Axel arrived not long after the call, his expression grim as Dimitri laid the envelope flat on the table between them. The photo sat like a curse, grainy and indistinct, its shadows daring him to blink first.
"You're sure this wasn't some hoax?" Axel asked, though his tone made it clear he already knew the answer.
"Cranks don't send drones to my balcony," Dimitri said dryly.
Axel slid the picture into a protective sleeve. "I'll get this to the Bureau's techs. They can clean it up. If there's something in here, they'll find it."
Dimitri nodded, he wanted a face. He wanted to drag the shadow out of the alley and into the light.
"Make it as clear as humanly possible," Dimitri said. His voice was calm, but Axel caught the unease beneath. "If we're lucky, clear enough to catch her."
Axel met his eyes, "Do you think Thanatos sent this? After all, he has sent a message before."
Dimitri leaned back in his chair, an eyebrow raised, "Then you shouldn't be saying that out loud with pride, Axel. He's sending messages from inside your prison, the one they call the most secure in the country. It doesn't sound very secure to me."
Axel snorted, shaking his head. "Keep talking like that and I'll start charging you rent for all the time you spend in my prison."
The corner of Dimitri's mouth twitched, just shy of a smile. "Rent implies safety, Axel. At your rates, I'd expect locks that hold."
Axel rolled his eyes but didn't bother replying.
Hours later, with nothing to do but wait for the Bureau's analysis, Dimitri found himself pacing. The gnawing unease in his chest wasn't only about the photo; it was about who had sent it. If it were a game, who was pulling the strings?
His mind circled back to Kian. It wouldn't be impossible. Kian had access, contacts, and a flair for the dramatic. Slipping a message into Dimitri's private life and taunting him with a breadcrumb was a move the infamous Thanatos might make just to watch him squirm.
Dimitri lingered at the window, eyes tracing the restless night sky. Sleep was a lost cause. If he wanted peace of mind, he'd have to earn it himself. With a resigned breath, he grabbed his coat and stepped out into the night.
The guards recognized him immediately, the gate sliding open with its usual chorus of buzzes and clanging locks. After instructing them to bring Kian, Dimitri made his way into the interrogation room and settled in to wait. He didn't wait long.
Kian entered, flanked by two guards at his sides, several more trailing close behind. Shackles rattled at his wrists, but he moved with a languid ease, head tilted, dark eyes locking onto Dimitri with a mischievous glint. In the low light, they seemed layered, burnt amber swirling with flecks of green, restless as if something volatile churned just beneath.
"Twice in one week," Kian drawled, his lips curling into that infuriating smirk. "Careful, Dimitri. People will start to think you like me."
Two of the guards stiffened, glancing briefly at one another before forcing their expressions back into neutral lines. One cleared his throat, betraying a flicker of unease at Kian's audacity.
Dimitri's jaw tightened, irritation and a feeling he refused to name coiling in his chest. "Save the performance," he said flatly.
Kian shrugged his shoulders, "Touché."
The guards ushered him forward, shackles clinking as they dropped him into the chair opposite Dimitri. At Dimitri's curt nod, they filed out, the heavy door shutting with a final metallic echo. Kian leaned back like he owned the room, eyes flicking to Dimitri with a smirk that begged to be slapped off.
Dimitri leaned forward, elbows on the table, his voice low but edged like a blade.
"Someone sent me a picture," he said. "Grainy, blurred, but not useless. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
Kian's lips curved faintly, but there was no humor in it. "You think I've got a phone in here? Hidden under my mattress? Maybe I carved a camera out of soap and sent you a nice little gift?"
The mockery burned at Dimitri's nerves. He wanted to slam his fist on the table, but he didn't. Instead, he tried to read past the calm, "So you're saying you had nothing to do with it?"
Kian stared deeply into his eyes, his voice dropping to something quieter, intimate, "Do you believe me?"
The question sank into the silence like a stone into deep water. Dimitri felt it coil in his chest, unsettling in its simplicity. Truth or lie.
For a long moment, neither spoke. Then Kian chuckled softly, as though he'd glimpsed an answer in Dimitri's eyes. And maybe he had. The smallest crack, the briefest hesitation but it was enough.
"I did it, Professor."
The smirk never left his lips, but in the space of a heartbeat, something else flickered in his eyes, gone before Dimitri could name it. His own voice slipped out before he could stop it. "You didn't send this."
Kian's brow arched, his expression slipping into mock hurt. "Did I just lose credit for a clever trick? I'm wounded."
"You're lying," Dimitri said, but the words came out softer than intended, almost betraying his own doubt.
"Am I?" Kian's grin widened, wolfish. "Which part?"
And God help him, Dimitri couldn't tell.
He pressed, lower now, trusting his instincts. "You know who did this. But who? Who would risk using your name?"
Kian's smirk lingered, but his tone was flat, almost convincing in its finality. "Nobody. That is why it is my handiwork."
