I glanced at the jacket again—not with suspicion, but with curiosity. Whoever this man was, he wasn’t my story. He was simply proof. Evidence that Rose had found something that made her step outside the life she’d been handed.
And that mattered.
I stood and went back to the desk, opening a folder of papers. I didn’t search for names. I wasn’t ready to know who he was. That could wait. For now, it was enough to know that Rose had been alive here in ways I hadn’t seen before.
After a cursory glance at the contents, I closed the folder and set it aside.
Outside, the city was shifting toward evening, the light thinning, the sounds rising. Paris didn’t soften as the day ended—it sharpened, like it expected something of you.
I smiled faintly.
Rose had always been braver than me. Quicker to leap. Less concerned with whether the ground beneath her feet was solid.
But she’d left me this.
Not answers. Not closure.
Possibility.
I crossed the room and stood by the window once more, watching the street come alive below. People gathering. Chairs scraping. Voices lifting.
“Okay,” I said quietly, to Rose or myself—I wasn’t sure which. “I see it.”
The city felt inviting.
I didn’t look away.
Tomorrow, I would start asking questions.
2
KANE
Bangkok didn't judge.
That's what I loved about it—the city's complete indifference to what you were or what you'd done. It absorbed violence the way other cities absorbed rain, letting it seep into the gutters without comment. Here, a man could be exactly what he was.
And I was a man who needed to hurt people.
The agency that paid me understood this. They didn't ask where I went between assignments or what I did with my time. They called when they needed someone disappeared, when a problem required the kind of solution that left no room for questions. The rest of the time, I managed myself.
Most contractors took vacations. Went to beaches. Pretended at normal.
I came to Bangkok.
The city sprawled beneath my feet as I moved through Sukhumvit, alive in ways that had nothing to do with tourists or commerce. This was the real Bangkok—the one that existed in the cracks. Markets selling things no government wouldsanction. Clubs where the entertainment violated seventeen international laws. And fights. Proper fights, where men went to prove they were still animals underneath the expensive suits.
The air was thick tonight. Humid enough that breathing felt like drinking. It smelled like grilled pork and diesel exhaust and jasmine rotting in the heat—sweet decay, the city's signature. The combination coated my throat.
I loved it.
Brooklyn had never felt like this. Too clean. Too ordered. Everyone performing civility like it was more than paint over the same primal wiring that drove every human on the planet. Bangkok didn't bother with paint. It showed you the beast and dared you to look away.
I never looked away.
The underground arena was fifteen minutes on foot, through streets that narrowed and darkened with each turn. No tourists here. No police. Just Bangkok's real economy, the one that ran on blood and bets and silence.
My knuckles itched.
