The city didn’t notice her.

It never had.
And that was the point.

Eve slipped through the streets of Bellrow like a shadow in daylight — a crumpled brown paper bag in hand, her gray coat draped loosely over thin shoulders, head bowed against the drizzle. She stood at the crosswalk, ignored by the mass of umbrellas and hunched commuters bustling past her. The walk sign blinked to life. She crossed without hurry, another tired woman blending into the urban churn.

Nobody saw her.
Nobody ever saw her.

And if they did, it was already too late.

Across the street, sitting behind the wheel of a battered sedan, Marco watched her through the rain-smeared windshield. He flipped a tattered paperback in his lap, pretending to read, pretending not to care.

But he watched. Always.

It wasn’t love in the ordinary sense. It was something harder, colder — like a blade forged for a single purpose. Marco would bleed, kill, and die for her without hesitation. She had saved him once, and in doing so, she had claimed him utterly.

He kept his distance, as ordered. Hovering too close was a death sentence — for him, and worse, for her.
If the cops ever connected the dots between the plain woman and the rising tide of bodies…
No. Marco would sooner burn the city to the ground than let that happen.

And yet even now, as he sat in the car, Eve seemed so… harmless. Smaller than the violence she orchestrated. A woman you wouldn’t give a second glance to.

It was her greatest weapon.
Her invisibility.

A few blocks down, another watcher sat in a different unmarked car.

Detective Nathan Cross sipped lukewarm coffee from a chipped mug, trying to ignore the ache between his shoulders. Something had drawn him here — a hunch, a feeling he couldn’t shake.
This part of the city was dying by inches. Gang wars no longer raged openly, but territories shifted like tectonic plates underfoot, and wherever power changed hands without bloodshed, Nathan smelled something wrong.

He caught sight of her.
The woman in the gray coat.

At first, she was just another body in the flood. But then she looked up — and even through the sheet of rain, Nathan felt something he couldn’t explain. A wrongness. A stillness that didn’t belong.

He shook it off. Paranoia. Lack of sleep.

The woman disappeared around a corner. Nathan frowned into his coffee.

Maybe he was chasing ghosts.

Maybe.