Bellrow dripped with rain and rot.
Marco stubbed out a cigarette on the curb and crossed the street. The dive bar ahead blinked neon through the fog.
Inside, a man sat alone, drink half-finished, desperation clinging to him like sweat.
A liability. A talker.
Eve’s instructions were clear: No witnesses. No blood.
Marco waited. Followed. Moved like smoke.
The alley behind the bar stank of piss and mold. By the time the man’s head hit the water pooled in the trash-clogged gutter, he was already unconscious.
No noise. No sign.
Just another night in a city that didn’t care.
Ten years ago, Eve killed for the first time.
Not because she meant to.
Because she had no choice.
The man had reached for her — too fast, too rough. And the knife she stole weeks ago had found his gut like it belonged there.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t run.
She cleaned.
She learned.
And she vanished.
The city didn’t notice.
Because no one ever noticed a girl in a gray coat.
Now, Marco walked through the night like a blade.
He didn’t question the orders.
Not until lately.
Not until him.
Across the city, Nathan Cross stared at a board covered in red strings and question marks.
No leads. No prints. No faces.
Just a pattern too quiet to be coincidence.
It wasn’t a gang. It wasn’t a hit squad.
It was someone smarter. Careful.
Like they wanted the world to forget their victims ever existed.
A thought crept in again — uninvited.
The woman at the market.
No reason to think of her.
But still, he did.
Eve stood alone in her safehouse.
The map was pristine. Her network, airtight.
But Nathan Cross… was a variable.
She’d watched him. He wasn’t corrupt. Couldn’t be swayed.
She told herself that made him dangerous.
But her fingers still hesitated over his photograph.
Marco appeared in the doorway. “It’s done.”
“I know.”
“You want me to handle the cop?”
“No,” she said.
He looked at her for a long time.
“Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t know what he’s looking for,” she said. “Yet.”
Baawa Unfiltered 