Marcus Voss stood beneath the dim glow of a flickering streetlamp on a cold, dark autumn night. The crime scene tape flapped in the wind, its yellow strips cutting sharp lines through the darkness. He had been there too long—long enough for the smell of blood to settle in the back of his throat, coppery and unshakable. The narrow alley stretched behind a row of closed storefronts, damp with rainwater and littered with trash. But nothing could hide the twisted body on the ground.

The boy couldn’t have been older than twenty. His shirt was torn open, his chest slashed in jagged arcs, as if carved by someone who wanted him to suffer rather than simply die. His skin was bruised, and his jaw was broken from a strike that was too hard and too deliberate. A pool of blood surrounded his body, still glistening under the red-blue flash of the patrol car lights. Whoever did this hadn’t been sloppy. They’d wanted to leave a message. Marcus knew the look—rage sharpened into ritual.

He pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack in his pocket and let it hang unlit from his lips as he crouched beside the body. His gloved hand brushed near the wounds, careful not to touch them. The cut patterns were deep and angled, almost surgical in their cruelty. This wasn't a robbery or a fight gone wrong. This was personal. Someone wanted to strip life away, piece by piece.

Behind him, radios crackled with static chatter, uniforms whispered, and the occasional camera flash from crime scene technicians painted the brick walls ghost white. Marcus straightened slowly, his back stiff, and exhaled a breath that wasn't quite smoke yet. His eyes swept the alley. No wallets were missing. No weapons were discarded. No signs of struggle were evident beyond the boy himself. He’d been cornered, held down, and carved open.

That was when he noticed her.

The journalist. She stood just outside the tape with her notebook in hand. Her eyes were sharp with that relentless hunger he’d grown to hate—and, in some twisted corner of himself, respect. She was one of the few who never let go of a lead and showed up at scenes like flies on corpses.

Marcus rolled the cigarette between his teeth and finally lit it with a flick of his worn lighter. Smoke curled upward, mixing with the damp night air. He let the first drag burn slowly in his lungs, then stepped toward the tape where she lingered. The leather of his boots slapped against the wet pavement, echoing louder than it should have.

"Not your case, kiddo," he muttered, his voice low and rough from too many cigarettes. He tugged at the edge of his jacket, adjusting it as if the motion could steady him. He didn’t raise his tone—he never needed to. “Go home. Write about the mayor’s press conference or the charity gala. This...” He gestured back toward the body with two fingers, the cigarette glowing between them. "This isn't for you."

Still, she didn’t move. He could feel her eyes on him, that stubborn insistence pressing against his ribs like a blade. Marcus exhaled sharply, smoke trailing from his nostrils, and stepped closer to the tape. "You don't want this story. Trust me.” His eyes narrowed, lines etching deeper into his face and shadows creasing his features, making him look harsher than he felt. “The kid’s throat was cut so deep that he drowned before he bled out. Whoever did it knew exactly how long it would take him to die. That’s not a detail you put in print. It's a detail you carry with you until it rots you from the inside."

Somewhere down the alley, a rookie officer gagged and stumbled away from the body while Detective Collins barked at him to pull himself together. Marcus ignored it. He kept his gaze locked on her, grinding the cigarette between his teeth until the paper split.

"You think you want the truth," he said, his voice dropping to an almost growling tone. "But the truth is uglier than you can handle. If you keep investigating these cases, one day you won't just be writing about the victim. You’ll be the victim."

The words hung between them, heavy and sharp. But his chest tightened with something more complicated than anger. He wasn’t just trying to scare her off; he was trying to protect her. A journalist chasing shadows in alleys like this? She was bound to cross the wrong line someday. Marcus had seen enough young faces turn cold on the pavement to last him a lifetime.

Behind him, the click of crime scene cameras caught the lifeless face of the boy on the ground. Marcus’s jaw clenched hard. He took a long drag on his cigarette, the ash glowing bright before crumbling and falling like tiny sparks into the puddles at his feet.

Straightening to his full height, he loomed over the tape, the tired authority of a man who’d buried his compassion beneath layers of smoke and steel. But his eyes betrayed him—they softened for half a second as he looked at her, just enough to reveal the conflict he would never admit.

"Don't make me throw you out," he said finally, his voice steadier now, though still rough. “Not tonight.”