Rain slicked the city, painting its streets in mirrored neon. The kind of rain that blurred lines — between reflection and reality, between right and wrong.

Nathan stood at a bench outside the precinct, his coat soaked, cigarette untouched in his fingers. He wasn’t smoking it. Just holding it. Thinking.

The trail on “Marko Halvik” was unraveling too neatly.

A name. A bank account. A fight. A flight log.

Each detail came gift-wrapped. Too easy.

If this was bait — it meant someone wanted him looking over there.

So what were they hiding here?

His gut kept circling back to her.
The florist.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t bluff. She didn’t react, and that was the problem. No one was that blank — not in this city.

He lit the cigarette.

One puff.

Then he dropped it and crushed it under his boot.

---

Across town, Marco was watching the world like a man no longer part of it.

He moved through the underground with the precision of someone who’d had everything stripped from him except purpose.

He’d eaten. Slept. Changed his clothes.

The shadows didn’t care if you were loyal. The shadows didn’t thank you for silence. They just swallowed you and moved on.

But Eve hadn’t replaced him. That was something.

She hadn’t sent a cleaner. She hadn’t buried him.

That meant he still mattered.

And if he mattered, he had work to do.

Marco broke into a low-level rival runner’s apartment that night. A young hotshot who’d been bragging in corners about wanting to “fill a power vacuum.”

Marco left him alive — barely — but unconscious and bleeding, duct-taped to a radiator with a single word carved into his arm.

“Watch.”

He didn’t do it for Eve’s approval.

He did it because someone had to remind these fools who still held the city.

---

Eve got the message before dawn.
It came embedded in Vasha’s morning report — buried, as always, behind layers of data and plausible deniability.

She didn’t ask who sent it. Just closed the file and slid it aside.

An encrypted line blinked once, then stilled. Vasha’s voice came through, clipped and cold:
“You’re letting him back in.”

Eve didn’t reply immediately. She adjusted the next document in the queue.
“He never left.”

“He’s unstable. Emotional. He’s leaving blood where we built silence.”

Eve paused, her tone soft but final.
“Sometimes silence needs a knife.”

There was a beat of static. Then:
“Understood.”

And the line went dead.

Nathan hit something real.

It started with a florist supply invoice — buried under a dozen shells. Someone had tried to erase it, but the numbers didn’t lie.

A bulk order of rare yellow poppies, processed through a front in Bellrow.

He matched the shipping address to a storage unit near the docks.

No cameras. No staff.

But last week, one guard reported hearing a strange humming inside. Like refrigeration. Or machinery.

Nathan called in a favor.

He went in alone.

Inside the unit, he found a steel table, freshly cleaned. Scorch marks on the floor. Air that smelled like bleach and steel.

A single tulip sat in a vase on the table — with a note.

“You’re smart. But not smart enough.”

He stared at it for a long time.

A challenge. Or a warning.

Maybe both.

But what chilled him most wasn’t the note — it was the handwriting.
Identical to the receipt tucked in his drawer.
From the flower shop.
From her.

Whoever she was, she wasn’t just selling daisies.

That night, Marco made contact.

Not with Eve.

With Vasha.

He waited for her in the alley behind the east tunnel hub, face half-covered, hood drawn low.

When she approached, she stopped cold. Hand on her blade.

“You’re supposed to be gone,” she said.

Marco didn’t flinch.

“I’m back.”

“No one authorized that.”

“She doesn’t need to. She knows.”

Vasha stepped forward. “You’re dangerous like this.”

“I’ve always been dangerous. You’re just finally noticing.”

He tossed her a USB drive.

“Names of everyone whispering about succession. Use it. Or don’t. But don’t pretend I’m not still doing my job.”

And then he turned and vanished into the steam.

Vasha didn’t call Eve.
Not yet.

She needed to decide what to do with this new Marco.

The one who still bled for the queen — but no longer followed the rules.

---

Eve sat alone in her apartment.

The lights were low. Her tea had gone cold.

She read and re-read the message from Vasha.

Marco was active.

Not gone. Not broken. Burning.

She stared out the window, watching the city move.

The detective.
The deputy.
The throne she had built from silence and fear.

It was all still hers.

But she felt it — the line between them all tightening, threading together.

One pull. One slip. One heartbeat…

And it would all snap.