She slowly dipped the spoon into the broth, spooning up a little and popping it into her mouth, hoping it would warm her up as she swallowed. The fish and chick pea soup her cook had made her was an ancient family recipe that preceded even her grandfather, and was the perfect dish for this weather…

A small knock at her door interrupted, and she gave a heavy sigh before calling out a 'Come in!'. Kurt Hummel walked in, followed by the other members of Nuova Genesis, who took their place at the table. She pushed her plate away, crossing her arms over her chest. "Wine, ladies and gents?"

"Please," Anderson nodded, waving a hand slowly. "Lopez, we must speak."

"Have I not dressed for the occasion?" she teased, gesturing at the black suit and hat she adorned. "Why do you all request my presence? It is rare that all of us meet at once."

Fabray and Berry glanced at each other across the table. Fabray controlled the politics of the city, Berry the art industry. They had recently started to work together further, and in very close conjunction with Santana herself. "We think that your desire for the girl is…dangerous."

The whole group nodded, some murmuring agreement. Evans, still in his Navy uniform, rapped his knuckles on the table. "Lopez, she is newly widowed; damaged goods."

"How is that going to stop me?"

"She will be brash, make mistakes," Hudson shrugged. He had total control of the army, was pretty much a soldier himself. "Her husband was killed by the Karofskys-"

"A mistake that would have been avoided had Anderson not spited both them and the Smythes!" Puckerman interjected, glaring at the offender. "Lopez, I am in no way against you and the Pierce girl pursuing your obvious interest in each other, but not until Anderson makes amends."

"Lopez, you must understand that with her family's history we could be jeopardizing all we've built here!" Jones growled, crossing her arms angrily. "We're fine just the way we are!"

"She's right," the Changs nodded. "We've spent years building our empire. We bring a foreigner – a Pierce – into this and everything goes to hell."

Santana looked at their faces, giving a frown as she got off her chair. She walked to the window and looked out at the skyline of their empire, misting the glass with her breath.

"You underestimate my power," she finally spoke, hanging her head slightly. "I am both feared and respected within the criminal community. My eventually courtship of Pierce will not change that."

"You will put us all in danger!"

"Then you will not be invited to the wedding."

She hears the chairs scrape back. "Well then, it's decided," Tina commented, her foot steps walking towards the door. "You will court the Pierce girl, but if she brings trouble, we will react accordingly. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Santana sighed, and the rest of them left the room. She put her hand up to the increasingly cold window pane and breathed out against her skin, leaving an imprint of her hand on the window.

-0-

Brittany groaned as her head thumped again, the bruise above her eye throbbing forcefully. She looked over at Sugar, her best (and only living) friend who seemed to never leave her side nowadays. She was holding out a cup of tea, and smiling at her sweetly.

"Where are we again, Sug?"

"At the St James Hotel, downtown."

"How did we get here?"

"I got you here after Artie died."

"Oh, right." Brittany sighed and turned her eyes to the ceiling, curling her fingers around the cup of tea. "Where are the Smythes and Karofskys now?"

"The Smythes are back to the law courts. I guess they lost interest in you."

"And the Karofskys?"

"Oh, they're just following whatever the Smythes say. They backed off too. Might go back to attacking the Andersons soon enough. I mean, they did totally ruin one of the Karofsky warehouses where they kept the weapons. I don't blame them for retaliating."

"But why me?"

Sugar shrugged. "I think it's because Artie and Mr Anderson were very close. Your businesses-"

"They had nothing to do with each other, Sug. The Andersons control transport. We control…" she sighed and put a hand up to her temple, wincing as the bruises on her shoulder crackled against her skin. "We had nothing to do with them."

"Maybe Artie was hiding something from you?"

Brittany nodded. "Yeah. Maybe. I'm just glad that I have nothing to do with those Genesis thugs right now."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Blushing, Brittany looked away from her best friend. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

-0-

Sebastian shrugged himself out of bed and lit a cigarette as he walked around the room, stark naked. "Blaine, you need to stop making this so called 'mistake'."

