a dating app, where daters were able to get dates based on categories. One of the said categories was Bad Boy. This particular fellow, Quote-on-Quote Honey, caught the attention of Daisy because he had connections, mafia connections that both she and Chief, who messaged her before, might want to know more about.
“Say, Obnizov blood buddy, huh?” Daisy remarked.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s me,” Quote-on-Quote Honey replied, looking at Daisy’s bodacious breasts.
Daisy and Quote-on-Quote Honey could still hear each other clearly, despite the TV next to them being on and loudly streaming a football game.
“Don’t tell me you’re one of the twins!” Daisy lowered her head down to make her date’s attention come back to her.
“I’m not that lucky.”
“Oh, so you just work for them?”
“Yep, I have the entire town at my feet. And I’m just a little helper.”
“You sound imprudent,” Daisy giggled.
“I’d be more upset if I knew what this word meant,” Quote-on-Quote Honey giggled back as he leaned his head slightly towards Daisy.
“Imprudent and unclever, I kinda like this,” Daisy whispered, in a flirty voice, as she leaned her head towards Quote-on-Quote Honey.
As she leaned toward him, she grabbed her phone, all discreet, and called Chief, as he just sent a message saying “Call me and the Shadows will come”.
Daisy saw, from the corner of her eye, that it was calling. Just as Chief answered, he turned it off. She made kissy lips to Quote-on-Quote Honey, who made kissy lips back and closed his eyes. Daisy saw there was a bearded and buff man watching her from near the cashier's desk. He looked at Daisy, who made a confirmation sign with her head.
“We got him,” the man mumbled into a walkie-talkie.
“You see, Honey,” Daisy said, with her flirty voice. “You really should be more cautious, maybe even looking at your back…”
“What…?” Quote-on-Quote Honey babbled, still making kissy lips.
When he opened his eyes, Quote-on-Quote Honey just saw Daisy on her chair, looking at him. She tilted her eyes up. When Quote-on-Quote Honey looked at his backside, all he could see was a gun barrel pointing at his nose. He gulped.
“But, but,” Quote-on-Quote Honey stuttered. “How?”
“You are the saddest catch I’ve got,” Daisy said, revealing a police badge. “They might give you a dictionary in prison, look up ‘imprudent’, it may be useful.”
Quote-on-Quote Honey looked around. Everyone was looking at him, and there were more police officers at the door. So he just sighed and raised his hands. The man who was pointing the gun at him pulled a pair of handcuffs.
“Thank you, Daisy,” the man said with a nice smile hidden behind that deep beard. “We’ve been tracking this pr*ck for weeks.”
“That’s just my job,” Daisy smiled. “Though I don’t wanna take the risk of getting bad breath from a kiss again.”
“Bad breath?”
“The one I caught last weekend left a salmon taste on my lips for three days.”
“Mere occupational hazard,” the man laughed. “Okay, Gecko, let’s move, come on, hapaya!”
Gecko, aka Quote-on-Quote Honey, was carried to a paddy wagon, while the people around, police people and passersby, applauded.
“My job here is done,” Daisy thought loudly, applying more lipstick and leaning back in her chair.
*
*NYPD break room—Early night*
*
Cups of coffee toasted and the police people cheered.
“Let’s hear it for our great femme fatale, and now promoted to second lieutenant, Daisy Neems!” Chief, last name Davis, a pale plumpy guy in his fifties, shouted.
“Hip, hip, hooray!” Everyone yelled three times.
Daisy responded by toasting her cup of coffee with a nervous but sympathetic smile. Chief Davis put his hand on her shoulder, with a proud father-daughter grin.
“Alright, guys, please, settle down,” Chief Davis asked.
Everyone present, in a matter of fifteen seconds, stopped commemorating and stood quiet.
“So, this one guy Daisy caught today is just a small piece of this gigantic puzzle known as the Obnizov family.”
The room was awfully quiet, and the only noises heard were sips of coffee and eventual stomach growls reacting to the coffee.
“There are mafia families in this city, but not all of them are that bad. Yes, they may resort to violent acts when it involves gambling or loan sharking, but we always keep an eye out for them. I mean, these guns sold to us by the Volpianis are pretty good, none of them are failing since we started buying them. The coffee brought by the Nogueira family is also something exceptional. We all know that, right?”
Some people toasted their cups of coffee, as Daisy looked more confident than ever, trying as well to not be smug.
“Even the ones we keep an eye open to, like the Ricci family or the Romanos, are of good use. We’re on good terms with all of them, but it had to appear one black sheep.”
A throat-cleaning sound was heard. Chief Davis realized what he did.
“Oh, sorry, I mean, a rotten apple appeared. The only one whose germs keep coming back like a zit. We only manage to get one of the Obnizov’s people at a time, even with Miss Neems' excellent service. They seem to keep going strong with their violence and wrongdoings. I fear that, without the other mafia families controlling themselves, we could have a gigantic fight between them. And Lord knows what would happen with the innocent ones, the ones that are unwillingly and accidentally in the middle of the fights…” Chief Davis said, with a sad tone, removing his cap, revealing a bald spot.
Daisy, with a loving smile, put her hand on the Chief’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, this will stop, eventually,” she declared.
Chief Davis’ smile returns and he tilts his head down, affirmative.
“That’s the spirit we must have until the end. We will continue searching for more members of the Obnizov family!”
Everyone cheered.
“Okay,” Chief Davis calmed everyone down again. “Night shift patrol, back to duties, day shift patrol, you are dismissed.”
The day shift patrol left, including Daisy, who grabbed another cup of coffee. Chief Davis looked proud at her.
“This will stop, eventually,” he remembers, leaving and laughing, at what Daisy said.
Daisy was hiding in a corner. She had a sassy smile.
“Oh, you’re challenging me? Well, you’re gonna see me try,” Daisy thought and giggled.