The city never slept. It didn't breathe, either. It choked.
Argonne was made of smoke, steel, and sin, and tonight, it felt like it was bleeding beneath my boots. The radio call came in quiet and grim—just another homicide, they said. But the dispatcher's voice cracked on the word "gruesome," and that told me more than protocol ever could.
Now I stood beneath a flickering streetlamp on the edge of uptown, the rain coming down in needling sheets. Cold. Sharp. The kind of rain that made you feel like the city was scrubbing its skin raw. I lit a cigarette with numb fingers, but it did nothing to fight the chill.
The Rembrandt loomed above me, all glass and greed, the kind of place that charged you for air. My badge got me past the front desk, past the uniforms, past the looks that asked questions no one wanted answered.
Forty-second floor. Penthouse suite. The elevator felt like a coffin riding upward.
And then I stepped into hell.
The suite was wide open, lights humming low, but the silence inside was deafening—like the walls were still holding their breath. I smelled the blood before I saw it. Iron and bile and something electric.
The body lay crumpled in the middle of imported tile and broken glass, art deco shattered around it like a desecrated altar.
Male. Mid-forties. Expensive taste—tailored suit, calfskin shoes, Rolex still ticking on a wrist soaked in red. But none of that mattered now. His face was pulp. Unrecognizable. A rage-killing. But not random. No, this had meaning—the placement of the body, the angle of the limbs, the way the blood spread. Deliberate.
My stomach knotted.
Then I saw it.
Scrawled on the mirrored wall behind the corpse, jagged and dripping, were three words:
HE DESERVED WORSE.
Every instinct I had flared. This wasn't a crime of passion. This was a performance. Someone wanted to be understood.
I stepped closer, trying to ignore the squelch of blood beneath my boots. Every detail burned itself into my mind—how the blood hadn't pooled naturally, how there were no drag marks, how the victim's hands were open, like he'd accepted it. Or never saw it coming.
Footsteps behind me. Precise. Clipped.Dr. Lillian Poe.
"Scene's yours, Doc," I muttered without turning.
She crouched beside the body, gloves already on, eyes narrowing. She didn't flinch. She never did. But I knew her too well—her silence meant she was trying to make sense of something that didn't add up.
"Mid-forties. Time of death? Maybe three hours ago. No signs of forced entry. Defensive wounds are minimal—if any." She frowned. "His heart was still beating when they started. You can tell by the arterial spray on the far wall."
I gritted my teeth. "So, not a quick job."
"No," she said. "This was slow. Intentional. A statement." Her voice dropped. "But I don't know what language it's speaking."
I did. It was the language of control. Of fear.
The kind I'd seen once before—back when Wolfe's name first started creeping through our streets like smoke under a locked door.
A camera snapped from the hallway. I looked up and saw her—Sylvie Mercer, in her trademark trench coat, leaning against the doorway like she owned it. Always a cigarette dangling from her fingers, always that look in her eyes like she knew how the world ended and just wanted front-row seats.
"I thought I told you to stay away from my scenes," I said.
"You did," she replied. "But then I got a tip. Said this wasn't just a murder. Said this was the start of something." She took a slow drag. "Looks like they were right."
I said nothing. I didn't have the energy to fight her tonight.
"You know who he is?" she asked.
"Not yet."
"You're lying," she said softly, like it didn't matter. "You always lie when it gets dangerous."
I didn't answer. I turned back to the body. Whoever he was, he'd had power. Money. The kind of man who was protected by more than a locked door. Which made him one of them.
Which meant the walls were already closing in.
That's when Nash showed up—Captain Gregor Nash, the department's sledgehammer in a city full of locks. His voice boomed before he even hit the threshold.
"I want this cleaned up now, Kane."
I didn't turn. "You want a cleanup, call sanitation."
"I'm serious." His voice dropped behind me. "You know who that is?"
"No. But I'm starting to 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 jabbed a finger at the scene. "This is a goddamn earthquake."
He leaned close, breath hot with coffee and fear. "You don't have time for theories. Wrap it up. Make it neat."
But nothing about this was neat.
I stepped away, needing air, needing space to think. My phone buzzed.
A number I knew. Burner. No name.
"Pier 19. Now."
I found Jax huddled beneath a rusting crane, rain slicked across his face like sweat. He hadn't aged so much as eroded—a man chipped down by years of addiction and secrets.
"You saw Langston?" he rasped.
"You knew?"
He nodded once. "You need to understand, Kane—this ain't just about Langston. He was part of something. A circle. Private. Protected. Untouchable."
"Who else was in it?"
He hesitated, then handed me a photograph wrapped in plastic.
Four men. Suits. Standing in front of a building I didn't recognize.
Langston. A sitting judge. A city councilman. And the last—
My blood ran cold.
Darius Wolfe.
His smile was slight, his hand resting on Langston's shoulder like ownership.
There was writing on the back of the photo. Faint. Scribbled in what looked like panic.
"They built the lie together."
I didn't speak. Couldn't.
Because this wasn't about one man anymore.
This was a system. A cancer.
And someone had just started cutting it out—one piece at a time.
Back in the car, the city loomed around me, alive with sirens and secrets. I watched the skyline and thought about the message written in blood.
He deserved worse.
I had a feeling that wasn't a threat. It was a promise.
And whoever made it…They weren't done yet.