Blaine groaned as he threw his head back, putting one hand over his face. "Not now, Smythe."

"Smythe? We're back to surnames now?"

"You know these nights mean nothing to me."

Sebastian gave a defiant laugh and put his cigarette in an ash tray, leaping onto the bed and straddling Blaine's hips. "Admit it," he growled inching his face close to the smaller man's. "you're catching feelings."

"Not even close."

"Really? 'Coz, judging from your little soldier over here," and he put his hand over the very obvious tent in the bed sheets, grasping lightly, "I think you find all this just simply…arousing."

Blaine moaned as the other man pulled the sheets down, putting his mouth down to his throbbing erection. "S-stop, Seb."

"Shut up, Anderson."

-0-

It was the 1940s, after the War, and a number of families had gathered. The city needed rebuilding, and there was no better way to do that than to do it themselves. They were all influential, powerful, controlling. And they could do it.

The Lopez family took the criminal activity, the underground business, making sure it never saw the light. The Hummel family took over business of every kind, the Andersons had transport. The Fabray family were already big names in politics, and the Berrys had just returned from a trip in Italy where they brought back with them mountains of books on art and culture. The Evans family were in charge of the Navy, and the Hudsons were in the Army. The Puckermans had just come to the town from Israel, and were very familiar with education and its systems. The Jones, the only black family in the town, took control over migrations, and the Chang and Cohen Chang family, the only Asians in town, decided to take over foreign affairs.

They became the Nuova Genesis, the unspoken, conventional, leaders of a slowly growing city that soon became one of the largest and most successful in the country.

It was the 1950s when suddenly, a group of three walked into the city, demanding a part in this newly born empire. The Smythes, a British family with a doubtful background, demanded the law courts. The Karofksys, a German (or Russian) family wanted warehouses were they could manufacture guns. They were turned down from Nuova Genesis, but somehow, they still got what they wanted. Nobody ever thought to ask how.

The Pierces were another story.

-0-

"Sebastian?"

"Yeah?"

David twirled the knife slowly in his hand, frowning at it as it didn't glint in the way it usually did. "Why did we stop going after the Pierce girl?"

"We haven't."

"But you said to lay off."

"For now." Sebastian rolled his eyes over his cigarette, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up onto the coffee table. "Eventually we'll go back to it."

"What does her family have that we need, anyways?"

"The drugs, Dave. They've got drugs. We've got law and weapons. Nobody will stand a chance against us."

"Oh. OK."

-0-

Sam gave an embarrassingly loud moan as Kurt pushed him up to the wall, popping the buttons on his jeans and pulling them down roughly. The younger man fell to his knees, planting wet kisses on Sam's crotch, his member bulging under his boxers.

"K-k-uuh…" He couldn't even form the sentence as he felt his boxers somehow disappear and Kurt's mouth finally taking in his erection. Kurt bobbed his head slowly up and down, his own groin area starting to ache as his lover's moans filled the air of his apartment. He flicked his tongue against Sam's length and tip, and Sam's hands found their way to him, digging into his hair and anchoring them both. He soon gave out a very loud cry as he exploded into Kurt's waiting mouth, and then came Kurt's lips on his, the taste of arousal still on his tongue. Sam's hand reached down the front of Kurt's trousers, wrapping his hands as much as he could around his boyfriend's package, giving a lazy grin.

"That was a lovely way of greeting me today."

"I haven't had you to myself in three days, Samuel!" Kurt muttered, pushing off the larger man and walking to his sofa. "But I didn't call you here for sex. We need to talk."

"What about?" he asked as he pulled his trousers and boxers back on.

"Anderson."

Sam sighed and sat down next to him, unbuttoning his shirt as he did to reveal a white t-shirt underneath. "I thought you were over him…"

"Oh, trust me, I am. No way I'm going back to him anytime soon. It's just…"

Sam waited patiently, watching as Kurt ran a hand through his always gelled hair, even if it was still morning, and watched as the look on Kurt's face changed into something akin to worry.

