Marco hadn’t slept in two nights.
He sat in a motel room that smelled like rot, watching shadows crawl across the ceiling.
His mind wouldn’t stop playing it back — that moment at the fruit stall. The way Eve smiled at him.
He punched the wall. Hard. Again.
Nathan sat in a café, sipping bitter coffee and scanning files. Drownings. Disappearances. Gaps too clean to be random.
He thought of the woman. The market. The flower she gave him like it meant something.
A daisy.
Why did that stick?
Why did she?
Eve stood in the observation room high above the factory floor, shrouded in shadowed glass. Below, her crew moved like clockwork—efficient, unaware of the eyes watching from above.
A voice crackled through the secure comm beside her.
“Marco’s gone dark,” said Vasha, miles away.
“He’s processing,” Eve said flatly.
“Because of the detective?”
Eve didn’t respond.
Didn’t need to.
She cut the line and turned away from the glass.
No one below would ever know she’d been there.
That night, Marco stood outside Nathan’s building.
No gun. No orders.
Just watching.
He could end it now. Make it look like nothing.
But he didn’t move.
Because Eve would know.
Nathan got a file two days later: another body. No signs of struggle.
And one odd detail.
The victim had made a call — two days before he vanished — to a flower shop registered to an “E. Hallow.”
Nathan blinked.
A name.
A coincidence?
He laughed to himself.
But his hand trembled slightly.
Back at the safehouse, Marco entered as Eve brewed tea.
“I saw him,” he said.
“I know.”
“I didn’t touch him.”
She turned. Eyes unreadable.
“Why not?”
“Because you…” he trailed off. “You like him.”
Her silence was sharper than any blade.
“You’re not paid to feel, Marco.”
“I’m not paid at all,” he said. “I’m yours.”
She poured her tea.
And said nothing.
Baawa Unfiltered 