Prologue
I wasn’t preparedfor February.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. That’s what Alex would say. Start at the beginning, Dylan. Context matters.
Fine. Context.
In January, I hid in a stairwell.
That’s it. That’s the inciting incident.
The moment everything changed. I was working late in the stacks—the creepy basement archives at Draven & Associates where I’ve been a paralegal for five years—and when I finished, the elevator was out. So I took the emergency stairs. In the dark. At 2 a.m.
And I heard my boss’s newest client confess to murder.
Marcus Ashford. Philadelphia’s newly elected City Controller. Golden boy of a three-generation political dynasty. The kind of man whose grandfather’s portrait hangs in City Hall and whose family has been buying judges and badges since before I was born.
I did it again, Dom. I don’t know how this keeps happening.
Again.
I documented everything. Told Alex. We investigated—built a murder board in our living room, traced shell companies,found a ring in an alley that I still carry everywhere because I can’t prove the woman who wore it ever existed.
January felt like rock bottom. The worst month of my life.
I was wrong.
February was worse.
And I don’t know how to write about it yet. Don’t know how to explain what happened at the fundraiser. What almost happened. The fight with Alex where over a decade of hurt surfaced—words I didn’t know she’d been holding, wounds I didn’t know I’d inflicted.
Hell, I still don’t know how close she was to walking away from me.
So here I am. Twilight. Our ritual hour. Sitting on the terrace with shaking hands and five bruises on my hip that I keep pressing to make sure they’re real.
We are in too deep.
And I’m not sure when the point of no return occurred. Just that it did. Just that we crossed it somewhere between January and now, and there’s no going back.
Monday, I have to walk into that building again.
And he’ll be waiting.
One
“Marcus-fucking-Ashford.”
Alex pushes her glasses up her nose with one finger, the other hand clutching her wine glass. Her long hair spills over her shoulders, and she’s wearing a muumuu in cheetah print that makes her look like a very organized jungle cat.
I’m in my dandelion one. We’re matching our traumas, apparently.
It’s Sunday night. The first of February.
This week I work one-on-one with Marcus.
We spent the day choosing the perfect outfit, aka armor. And now we are reviewing all of Marcus Ashford’s socials.
Our murder board sits just off to the right of the TV, updated since last week. Marcus’s face is now pinned underWHO IS THE CRIMINAL?alongside Dom.
