Chapter 1
The rain fell in sheets across the North District, turning the neon signs of late-night bars into bleeding watercolors along the asphalt. Damiano Rossetti stood beneath the awning of a shuttered pawn shop, the tip of his second cigar glowing orange in the humidity. His suit was charcoal, custom-tailored, worth more than most people in this neighborhood made in a year. He didn’t belong here. That was exactly why he’d come.
Three blocks away, a shipment was going wrong. He’d known it would. That was also why he’d come.
The air smelled of wet concrete and garbage and the faint metallic tang of rain beating against rusted fire escapes. Somewhere above, a television played static through an open window. A dog barked in the distance. Normal sounds. City sounds. The kind of noise that meant nothing to anyone except the people who needed them for cover.
He was reaching for his phone when something small and trembling pressed against his knee.
May you like
The touch was so unexpected — so impossibly *soft* in a world of knives and betrayal — that his hand stopped mid-reach. His fingers hovered an inch from his pocket. He looked down slowly, the way a man looks at a trap he should have seen coming.
A little girl stood in the downpour.
