(The Torch office, Smallville High)
The office was unusually silent. And it was driving Chloe nuts. It was the night before this week's edition went to the printer. On most days, the scene could be described as organized chaos: Chloe would track the progress of the writers, the layout editor and the pre-press production. Frantic chatter would fill the room as the writers and graphic designers struggled to prepare another edition of the Torch.
Tonight, there was none of that. It was silence, Chloe observed, punctuated by intermittent periods of pointless bickering over the "Helena affair". Clark quietly typed his story about the cafeteria's new vegetarian lunch menu. Lana sat across from Chloe's desk, ignoring Clark and digitally cropping this edition's photos on her computer.
"Did you get around to taking photos of the cafeteria during lunch?" Clark announced in an irritated tone. Another intermittent period of bickering is about to be punctuated, Chloe sighed to herself.
Lana pretended not to hear Clark's demand, then abruptly spun her chair around to face Clark. "Yours isn't the only story I had to take photos for," Lana remarked impatiently. "They're on the server. You'll find them there."
"You're the acting photo editor," Clark argued. "Isn't photo selection your responsibility?"
"When you get around to finishing your story," Lana replied angrily, "maybe then I'll have something to work with. We're on a deadline you know!"
"If you're going to make this about Helena again –" Clark blurted, but he didn't finish his sentence. Chloe slammed a stapler loudly on her desk in disgust.
"Okay, that's enough!" Chloe barked. "If I have to hear another five minutes of this, my reactor is going to hit critical mass!"
"But, Lana –" Clark began to protest, but Chloe's icy glare quickly muzzled him. Lana merely sneered at Clark from behind her monitor.
"I'm short of hands as it is," Chloe explained. "Ashley's 'Cheerleader Diary' is on the backburner, due to some pom-pom arm injury – whatever that means. Victor's weekly article is on permanent hiatus … he said something about the feds seizing his hard drive for hacking into the Pentagon's intranet …" It was upsetting to see her best friends bicker over Helena, the Zucco mob and the tragic shooting at the Talon. A part of her wished that Lex had never met Zucco … and that Helena Bertinelli had never come to Smallville. Those events were beyond her control, but Smallville High's parents were going to do something about it tomorrow night.
Shades of grey, Lex had cautioned her. Would Bruce Wayne interfere in the school board hearing, or would the PTA be able to defy him and remove Miss Bertinelli from the classroom?
"Right now you're the only people I can count on," Chloe continued (half-amazed that she was lecturing her friends). "Who I need to count on. I can't do it alone. For now, we can agree to disagree about everything 'Helena'. Please, can we set that aside, and let's concentrate on putting out the Torch. Hundreds of students, parents and teachers read our paper every week, and we can't let them down, even if our town's in a mess right now …" Chloe's voice trailed off. A girl was shot to death at the Talon, in their hometown! Clark and Lana noticed that Chloe seemed less strong-willed this whole week. She kept a level head throughout these crises, despite her own brush with death in the Ledger archives. The Torch was the constant in her life. Their squabbling threatened to take that source of strength away from her.
"Chloe, I'm sorry," Lana offered. "I didn't mean to burden you with more mob craziness, especially after what happened to you at the Ledger. We promised to help you out, and we're letting you down. It's not fair to you …"
"We weren't fair to you," Clark added. "And you're absolutely right. People are counting on the Torch being there, and no one – not Tony Zucco, The Jazzman or the whole Gotham mob – is going to keep our paper off the press." He studied Chloe's face. Despite her confidence, she was emotionally exhausted. A Zucco henchman had attacked her, and it could have been much worse if Lex hadn't been there. I should have been there, Clark lamented.
I failed her then, too.
"That's right, Clark," Chloe confirmed. She swallowed her vulnerability and put on a brave face. "It'll take more than a few wiseguys to keep the Torch from the people. So we have a truce, then?" Lana and Clark looked at Chloe, then hesitantly at each other and nodded. Nobody's opinions would be changed tonight, so it was futile to argue about what mighthappen at the school board meeting.
"Clark," Lana started warily, "when you're done with your article, maybe you and I can pick out the best photo for your article?"
"Thanks, Lana," Clark agreed. "I'll be done soon. I can stay a bit longer to help you and Chloe with the pre-press production. And I promise I won't break anything this time." His quip managed to get a slight grin out of Lana.
"I'm holding you to that, Mr. Kent," Chloe smirked. "Digital photocopiers don't grow in fields, you know." The Torch office began to hum with some of the usual chatter she was accustomed to. The PTA would present their petition to the Lowell County School Board tomorrow night, and their truce would be over. Clark would stand alone behind Miss Bertinelli – or would he? Any action from Wayne Manor could change everything. Jonathan Kent and her father were the chief sponsors of the petition (and they had the support of the most influential employer in the region: Lex Luthor). Was Lex's 'Rubicon' with Mr. Wayne just beyond the horizon?
Tonight was a reprieve, Chloe admitted, but I'll take any brief respite from the looming mob war that could tear apart Metropolis: my city.
(Dixon-Simone Luxury Condominiums, Metropolis suburbs)
Helena shifted her Lamborghini into gear. Two passers-by turned their heads abruptly as the sports car squealed out of the garage and zipped through the intersection. The only thing on her mind was Luthor Commerce Square … and Tony Zucco.