"Anderson has something going on with someone outside of Genesis, I can feel it."

"How so?"

"Well, I just feel like he's making this huge mistake."

"Well," Sam shrugged, putting a hand up to Kurt's face and smiling sweetly, "that's not your business, really."

"But what if he brings us down, Sam? What then?"

Sam pursed his lips and let his hand fall. He fell back on the sofa, his legs propped up between him and his man, and his arms draped across the back of the sofa and on the side.

"We run, I guess…"

Kurt shrugged and leaned down into his body, his head on his stomach. "You and me?"

"Yeah, out of here and somewhere else. Las Vegas, Atlantic City, New York. You name it."

Kurt nodded. "As long as I'm with you."

Smiling, Sam put on hand on Kurt's body, squeezing lightly. "I love you."

Lifting himself up, Kurt crawled up to Sam's face, closing the distance between them with a peck on the lips, his hand already rummaging at the front of Sam's boxers again.

"Now show me you mean that, boy…"

Sam grinned, flipping them over and snapping open Kurt's trousers, looking down at the gradually growing bulge. "Oh trust me, I will…"

-0-

"Sugar?"

The girl looked up as her name was called inquisitively, and slowly her face turned from a frown into a smile. She got off the lobby armchair she had been sitting on and walked over to Santana, her smile growing ever wider as she approached.

"Hello, Miss Lopez."

"But the 'miss' crap, Sugar. You can call me Santana."

"Of course." Sugar nodded at her and gestured towards the hotel restaurant, inkling her head slightly. "Shall we?"

"Yes. Isn't Brittany joining us?"

"She's too tired to move Miss…Santana."

Sugar saw as Santana's face slowly transformed from hopeful to disappointed, but she followed her into the restaurant nonetheless, sitting at their usual table near the bay window.

"Sugar, what really happened?"

"I told you, we ran into some trouble with some thugs."

Santana shook her head, grabbing the menu and flipping through it aggressively, landing in the meat section. "I don't believe that. There's more to the story and you're leaving it out. What really happened out there when you got away from Abram Manor?"

Sugar looked down at her own menu, singling out the salads, her hair carefully hiding her face from Santana's inquisitive glare. The darker woman before her slowly tapped the table with her fingers, first the index, then the middle, then the ring, then the pinkie, and then from the beginning…

"I'm waiting."

"Karofsky sent some thugs after us, to get Brittany. They got her when we were getting to the car and they were too strong for me. So I followed them in a car to a warehouse. They beat her…senseless. They thought she had information they wanted."

"Did she?"

"She doesn't. She doesn't know anything about Abram's business. Or Anderson's. They kept her – and me – in the dark."

"It's always worse."

"Why's that?"

Santana shrugged and grabbed the wine glass before her, empty for now, and held it up to the light, inspecting it.

"Because when you tell your captors you don't know anything – even if you are telling the truth – they don't tend to believe you. It's one of the rules of leading an underground, illegal organization. Trust and believe no one."

"I find it strange then that you are here."

Santana looked back at her and gave a small, wary smile.

"Brittany trusts you. There must be something there…"

-0-

Breaths and snores filled the air of Quinn Fabray's beautifully decorated bedroom, and to anyone entering the room, the rustling of the bed sheets was obvious indication that she was not alone. A brown head of hair lay next to her's on the bed, the identifiable face of Miss Berry easy to spot. They both lay, sprawled and bare, on the bed, and Quinn was the first to stir awake and clutch at Rachel.

"Rach?"

"Right here, Quinn…" Rachel murmured, rising to a sitting position and smiling at her blonde lover. "Hello."

"Hi."

"When I got here last night we said we needed to talk…"

"Well, fat lot of talking we did…" Quinn grinned, reaching up to Rachel's lips with her own, sucking slightly at the brunette's full, bottom one. "But we can talk later or-"

"No. We should talk now."

