Night fell gently over the city, enveloping the tall windows of that mansion in a golden twilight, as if time itself had slowed down within its walls. Outside, the murmur of traffic and the lights distorted by the old glass wove a picture unrelated to what was happening inside: a scene suspended between art and crime, between beauty and death.

The body on the table had not completely lost its warmth. The skin still glistened in places with a slight post-mortem sweat, the eyes carefully closed, the mouth slightly open as if exhaling a final secret. It was arranged with reverence, the arms aligned, the fingers relaxed, the legs crossed in a pose that bordered on the theatrical. There was no haste, no brutality. Only precision. Almost tenderness.

And in front of it, still wearing bloody gloves and with a serene gaze, was he—the man most wanted by the FBI. The ghost that everyone was chasing, faceless, with no real name, no real clues. Except for one woman.

Bedelia Du Maurier had known him before he became a bloody legend. Before the files piled up on federal desks. She had known him since he was a model student, brilliant and popular in college, adored by professors and classmates alike. Charming. Impeccable. Unapproachable. And yet, there was always something behind his smile—a shadow, a barely perceptible pause between his words, a carefully cultivated silence.

She had watched him. Patiently, with fascination. Not as a psychiatrist analyzes a case, but as an entomologist contemplates a poisonous creature unique to its species.

He never looked at her the way other men did. And perhaps that was why she let him in.

The workroom opened without ceremony. No code. No warning. She didn't need it.

Bedelia's heels made no sound on the polished parquet floor. Her figure emerged from the shadows of the hallway like an apparition: wrapped in an off-white cashmere coat, the black silk lining visible with every deliberate movement. Under the coat, a dark satin evening gown hugged her body with an elegance that was never forced in her. Her platinum blonde hair fell loosely over her shoulders with such perfect order that it seemed to defy reality.

In one hand she held a glass of red wine; in the other, a thin gold chain slipped between her gloved fingers, as if she were playing with a rosary without faith.

She paused in the doorway.

Her gaze, as clinically serene as ever, first descended toward the lifeless body, then slowly rose toward him. She contemplated him as one contemplates a newly completed masterpiece—with that mixture of pride, admiration, and intimacy that exists only between those who understand that death can also be a language.

"You always had an eye for symmetry," she said, her voice creeping through the room like a soft, precise narcotic, designed to seduce without urgency.

The air around her changed. Her perfume filled the space: myrrh, cardamom, and a barely perceptible note of blood orange. There was no shock. There was no judgment. Only the familiar calm that surrounded her, even among corpses.

She approached without fear, as if the stained marble and bloodstains were part of a routine she knew well. She stopped beside him, her eyes scanning the still-wet latex gloves, the line of blood that ran up to his shirt sleeve, the absent gleam in his eyes after the act.

"I missed this, It's been a while since you hunted," she added, almost in a whisper. "I love it, not the art, not the body. The aftermath. When you're no longer pretending. When you are this."

She set the glass down next to a scalpel. Her hand rose, touching the edge of his shirt with studied slowness, her index finger brushing a dried bloodstain near his neck.

"You never wore masks with me." Her fingers slid gently down the edge of his shirt to his collarbone, then paused over the pulse beating steadily in his throat. "That's why I keep letting you in."

Then her eyes caught something behind him. A trail. A signature.

"You left a smear of blood on the ivory curtains,"

She murmured, as if noting a misstep in a waltz.

"Was it intentional... or are you simply beginning to enjoy the danger?"

Her touch was not urgent. It was ritualistic. A confirmation that what they shared had no name and no rules. It wasn't love. It wasn't only sex. It was something darker. More lasting.

"This morning I saw your face on a private Bureau broadcast," she murmured, with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "They think you're in Prague. That you've become careless."

A pause. Her gaze burned with something that was neither tenderness nor affection.

"They're wrong, of course. As they always are about you."

And then, with absolute serenity, she tilted her head, gazing at him with a twisted devotion that crossed the line between fascination and need.

"But they are close..."