date: 23 aprile 2019 time: evening location: warehouse district status: closed, to @nickborisov
In retrospect, Katarina should have thought to bring Bernadette with her. Meeting with third parties was always a little different from meeting both current and prospective clients, but as the younger woman was more than adept at getting what she wanted, she supposed that there wouldn’t be much of a lesson to learn here tonight. Maybe, with the way her passive expression grows into a small smile, it’s better that Bernadette hadn’t accompanied her indeed.
Here, of course, means a warehouse district just east of the Ospedale Borgo Roma and few blocks south of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, whose lighting she admired driving past as the sun set on the city. If this is the area where Nick regularly conducted business, it’s smart, and practically faultless. Hotels and nearby shopping areas mean high enough traffic that anyone driving to or from this warehouse would be overlooked, it’s close to the freeway, and conveniently enough, it is out of the way of any police stations.
But, it isn’t like Katarina’s there tonight to arrest him, anyway.
One hand holds a case filled with cash (a down payment of sorts), and in the other is a scroll of blueprints (identifying markings redacted of course) as she strides in through the door. Though the gun on her hip is difficult to miss along with what she carries (it’s a bulky thing beneath the open blazer she sports), it is perhaps the mischievous grin on her lips that should be the first to be discerned. There’s an impish glint in her eyes as well, and instead of fading as she approaches him, first offering the bag, it only seems to glow brighter.
“How many explosives would it take to bring down a nearly 40,000 square meter warehouse? And, can you have them ready in six days?” Prim, proper Katarina Du Pont. Carabinieri. Diamond-wearing socialite whose rings glint in the light of the room. It’d be wrong to say she enjoyed causing pain. But, a little chaos, a little of her own brand of justice has her smiling, even if it softens slightly as she speaks. With the approval and teams she needs, the next step is Nick Borisov, mastermind in his own right. “I don’t only want to only put it up in flames, I want to bring the entire building to the ground.”
katarina du pont is not the first of her kind to wander into the mouth of the wolf--though she does not so much as wander, as she does march with her icy gaze focused directly ahead of her. nikolai borisov has long been in the business of chaos, and there isn’t a social group more devoted to that particular cause than young and too-rich-for-their-own-good socialites, eager to settle their petty disputes with all the subtlety and grace of a gucci branded hurricane. their heels click against the cement floors of buildings they don’t even know dot their maps, they politely pretend not to notice the distinct smell of kerosene and smoke, and they always throw down the cash without looking him in the eye.
i don’t care how you do it, they say. just make it look like an accident.
katarina du pont only wears the armor of the socialite--she opens her mouth and speaks with the tongue of a general, and the look in her eyes is one that is all to familiar to nikolai borisov. spark, he thinks to himself, a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. meet tinder.
he worries the wooden end of a matchstick between his teeth, gestures for her to hand over the blueprint he can see clutched in her hand. “six days?” he scoffs. “i have them ready right now, katarina--theo is not the only one who makes magic happen in a laboratory. people just tend to like the results of my experiments a hell of a lot less than theirs.”
he meets her eyes, matches the grin he can see that she’s fighting with a full-fledged one of his own. he can feel heat start to pool in the bottom of his stomach, the beginnings of a full-fledged blaze--how long has it been, since he’s had a client who could really appreciate the art of his work? who looked at him like they wanted to reach into him to see just what they might be able to pull out? people had looked at the cathedral in awe, but that had been simple in comparison--that had only ever been meant to burn. this, what katarina is asking for, is creation as much as it is destruction. “it all depends on how much of a show you want. you’re the composer, i’m merely the conductor of this particular orchestra--i can make the tempo really swing, fast and sudden, all at once. or i can really draw it out, make it something really slow and aching. i can make it so rooms, not sections--individual rooms, go up one at a time.”
his mind is already racing, and he feels a familiar itching sensation in the palm of his hands, as though flame is licking just underneath the surface of the skin--but he bites down hard on the inside of his cheek to force himself to slow down, just for a moment.
“i have a condition, katarina.” he lowers his voice just a fraction, spares a glance to a nearby open window before he speaks again. “i need your help, your advice, in regards to a project i’ve been planning. something we both have a mutual interest in.”














