The city never looked innocent from this high up.
Glass towers speared the sky, their reflections slicing the night into cold fragments, and Damien Black watched it all through the floor‑to‑ceiling windows of his private office above his busiest club.
The music throbbed faintly through the walls—bass like a distant, steady heartbeat—but up here the sound was muffled, subdued, as if even the noise knew better than to intrude. Damien preferred it that way. Chaos belonged downstairs with the bodies and the liquor. Up here, he kept everything clean.
Order was the only thing that had ever kept him alive.
He stood with his hands in his pockets, jacket open, white shirt immaculate, gaze fixed on the glowing tower across the river. From this angle, he could just see the edge of the luxury block where Sophia Kane had died a few hours ago.
His territory.
His problem.
A soft chime sounded behind him. “She’s here,” Luca Moretti said, voice thick with the remnants of cigarette smoke and Rome. “The detective.”
Damien turned away from the glass. “The profiler,” he corrected. “Elena Voss.”
Luca lounged near the door, shoulders propped against the frame, tattoos coiling down his forearms like inked snakes. He tilted his head, studying his boss with an amused squint. “You sure you don’t want a few more men inside?”
“If she came to shoot me, she would not walk through the front entrance of my club,” Damien said. “She’s not careless.”
He did not add that if someone else had sent her as a weapon, extra men in the room would not matter. Damien had learned long ago that danger rarely announced itself with guns. It came wrapped in polite smiles and paperwork. It came in people like Dr. Victor Hale.
And, possibly, in people like Elena Voss.
Luca lifted his hands in surrender. “Fine. You want intimate, you get intimate.”
Damien gave him a level look. Luca grinned wider, then slipped out, closing the door quietly behind him.
For a moment, Damien simply stood in the center of the room, letting the silence settle. He adjusted his cufflinks, the familiar weight of gold grounding his thoughts, then moved to the bar along the wall. Two glasses. One bottle of single malt, expensive enough to impress but not ostentatious.
He poured only one drink.
When the door opened again, she paused on the threshold, taking him in.
The photographs in the police files did not do Elena Voss justice. They caught the sharpness—the angular cheekbones, the neat dark hair, the cool assessment in her pale eyes—but not the tension wound beneath her skin. She moved like someone used to pushing herself past exhaustion, a woman held together by force of will and caffeine.
Black blazer, black trousers, pale blouse. Professional armor. Sleepless shadows smudged beneath her eyes, but she did not try to hide them with makeup. He respected that.
“Mr. Black.” Her voice was low, controlled, with the faintest scrape of weariness. “You asked for me.”
“I did.” Damien gestured to the chair opposite his desk. “Please.”
She stepped inside, gaze sweeping the office in one clean, efficient pass: door, windows, bar, desk, distance to each. Calculating exits. Estimating threats. Not once did her eyes dart. She simply absorbed.
Interesting.
“I was under the impression that people usually ask for lawyers before they ask for profilers,” she said, remaining standing. “And that they call them in after they’re arrested.”
“Then you know I am not ‘people.’” Damien smiled slightly. “And I am not under arrest.”
“Yet?” she asked.
Her bluntness amused him. “Is that a promise or a hope, Agent Voss?”
“Consultant,” she corrected. “I’m not FBI.”
“No,” he said softly. “You’re something more useful.”
Her jaw tightened for a fraction of a second. She moved to the chair but didn’t sit; instead, she placed both hands on the backrest, knuckles pale against the leather. “You claimed you have information about a homicide in my investigation. Sophia Kane.”
“Sophia,” he repeated, letting the name curl on his tongue. “Bright girl. Ambitious. Too trusting.”
“So you knew her.”
“I know everyone who matters in my city,” Damien said. “Sometimes personally. Sometimes…by their effect on others.”
Her gaze cooled further. “You sound like you’re describing a lab rat.”
“In some ways, the city is a lab,” he said. “People are reactions waiting to be triggered. You of all people should understand that.”
She did not rise to the bait. “Did you know her well enough to care that she’s dead?”
“Care is an inefficient luxury,” Damien replied. “But I care very much that someone carved open a woman in one of my buildings and did it with the kind of arrogance that suggests he believes he is untouchable.”
For a moment, those pale eyes sharpened, curiosity flickering through the professional mask. “Because he made you look weak.”
“Because he made the city look uncontrolled,” Damien corrected. “And lack of control attracts chaos. Chaos is bad for business.”
He picked up his glass but did not drink. “Sit, Agent Voss. You’re making my office nervous.”
She considered him a moment longer, then sat, posture straight but not stiff. “Tell me why you asked for me specifically.”
“Because you see things,” he said simply. “Because you look at blood and call it language. Because my people read reports about you that make interesting claims.”
Her brows arched. “Which are?”
“That you do not scare easily. That you have a habit of crawling into the skulls of killers and rearranging the furniture. That sometimes you’re too close to the line you walk.”
Her fingers flexed once on her knee, a tiny betrayal of tension. “Your people have been watching me.”
“My people watch everyone.” He paused. “But I have been watching you.”
Silence stretched between them, humming like the bass through the floor.
“You called me here to flirt,” she said flatly. “That’s new.”
Damien laughed, a low, genuine sound. “No. That is an incidental pleasure. I called you here because the man you are hunting is someone I once allowed to live.”
Her stillness shifted. Not a flinch, not quite, but a tightening, as if invisible thread had pulled her spine straighter. “You know who he is.”
“I know what he was,” Damien said. “Victor Hale. Surgeon. Artist. The kind of man who likes clean lines and tidy endings. The kind of man who never understood that living things are the worst material to sculpt.”
Recognizing the name cost her composure. It was there in the flash of shock, the brief dilation of her pupils. “You’ve had contact with Dr. Hale.”
“Yes.” He met her gaze without blinking. “And I am telling you this because I believe he is courting you.”
Her breath caught almost imperceptibly. “Courting.”
“He leaves you gifts,” Damien said. “Arranged with care. Symbols stitched into flesh. White roses that never touch blood. He is speaking to you, Agent Voss. To your mind. To your past.”
The last word landed between them like a dropped blade.
“How would you know anything about my past?” she asked quietly.
“Because Victor Hale is not the only man in this city obsessed with patterns,” Damien said. “And because some of those patterns begin in childhood bedrooms where doors should have stayed closed.”
Her chair scraped back so abruptly that the sound cracked the air. She stood, one hand braced on the desk, the other clenched at her side. “You investigated
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