"But you're naked in my bed."

"You can pleasure both me and yourself later. Right now, we need to speak."

Quinn sighed and rolled off the bed, grabbing her discarded house coat off the floor and flinging it over her shoulders, tying the knot securely.

"OK. Speak."

"Our relationship is dangerous."

Quinn rolled her eyes and sat back on the bed, grabbing Rachel's hand in hers and rubbing the knuckles subtly with her thumb. "It's always been dangerous. No one in Nuova Genesis could be a worse match, except for maybe you and that Hudson boy-"

"That is in the past. But I'm not talking about profession wise, you know that. You know how this city views same-sex couples. If word got out that two of the most powerful women in the city were regularly seeing each other naked they would have a fit. We'd be voted off the city council. No more Genesis. And I'm pretty sure Lopez would send someone after us to kill us for ruining Genesis."

"She would do that. But I don't see your point very well, Rachel."

"My point," she drawled out, getting off the bed and walking towards the window as she spoke, "is that we've made the...unfortunately delicious mistake of falling for each other. We cannot let Santana make the same one."

She heard Quinn rise off the bed and walk towards her, her feet padding softly on the blue fitted carpet. She felt the blonde's arms circle her waist and splay her fingers across her bare stomach. She also felt Quinn's breath on the back of her neck as she leaned close, planting a small, wet kiss on her skin.

"What should we do?"

"We need to warn her."

"How? She's completely smitten for Brittany…"

"Well, we just have to make sure Brittany comes nowhere near Genesis."

"Trust me," Quinn scoffed, rolling her eyes again, "the others won't let her. She's a dangerous individual, with dangerous ties and a dangerous history. If we let her anywhere near, we'll all be ruined, not just Santana."

And the two fell silent, watching the sun slowly rise from the window, skin against skin, heart beating next to heart.

-0-

She sat at the table near the window, her eyes searching the street for any sign of her coming through the stream of people. She spotted her soon, the red jacket and gleaming black boots striding confidently towards the door, clanging it open, shaking her clothes of the rain. Her eyes travelled and caught her own eyes quickly, and then she rushed to her table, sat down, grabbed her hand and rested her head on their clasped hands, breathing deeply.

"You're alive. You're OK."

"Yeah, I am."

She looked up at her and smiled, a sad small smile beneath dark locks of wet hair obscuring tired brown eyes. "I was so worried about you."

"I'm here now."

And she leaned forward, almost climbing onto the table to get closer to her, staring into her eyes, gauging her out. "What happened? What happened at Abram Manor?"

"I don't remember…"

"But why would the Smythes go after you?"

"The business. Arthur's business."

"You mean your business."

She shrugged, sliding her hands away. "I…I don't know anymore."

"Arthur married into the Pierces. He took over the business, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did."

"Did you ever know what it was?"

"Never a clue."

"Then we need to talk to the Smythes about that, don't we?"

She made to get up, but her hands shot out and grabbed hers again, her eyes pleading with her to stay.

"Don't go. I…I miss you."

She turned her eyes back to her and smiled, softly, warmly…

"I'll stay. For a bit. And then it's to the Smythes."

As soon as she sat back down, Brittany moved her chair closer to her, putting her hands on her cheeks and pulling her face closer to her, closing the gap with a kiss, a simple lip lock that sent the rest of the world flying out into the rain filled street outside. All that mattered were her lips on hers, the taste of her lip gloss (cherry today) and the fact that her hands were secured on her lap, holding on for dear life.

It felt good and right. And she missed it terribly…

-0-

It was a beautiful hall, strewn with yellow chairs that circled around in a flawed Fibonacci Spiral. He sat alone, a cigar propped in his mouth, puffing out smoke occasionally into rings, watching them proudly as they floated up to the ceiling, disappearing slowly as they went higher. He blinked as he heard footsteps approaching, and then the door suddenly creak open.

