Kimberly Carter fine-tuned the dials on her hi-tech mic one more time. She leaned forward, her voice gliding into the character the world was familiar with: Rae Brooks, bold, mysterious, untouchable podcaster who the world only knew by her pseudonym.

“Eddie Patterson claimed he was out with his friends. His friends corroborated him. But the video footage from the pub tells a different story. The footage from her apartment reveals otherwise…”

Rae unrolled the facts like a knife to the throat of a falsehood, hesitating only long enough to make the silence hurt.

“The police termed it suicide. I call it bullshit. Until the rape kit hidden in an unprocessed backlog is tested, until Alicia’s gown is tested and matched against Mr. Patterson’s DNA, it all remains bullshit!”

Her voice, calm and ominous, rises with the last sentence, filling the small soundproof studio she had carved out in her apartment. She continued to dole out facts, figures, and evidence that can nail even a saint with precision and calmness that belies the anger burning inside her.

Outside, the evening traffic crept by. Inside, she lit a match beneath the paper trail.

And then she left her signature breadcrumbs that may keep the mafia world on its toes. She'd been circling the case for weeks, digging, unearthing, filing away.

“There's a cold trail that's leading us to one of America's most powerful mafia families. They buried it just as they buried the man, but we are rekindling the buried ashes, my friends. The pieces don’t fit yet. But they will. Until then, this is Rae Brooks… signing off, but the ashes between us still burn.”

Rae’s tone did not waver, but a sting of something crept across her skin as she made that promise, or was it a threat? She did not know the Rossettis physically. Only whispers, closed books, and tales people only told in bits and pieces. But she's about to peel them piece by piece like onions.

She pulled off her headphones as Rae, revealing the unassuming and coolheaded Kimberly blending back into her quiet life.

Outside, the city’s pulse dragged on with taillights blinking in the dusk. Inside her podcast studio, Kimberly sat staring at the screen, legs shaking, urging it to yield some answers. The unusual message in her inbox stared right back at her silently.

She ignored the rest of the messages jostling for her attention and clicked on that mysterious message that dropped during her broadcast.

No greeting, no subject line, only a distorted image of a blonde woman and a toddler smiling. There was a lone sentence:

‘They escaped, but he was murdered and his case buried deep in mafia connections and blood.’

Her gut constricted, and goosebumps broke out on her skin. Not from fear. There was something about the picture she could not put her finger on, something that pulled at her. The sender was a ghost. No trace of an IP address. No name. But they recognized the case she was pursuing.

And they knew her. Somehow, they knew her enough to know she'd bite what they're dangling before her.

Kimberly leaned forward, squinting at the grainy photo. The woman's face was mostly obscured, but her hand was visible, resting on the child's shoulder. On her ring finger: a distinctive band with what looked like an engraved crest. The detail caught her eye. Ornate, deliberate, the kind of thing that meant something.

She took a screenshot and opened her image enhancement software. While it processed, she opened a fresh page in her notepad and dismantled the sentence.

They escaped...

He was murdered...

The case was buried deep...

Mafia. Blood.

She tapped the pen against her pink lower lip, eyes narrowing. "Who is the 'he'?" she murmured aloud.

"Who murdered him?

Who were the mother and child who escaped?

Where did they escape to?

Why now?”

The message was a challenge. She could feel her adrenaline bubbling just beneath the surface. But she practically had nothing to work with. That image was not just blurred, it looked ancient. Heck, are those people even alive?

She forwarded the picture to Tasha with one word, “Decipher”. If anything can be dug from it, her computer guru best friend can unearth it. Tasha has been a great asset to her budding podcast. Though both of them graduated from journalism school, they'd dabbled into cyber security and open source intelligence. But Tasha, wild Tasha, had gone wild at data analysis, hacking and accessing hidden databases. The girl was a guru and making a shitload of money while at it.

Kimberly wondered again why the informant couldn’t just give her more details to go on. Masking her frustration, she closed her laptop, flicked off her gadgets, and ignored the urge to dig deeper into the mystery immediately.

In Somerset Hills, the night pressed in as people hurried home just as the night crawlers traced their way into the Friday fun traffic. In a couple of hours, she and Tasha will join that fun-seeking crowd for their Friday girls’ night out. But first things first, her bathroom ritual. Kimberly leisurely padded barefoot to her bathroom, her sanctuary.

Podcast nights were ritual nights. Tasha nicknamed it her holy hour. Once inside the sanctuary, she lit her scented candles, turned on the faucet, dropped rose petals into the bathtub, and allowed her robe to slip from her shoulders. Steam curled around her as the lavender and oud scent from the candle enveloped her.

She intended to concentrate on nothing, to just relax and let go. But once her head tilted back, the Rossetti case intruded…

And with it, him, for some inexplicable reason.

He had been gone for four years, but Xavier’s voice continued to exist somewhere in her bones. That initial evening in her roommate’s apartment, half asleep, she had heard him talking in the other room, deep, low, and powerful. His was the type of voice that stirred the body before the appearance did.

When at last she did see him, his gaze had met hers, bold, unblinking, possessive. There was something else in it, though. Not exactly danger, but… weight. As if he walked around with something larger than himself, something powerful, unspoken. He looked nothing like the usual students on campus. She became enchanted.

Now, the warm water lapped at her skin, and she closed her eyes, trying to push away thoughts of mysterious photos and threatening messages. Her hand drifted lower, seeking the kind of release that didn't come from solving cases.

Xavier's face flickered behind her eyelids. That last night together, the way he'd…

No. She squeezed her eyes tighter, banishing the memory. He'd left. Four years of silence. Whatever they'd had was dead and buried.

But her treacherous body didn't care about logic. The heat building low in her belly had nothing to do with the bathwater and everything to do with memories she couldn't quite kill.

She let her hand drift between her thighs, just for a moment. Just to take the edge off. Just to quiet the noise in her head.

Her phone buzzed on the bathroom counter.

Kimberly's eyes flew open, the spell broken. She grabbed a towel, wrapping it around herself as she reached for the phone with wet hands.

A message from an unknown number.

She opened it.

A photo loaded slowly, line by line.

Her mother. In the garden. Rose shears in hand, completely unaware of the camera capturing her from twenty feet away.

The message below it was simple, brutal:

EYES ON YOU. ️

The phone slipped from her hands and landed with a splash in the tub.