Chapter 2: Twelve Years Ago

I stopped going to school after the funeral.

Everyone looked at me like I was fragile. Like I might shatter if they said the wrong thing.

But I wasn’t fragile.

I was fire.

And I was already burning.

The house was quiet now — too quiet.

Mom stayed in bed most days. Dad left without saying anything.No one said Kaden’s name.Like if they didn’t say it, it wouldn’t hurt so bad. But I wanted it to hurt.I needed it to hurt. Because the pain reminded me that he was real.That he was mine.That someone took him from me and the world just… kept turning.The first time I went to the precinct on my own, I wore Kaden’s hoodie and a stare that could cut through walls.

Detective Halpern looked surprised to see me.

“Miss Black, what are you doing here?”

“You said you’d keep me updated,” I said flatly. “You didn’t.”

He sighed, like this was a burden.

Like I was a child wasting his time.

“I’m sorry. There’s been no movement. No leads. These things happen sometimes.”

“These things?” I snapped. “You mean murders? Unsolved murders?”

He gave me that same tired shrug. The one that made me want to scream.

“There’s nothing else we can do, Myra. The case is cold.”

Cold.

My brother’s body wasn’t even cold when they gave up.I left the precinct with my fists clenched so tight my nails cut into my palms.

I didn’t cry.

Not anymore.

I wrote the case number on my bedroom wall.Right above my bed.I stared at it every night until I could recite it like a prayer.

Case #147-KB. And beneath it, I wrote three words:

Find the truth.

I spent the next year in libraries and courtrooms.I read everything.

Criminal codes.

Detective novels.

Forensic science.

Old news clippings.

I started attending open hearings downtown — mostly petty theft and drug cases. But sometimes… sometimes I saw something useful.And then one day, I saw him.

Raffaele Moretti.

Sharp suit. Sharper eyes. Watching from the back of a courtroom like he owned the place.He wasn’t the one on trial.He never would be.He was the kind of man who pulled strings and let others take the fall.But I remembered that face.I’d seen it once, blurry in a photo from the night Kaden died — standing near the alley, just behind the yellow tape.

It was grainy.

Circumstantial.

But I knew what I saw.

He was there.

That day, something changed in me.

The grief stopped choking me.

The anger stopped eating me.

It became something else.

Purpose.

I applied to the academy the day I turned eighteen.They said I was too young.I pushed harder.They said I was too emotional.I gave them stats and citations and everything I’d memorized since Kaden’s death.I passed with honors.

I learned how to carry a gun.

How to chase suspects.

How to look a killer in the eye without blinking.

But nothing — nothing — compared to the day I pinned on the badge.I looked in the mirror that morning and told myself what no one else would:

This isn’t over.