"So you decided to show up after all. I thought you would chicken out," he drawled out, snuffing out the cigar and placing it carefully into his pocket, getting off his chair and dusting his trouser legs of imaginary dust, refusing to look her in the eye.

"Smythe, we need to talk."

He gestured wildly with his hands at the hall, giving her his sly, shit eating grin. "Well, that's why we met here, isn't it, at the old boys' school? So that we could talk and avoid as many casualties as possible!"

"You need to lay off Pierce."

"Well, last time I checked, you weren't really the leader of Genesis, so I don't see why I should listen to you anymore than I'll listen to Hudson."

"Hudson is a slow, idiotic fool. He would back off from this at the first sign of conflict. Me? Not so much."

He turned to look at her for the first time, and saw it in her eyes – the determination and hardness that came with leading the criminal underground; the stoic demeanor that grows from seeing your family slaughtered before your eyes; the brilliant mind that came from years of practice and careful observation.

He saw it all. And he wanted to destroy it.

He raised his hand slowly to shoulder height, pointing his index finger at her, his thumb extending up from the rest of the hand. He clicked his thumb down onto his finger, winking at her,

"Bang."

She froze, furrowing her brow as she tried to understand his gesture. He pretended to put his finger gun into a holster at his hip, and walked towards her, sauntering his step.

"It means, oh great and powerful Lopez, that if you get in the way of my plan to get what I want, I will kill you. I won't hesitate. You will die, and I will get what I want."

"And what exactly is it that you want?"

He shrugged, circling around her as she sat down on a chair, his hand reaching out to her and brushing against her suit-clad shoulder, watching her shiver under his touch in disgust. "Money? Power? One brings the other, it's inevitable."

"But why the Pierce? Why now? Did this whole conflict with Anderson bring this on or has it been planned from before?"

"Wow, you are smarter than you look, definitely Anderson was wrong about that…"

Santana stared at him, her eyes widening as she came to a sudden realization on two parts: that this whole Smythe-Pierce business had been planned before, and that Anderson was the reason they had been so vulnerable when they had been…

"Your plan, Smythe. Now!"

She got off the chair on the last word, and it toppled backwards with the force of her ascent. She heard it clang noisily as it fell, but ignored it as she walked towards him, her fists clenching and unclenching rapidly. "What are you planning? What do the Andersons have to do with the Pierces? And why are the Andersons involved with you?"

He reached out to her quickly, too quickly for her to see, and grabbed her face with his left hand, squishing her cheeks slightly. She froze, unsure of what was going to happen next, until of course he slapped her clean across the face. She staggered backwards slightly, and with good fortune fell onto a chair close by. She heard him drag a chair over to sit opposite her as she nursed her bruising cheek, and looked up at him with wounded, angry eyes as he crossed his legs and leaned forward, grinning at her.

"You see, we both know that the Andersons control transport in the city. It doesn't make a lot of money, admittedly. But they were happy. And me, well, I have the law courts in the palm of my hand. So what happens when the Andersons want a little extra money? They turned to the Pierces, begging them for a piece of the drug business. The Pierces aren't stupid, they let them help them with trafficking. Of course, they didn't count on getting caught.

"Luckily for him, Anderson is very cute. So I let them off the hook, with the one condition that Anderson sees me…privately and frequently."

"So for sex you gave protection?"

"Pretty much, yes."

"Then what did he do that was so bad that you had to attack the Pierces and destroy Abram Manor?" she practically screamed, but a hand up silenced her as he continued, his mellow voice grating on her nerves to no end.

"He refused to appear at my house for a week or two. I exacted my revenge on the Pierces. Nobody denies me anything. Nobody. And now, I have my master plan in motion. The Pierce girl will be the perfect wife, and with her in my hands and Karofsky by my side, I'll have the drug business, the weapon industry, and the law courts all in one. Nobody will dare defy me and if they do, they'll face horrible consequences. I'll be unstoppable!"