She frowned. It shouldn't have turned out like this …
Two hours earlier, she had laid out two business cards on her living room table. One was for the teachers' union rep that would go with her to the emergency school board meeting. She thought of the possibility of challenging the parents' petition. Jonathan Kent was a respected member of the community, and it would be his word against hers. Most of Smallville High's PTA were on his side. They didn't want Gotham City's violence in their quaint little streets. Those crimes belonged in the city – not in 'their' town.
She smirked at their indignant attitude. The townspeople allowed Lionel and Lex Luthor to turn their county into their own personal fiefdom – and they accomplished it with the stroke of pens and convenient handshakes. LuthorCorp.'s business practices have already tarnished their slice of heaven in Kansas. How naïve and stupid are they in Smallville?
The other business card read: 'Bruce Wayne. Gotham University patron and alumnus, Chair of The Wayne Foundation.' He always sympathized with her situation as a victim of crime and tried his best to keep her away from less-savoury members of Gotham society. Unfortunately, some of those members were also friends and relatives of the once-powerful Bertinelli crime family. She knew she was being screwed over because of her past, and she would have every right to summon Mr. Wayne's considerable influence.
But that was how her father did business: scratching backs and currying favours. Mr. Wayne had done much to assist her return to respectable society, with helpful letters to Gotham U.'s teachers' college and references for the county school board. Before Zucco came into town, she believed that she had finally broken free of her family's sordid past.
Lauren Morris' death shattered those hopes for good. She could cry foul at the board meeting until she was blue in the face, but Mr. Kent, or Mr. Sullivan (or even Lex Luthor!) could drag out her blood ties with the Gotham mafia. Helena was guilty by association. She would become a spectacle again, a piteous object of scorn. No one leaves the mob alive, the dons would say.
Innocent blood was spilled in her adopted town, and for what? So that The Jazzman and Tony Zucco can resume their Midwest turf war and claim more lives? Helena tossed the business cards into the trash. I played by the rules of society, she fumed, but those rules didn't apply to people like me. The Lex Luthors of the world (who were nothing but kingpins who knew how to exploit the system legally) would always seize any chance to reap more wealth and power. She feared that – one day – Lex might turn against Bruce, his one-time schoolmate.
Her father was Franco Bertinelli, once one of the most senior dons in La Cosa Nostra. He lived to satiate the greed that comes with such power, regardless of how it affected his family. Helena remembered nights when her mother Maria would sob alone silently at the kitchen table. "Your papa's at work, figlia," her mother had told her in tears so often. Daughter. "Go back to bed." She would always be a daughter of Bertinelli; it was in her blood.
Her family was dead, but they left unfinished work for her.
Kill them before they kill you. There ain't no second chances. Calmly, Helena put on her leather gloves and loaded the 9mm Glock pistol. She could do it blindfolded. In safe houses from Missouri to Nevada, she had learned how to protect herself. The pistol's serial number had long been filed off, so it was untraceable.
Ms. Dolce & Gabbana – as Sheriff Adams described her – would have no such designer gear on this night. She took off the corporate pantsuit she had planned to wear for the school board meeting, and she slipped on a tight, black woollen turtleneck sweater and black jeans.
Metropolis' six o'clock news reports covered a late-breaking incident in Gotham City's Little Moscow district. A car bomb had just torn apart a social club that catered to Russian émigrés. The explosion killed the owner, who had deep connections with influential people in Eastern Europe – and he was a major financier for The Jazzman Syndicate. Helena gritted her teeth. Tony Zucco got his revenge for the Talon shooting. She knew how they thought. Zucco wanted to make a point to The Jazzman that Lex Luthor was his friend, his 'creature'. It was Zucco's way of telling the other Gotham mobsters that the region – including Metropolis – was his territory. The media would chalk it up as just another skirmish in Gotham's endless mob turf wars, since The Jazzman had enemies from at least half a dozen crime families throughout the eastern seaboard. Mobsters died every day in the city.
But Tony Zucco's rivals would get the message. Metropolis was now in Zucco's hands. There would be more deaths in Gotham's streets, as The Jazzman's loyalists retaliated. Zucco was too smart to attack the Syndicate's assets in Metropolis. It wasn't worth the risk of alienating his new, valuable ally: Lex Luthor.
Lionel's son is out of his league, Helena grunted to herself. But I am cut from the same cloth as Zucco. You don't handle Tony Zucco with polite words and "gentlemen's agreements". Zucco used honour as he used everything else in his life: family, friendships, women, associates, or religion. They were tools of the trade, a means to an end. Disposable.
As her car clocked 100 mph on the beltway, she gripped the steering wheel firmly with her gloved hands. She would be at the construction development soon enough. Her father was a selfish, uncaring bastard – but he was also the husband of her mother, whom she adored. Zucco was the only don with the clout to pull off their murders. He couldn't fail because if he did … her father would surely have killed him. She blinked away any lingering sorrow.
Zucco spilled blood: Lauren's, her parents, and countless bystanders in Gotham's bullet-ridden neighbourhoods. As she eyed the road ahead, she clenched her teeth. I don't care what happens to me, she snarled. Dozens of his loyal, armed associates will be there to protect him, but I have nothing more to lose. I have lost everything dear to me: my family, my name, my career and my honour.
Anthony Zucco, undisputed crime lord of Gotham City, you will pay for a lifetime of sins tonight – with your own blood.
Mamma, forgive me for what I am about to do.