The city never slept. It did not breathe, either. It choked.
Argonne was composed of smoke and steel and sin, and tonight it seemed like it was bleeding under my boots. The radio call came in hushed and somber—just another murder, they told me. But the dispatcher's voice broke on the word "gruesome," and that said more than procedure ever could.
Now I stood under a swaying streetlamp at the edge of uptown, the rain descending in pricking sheets. Cold. Biting. The kind of rain that made you wonder if the city was scraping its skin raw. I took out a cigarette and lit it with numb fingers, but it didn't do anything to battle the cold.
The Rembrandt towered over me, glass and avarice, the sort of establishment that levied a toll for breathing. My badge facilitated my passage through the front desk, the uniforms, the queries that no one wished to be answered.
Forty-second floor. Penthouse suite. The elevator was akin to a coffin traveling upwards.
And then I entered hell.
The suite was open wide, lights humming softly, but the silence within was deafening—like walls still holding their breath. I caught the scent of blood before I saw it. Iron and bile and something electric.
The body was crumpled in the center of imported tile and shattered glass, art deco destroyed around it like a desecrated altar.
Male. Fortyish. Luxurious taste—custom-made suit, calfskin boots, Rolex still ticking on a wrist stained red. But all that was irrelevant now. His face was mush. Unrecognizable. Rage-killing. But not senseless. No, this was deliberate—the positioning of the body, the position of the limbs, the pattern in which the blood had spread. Deliberate.
My gut twisted.
Then I saw it.
Written on the mirrored wall behind the body, jagged and dripping, were three words:
HE DESERVED WORSE.
All my instincts flared. This wasn't a passion crime. This was an act. Someone needed to be heard.
I edged forward, attempting to push the squelch of blood out of my mind beneath my boots. Every fact seared itself into my memory—how the blood hadn't flowed naturally, how there were no drag marks, how the victim's hands were open, as if he'd accepted it. Or never saw it coming.
Footsteps behind me. Accurate. Staccato.Dr. Lillian Poe.
"Scene's yours, Doc," I grunted without looking around.
She knelt beside the corpse, gloved already, eyes squinting. She didn't jump. She never did. But I knew her too well—her quiet told me she was attempting to make sense of something that didn't compute.
"Mid-forties. Time of death? Perhaps three hours ago. No forced entry signs. Defensive wounds are minor—if any." She scowled. "His heart was still pumping when they began. You can see from the arterial spray on the back wall."
I clenched my teeth. "So, not a fast job."
"No," she replied. "This was slow. Intentional. A message." Her voice fell. "But I don't know what language it's speaking."
I did. It was the language of domination. Of terror.
The type I'd witnessed before—way back when Wolfe's name first began to seep into our streets like smoke under a shut door.
A camera flashed from the hallway. I glanced up and saw her—Sylvie Mercer, in her signature trench coat, slumped against the doorway as if she owned it. Always a cigarette hanging from her fingers, always that expression in her eyes like she knew how the world had ended and just wanted front-row seats.
"I told you to stay out of my scenes," I said.
"You did," she said. "But I got a tip. Said that this was more than a murder. Said that this was the beginning of something." She sucked in slowly. "Looks like they were right."
I remained silent. I didn't have the strength to argue with her tonight.
"Know who he is?" she asked.
"Not yet."
"You're lying," she said softly, as if it made no difference. "You always lie when things get unsafe."
I didn't respond. I faced back to the body. Whoever he was, he'd had authority. Money. The type of man who was guarded by more than a locked door. Which made him one of them.
Which meant the walls were already closing in.
That's when Nash arrived—Captain Gregor Nash, the department's sledgehammer in a city full of locks. His voice boomed before he even crossed the threshold.
"I want this tidied up now, Kane."
I didn't turn. "You want a cleanup, you call sanitation."
"I'm serious." His voice fell behind me. "You know who that is?"
"No. But I'm beginning to hazard. Guess."
"That's Victor Langston," he said. "Langston Group. Real estate, contracts with the mayor's office, half the judiciary owes him favors. You think this is just a homicide?" He pointed at the scene. "This is a goddamn earthquake."
He crept in close, mouth hot with coffee and terror. "You don't have time for theories. Tie it up. Make it tidy."
But nothing here was tidy.
I edged away, in need of air, in need of space to think. My phone vibrated.
A number I recognized. Burner. No label.
"Pier 19. Now."
I discovered Jax crouched under a crumbling crane, rain wetted across his features like perspiration. He hadn't so much aged as worn away—a man stripped down by years of habit and lies.
"You saw Langston?" he croaked.
"You knew?"
Once, he nodded. "You need to know, Kane—this ain't just Langston. He was with something. A circle. Exclusive. Guarded. Invincible."
"Who else?"
He paused, then gave me a photo covered in plastic.
Four men. Suits. Standing in front of a building I didn't know.
Langston. A sitting judge. A city councilman. And the last—
My blood froze.
Darius Wolfe.
His smile was small, his hand on Langston's shoulder like possession.
There was text on the back of the photo. Faint. Scrawled in what appeared to be panic.
"They built the lie together."
I didn't say anything. Couldn't.
Because this wasn't about one man anymore.
This was a system. A cancer.
And someone had just begun to cut it out—one piece at a time.
In the car again, the city swirled around me, thrumming with sirens and secrets. I stared at the skyline and wondered at the message in blood.
He deserved worse.
I think that wasn't a threat. It was a promise.
And whoever made it…They weren't finished.