She stared at him as he rose off the chair and pointed to the door she had previously entered through, waving his hand around absent mindedly. "You may leave now. I have no use for you."

"What if I try to stop you?" she yelled out without thinking, slowly rising off the chair.

But she wasn't quick enough.

In a flash stealthier than lightning, he had whipped out a gun and fired at her, right as she was in mid-rise from the chair. She fell back suddenly onto it, screaming out in agony as the bullet wound in her belly burned at her skin.

"Consider that a warning. I will kill you."

-0-

She waited. For three weeks she waited patiently, every day, at the same hotel she had taken up residence in for god knows how long. She waited in the lobby for her to arrive, but she never did.

And she was losing hope, until finally she did come around.

"Santana?" She ran at her, tears already stinging her eyes, barreling into her and clutching her tightly at the shoulders to her body, choking back sobs. "I thought you were dead! You didn't tell me what happened and I heard you were shot!"

"Shush, Brittany, it's alright…" Santana mumbled, stroking the blonde's hair softly in an effort to calm her. "I'm fine, I'm healed. And you're coming with me."

Startled, Brittany looked up, staring into those brown eyes she didn't know she missed. "Wha-why?"

"I'll explain in the car. Just come. Now."

"What about Sugar?"

"She's already in the cab. Now come! We're outta here!"

-0-

Two Years Later

Dark times had fallen on their not-so-fair city. Ever since Lopez and Pierce had run off with Motta in tow, the Karofskys and Smythes had immediately taken out all their anger on the Genesis. The Andersons had been slaughtered, and Blaine had disappeared. Rumors said he had tried to reconcile with Sebastian Smythe, who had turned out to be his secret lover all along, but Smythe had had him…disposed of.

The Fabrays and Berrys quickly separated the criminal community, with the help of Evans and Puckerman, but their plan went to dust once Hudson was murdered. Things got especially ugly when Evans' forces stopped responding, and suddenly the whole city was at war: a silent, potentially end-of-all-time (for the city, at least) war.

"We can't do this."

They all looked at the Changs, the ones left in the great Berry manor, seated around the oak table, fiddling with the remains of their once great dynasty.

"We're falling apart. Ever since Lopez left and let the criminal activity go wild…without the leader of the thugs and the leader of the drugs, we're screwed!"

"Chang, we can't do anything about it. They're gone now…"

"I wish they weren't!" Quinn broke down, banging her head against the table and sobbing out. "I wish they hadn't been so selfish! They should have stayed!"

"All hope is lost now, I guess…" Jones murmured, scraping her chair back. "There's nothing we can do but…surrender."

"And let the Smythes win?" Hummel whined, gnawing at his stubby nails with his teeth, his eyes wide and scared. "We can't let that happen!"

Amidst the panic, nobody heard the door open and two figures, adorned in black and shrouded in shadows enter the room.

"Then what do we do?"

"You leave it to us."

The heads turned to them, staring at the two figures as they entered the light, their hands firmly clasped with each other's, gold bands glittering on their ring fingers.

"Lopez?"

"Lopez-Pierce now, actually, but hello."

"You're alive? And back? And married?"

Santana gave a laugh and moved to the oak table, throwing a bloody bundle onto the table. "You know how the song goes, right?"

"What song?"

"Well, regardless, I'm back, and I'm going to solve the problem. I just needed a bit of time off to…fall in love." She turned into Brittany's body, closing her eyes and smiling contentedly. "I'm ready to rule the city again."

"Santana, what song?" Rachel almost shouted out in an effort to get her attention, and Santana snapped out of it, pointing at the bag.

"I put horses heads in people's beds, 'coz I am the Mob," she sing-songed at them, and then flitted out of the room with Brittany in tow, shouting over her shoulder that everything was going to be fine.

When Quinn untied the bundle on the table, she was pleasantly disgusted to find Sebastian Smythe's head carefully parceled inside.