Dimitri opened his mouth, the beginnings of another question burning on his tongue. The door clanged open, shattering the moment. Guards filed in, six of them, bulk in black uniforms, faces set like stone. It wasn't Dimitri's choice; at this hour, visitation time was cut short, no exceptions. The prison kept its own rhythm. They unlocked the cuff from the table and hauled Kian to his feet.
But something was different this time.
As Kian stood up, he stopped, his eyes flickering to Dimitri's eyes then a glance into the line of men waiting for him. His lips twitched into that same mocking smile, the one that had haunted Dimitri's thoughts, but it wasn't aimed at him this time.
It was aimed at them.
The guards didn't notice. None of them did but Dimitri did. And the realization hit him like ice water. Without a word, without a gesture that would draw attention, he was telling Dimitri something important, something hidden in plain sight.
The first claim that Kian had nothing to do with the drone was the truth. The second, the so-called confession was a lie. Someone else had sent the drone. Someone who wanted Dimitri to believe it came from Thanatos. Someone bold enough to use the legend of Kian as their weapon.
And Kian knew exactly who it was.
Instead of naming them, instead of pointing the finger, he had chosen to lie. He could have ended it like that and left Dimitri to struggle but instead, Kian chose to communicate without a word. He was trusting Dimitri to read the unspoken.
Why?
The story Dimitri thought he knew about Thanatos was already beginning to unravel. Every legend, every certainty, was slipping through his fingers. Thanatos leaving a victim alive should have been impossible, yet a copycat stalked the city, killing in his shadow. And now, the greater question: who, inside this prison or beyond it, dared to use Thanatos as a pawn?
There were too many cracks and inconsistencies. This was the monster the country feared, the myth whispered like a curse in courtrooms and classrooms alike, his name stretching across borders like smoke. Thanatos wasn't supposed to bend; he wasn't supposed to break. And yet, here Dimitri was, staring at fractures in a legend he had once believed unshakable.
But he could still feel it, the darkness radiating from Kian like something that had lived inside him long before the name Thanatos was born. It wasn't the awareness of prey flinching from a predator. It was recognition. The way one predator knows another, not through words but through the marrow of their bones.
So, what was this? Had someone found a way to use even the monster against himself?
The thought gnawed at him because if Kian wasn't the perfect, untouchable monster then maybe Dimitri had been staring into a reflection all along.
****************
At home, he didn't bother with the lights.
The phone rang. He almost let it keep ringing, but the shrill sound clawed through the quiet until he caved.
"Dimitri?" His mother's voice sounded.
"Mom," he said, voice dropping to an octave.
"You sound tired," she whispered, with that cautious gentleness she reserved for him, as if he were still a fragile child. "You've been thinking about him again, haven't you?"
He didn't ask who she meant. There was only one him.
Dimitri let his head fall back against the bedframe. "You always think I'm thinking about him."
"It's almost the day. Of course, I know you have." Her voice cracked, but she pressed on. "And I don't want you to. It's been fifteen years since everything changed. You were just a boy, Dimitri. You didn't understand—"
For a moment, he froze. The day. Lost under Thanatos, under the copycat, he had forgotten but now, her words dragged it back into him: the night their lives split in two.
"I understood enough," he cut in.
"Dimitri!"
"You call it the night you saved me. I call it the night I saw our family for what it really was." His voice was rough. "Don't treat me like a child, Mom. I was fifteen, not five. I understood then and I still do."
There was the familiar silence. The kind of silence they always fell into, the gulf between her need to protect and his refusal to be treated as blind. She clung to his innocence like a shield; he wanted her honesty like a wound reopened. Neither could give the other what they demanded, and the distance between them only widened.
Finally, she exhaled. "All I ever wanted was for you to have a life untouched by him."
Too late for that, Dimitri thought. His father's shadow had stained everything; the way he worked and the way he studied people.
"I'm fine," he said, and the lie tasted bitter.
"You're not," she murmured, the words sagging under years of exhaustion. "I see what he left in you, the weight you carry. It isn't your fault, Dimitri but it's there and I wish I could take it from you."
Her voice lingered long after the line went dead.
The room was drowned in shadow, the blinds half-open to a sickle of moonlight that carved thin silver lines across the walls. He lay back against the bed, the mattress cold beneath him, one hand slipping automatically under the pillow until his fingers brushed the steel of the gun he kept there. It was a habit now, a defense against enemies both outside and within.
Sleep didn't come. How could it? The drone buzzing outside his balcony, Kian's mocking smile and slippery truths, the hollow inconsistencies in Thanatos, his mother's broken voice, and that day creeping closer with every tick of the clock; all of it circled him like vultures.
Each thought fed the next, looping faster, until the hours bled together. His green eyes caught the moonlight when he finally turned his head toward the window, a ghostly glimmer in the black, wide open, and unblinking.
By the time dawn arrived, Dimitri was still lying there, eyes burning and trapped in the prison of his own mind. Sleep was for men at peace, and he wasn't one of them.