Cassian pov
The body was still warm. That was disappointing."
The first thing I noticed was the angle of the jaw.
Broken. Left side. Not from the fall.
Blunt trauma—likely a hammer, judging by the starburst fracture and the meat still clinging to the bone like wet cotton.
Interesting.
The rest of the room was noisy. Cameras. Shouting. Gloves snapping. I blocked it out. Chaos is irrelevant to understanding. You can't profile a scene if you let yourself become part of it.
I stepped over the blood. It had pooled beneath the neck, still glistening in places, barely congealed. She'd died fast. That was sloppy.
I don't do sloppy.
"Agent Cassian ," someone called. I didn't look. I was already kneeling beside the body. Female. Mid-thirties. No wedding ring. Pupils still dilated. She'd seen him coming.
She didn't scream.
Or maybe she did.
It didn't matter now.
"Single entry wound to the temple, lacerations along the clavicle. Postmortem," I muttered. My voice was quiet. Mechanical. Like flipping through a filing cabinet of corpses.
"She fought back," I added. "There's skin under her fingernails."
The rookie beside me—Martinez or Morales or something equally forgettable—nodded. Eager. Green. Scared. "The husband found her like this. He's waiting outside."
I stood up slowly. Blood creaked on my gloves. "No, he didn't."
"What?"
I turned to him. "He didn't find her. He left her."
A flicker of confusion passed across his face. I didn't explain.
Why should I?
There's no satisfaction in handholding. No pleasure in understanding. There's only clarity. And I am clarity, carved out of everything I lost.
The apartment smelled like copper and ammonia. The decay hadn't set in yet, but it would. Human rot is always patient.
I walked past the blood like it was furniture. The killer hadn't been careful. Prints everywhere. The media would call it a "crime of passion." They always do it when they don't understand violence.
But violence isn't passion.
Violence is mathematics.
Controlled. Precise.
Intimate, in the way a scalpel is intimate.
I killed my first man at nineteen.
He had a name.
I don't remember it.
But I remember what he looked like when the light went out. The exact moment the synapses stopped firing. It was clean. Beautiful, even. Like watching a candle flicker and die in total silence.
People ask me why I joined the FBI.
The truth?
Because it's easier to hide in a pack of wolves.
And I know how they think.
Because I am one.
When I left the crime scene, I didn't drive home.
I went to the gym. I lifted until my arms trembled. I watched the others watch me. They think I come here to stay in shape.
No.
I came here to understand human meat.
To feel the muscle fibers snap underweight. To listen to tendons sing under pressure. It's anatomy. Pure. Functional. Clean.
Like killing.
My apartment is quiet. Minimal. Sterile. Everything I own fits into a single duffel bag. The fridge is empty. On the wall is a single photograph.
My mother.
Face blurred from water damage. Frame cracked. She died when I was nine. They said it was an accident.
They lied.
I don't cry when I look at it.
I don't feel anything.
But I remember the sound of her ribs breaking.
And the way her blood smelled on the carpet.
So I made a list.
Every man involved in covering it up.
Every judge. Every cop. Every bystander.
One by one, they disappeared.
Some they found.
Some they didn't.
I don't kill for pleasure.
I kill because justice is a myth.
And I'm tired of pretending I believe in it.
At midnight, I review the files again.
This case—the woman in the apartment—it wasn't mine. I didn't kill her.
Which means someone else did.
Someone sloppy. Emotional. Uncontrolled.
But not unskilled.
The cuts on her body weren't random.
They were a message.
There's another predator in the city.
This is getting interesting.
I close the file.
Look at myself in the mirror.
I don't smile.
Smiling is an affectation. A lie made of muscle.
Instead, I whisper to my reflection:
"Let the games begin."
And for the first time in years,
I feel something close to curiosity.
Almost.