Or stay in the shadows a little longer?
Let her guard lower naturally. Let her routine reveal itself. Let her tell me who she is without even knowing she’s doing it. Let my men stay invisible. Let me stay a ghost in her periphery.
My jaw ticks once as I exhale, breath fogging the cool glass.
“She shouldn’t have seen that.”
The words leave me quietly, almost a whisper.
Beneath the warning—buried under the logic, the caution, the risk—there’s something else. A pull I don’t recognize. An interest I shouldn’t have. A slow, instinctive urge to follow the thread she unknowingly tied between us.
Chapter Three - Eden
I barely sleep.
Every time I close my eyes, the alley flashes behind my eyelids: the gunshot, the body collapsing, the man standing still in the shadows like the violence barely registered. My mind keeps replaying the scene in fragmented loops, each detail sharpening instead of fading. I toss and turn, sheets twisted around my legs, heart kicking whenever I hear a car pass outside my window.
I keep thinking I should call someone. Report it. Do the normal, reasonable thing a citizen is supposed to do. Except the thought sends a tight, nauseating pull through my stomach. If I report it, I have to explain why I was there. What I saw. Who I saw.
The more I think about that man—the tall one, the still one—the more certain I am that getting involved would be a mistake.
I get up before dawn, restless and wired, pacing my small apartment barefoot. The city stays loud even at sunrise, though it isn’t suffocating yet. I turn on the TV to drown out my thoughts, flipping channels until I land on a local news station.
The headline hits me like a punch.
Man found dead in Lower West Side alley—suspected suicide.
I freeze. The news camera pans over a cordoned-off section of the neighborhood. Not the exact alley, but close enough that the landmarks match what I remember. The reporter stands stiffly, her voice smooth and practiced as she reads the details.
“Authorities say the victim died from a single gunshot wound. Evidence at the scene suggests it was self-inflicted.”
My breath hitches. I step closer to the screen as if proximity can force the truth to change.
Self-inflicted. A suicide. There’s no mention of another person or mention of a struggle. No mention of witnesses.
I saw him fall. I saw the shooter. I saw the man behind him watching everything with that cold, assessing focus. Nothing about that moment was suicide.
A chill works through me as the camera cuts to a police officer giving a rehearsed statement. He avoids every word that would hint at foul play. He doesn’t look uncertain. He looks… prepared.
Someone arranged that narrative. Someone powerful enough to rewrite reality overnight.
I sink onto the edge of my couch and rub my arms. Fear pulses through me, but so does something else—something sharper, something I don’t want to name. Curiosity. Fascination. Pull.
Who was that man? How did he make a murder disappear?
***
By midmorning, the question gnaws at me so persistently that I grab my notebook and leave the apartment. I tell myself I’m checking the neighborhood one last time just to confirm what I saw, that I’m being rational, methodical, responsible.
I know I’m lying to myself. If I were rational, I’d stay away.
Instead, I take the same train as yesterday, follow the same streets, and end up back at the scene with my pulse thudding against my ribs.
The entire area is flooded with police tape, uniformed officers, and a swarm of reporters. Yellow tape flutters weakly in the breeze. Cameras flash. Microphones extend toward anyone who looks vaguely important.
Officers herd people away from the alley, their expressions firm and exhausted.
I stay behind the closest barrier and observe from a distance. No point drawing attention to myself.
