Kroos had always thought of himself as a man who could bend fate with a flick of his wrist, a man who always had a backup plan hidden in the shadows. For years, he had played the game of crime and survival with cold precision—never reckless, never sloppy. But sitting in his car outside the station, chain-smoking one cigarette after another, he realized just how badly he had miscalculated.He had thought handing Rico to the police would bring him leverage, maybe even a clean slate to bargain with. He’d imagined Rico wouldn’t last more than a few hours under questioning before he spilled everything about the Boss, Salvatore, and the entire crooked empire they had built. Kroos had pictured himself as the silent architect, the man behind the curtain who pulled the strings while staying untouchable.But reality had other plans.Rico wasn’t breaking.From the whispers Kroos had caught through his sources, the boy was sitting in that interrogation room like a ghost—silent, stubborn, refusing
The clock ticked past two in the morning, the precinct walls heavy with silence, broken only by the occasional shuffle of officers moving in the hallway. Rico sat in the interrogation room, a bare bulb hanging above his head, his wrists chained to the cold steel of the table. His face was calm, but inside his chest, a storm brewed. He knew what the police wanted; they weren’t after his street crimes, they weren’t after his petty hustling. They wanted something bigger. They wanted names, dates, networks. They wanted him to turn against the very men who had shaped the streets of this city: The Boss, Kroos, Marquez.But Rico stayed silent.Hours had passed since the questioning began. The tall detective had tried his patience, peppering him with questions, circling back, tightening the net with words. The short detective had leaned on him, whispering promises, speaking of deals that could protect him. Yet Rico’s mouth refused to open. Every time a question came, he stared at them with th
The interview room was colder than the cell.Not because of the air, though the vent rattled like a broken fan, but because of the emptiness. A bare walls, a metal table and two chairs. A camera fixed above the door. One fluorescent light overhead that buzzed like a mosquito.Rico sat with his wrists cuffed to the table. The chains clinked every time he shifted, a reminder that he wasn’t walking away from this room unless someone else decided so.The door opened, and two detectives walked in. The tall one, with the pressed suit Rico remembered from the precinct, carried a folder under his arm. The shorter one trailed behind, sleeves rolled up, tired eyes scanning Rico like he was a puzzle he’d rather not solve.Neither spoke at first. They set things down, shuffled papers, and switched on the recorder. A red light blinked, and the taller detective leaned forward.“State your full name for the record.”Rico glanced at him, then away. His lips pressed into a thin line.The shorter detec
The precinct carried a different weight when the night crept in. The traffic beyond the frosted windows, the chatter of officers moving between desks, and the hollow ring of telephones—all of it seemed more subdued, muted, as though the building itself knew a storm was about to break inside its walls. Rico wasn’t just another boy in custody. He was the missing link in a puzzle the police had been chasing for years, a living witness tangled in the web of three different men who each claimed dominance over the city’s underworld.The problem wasn’t arresting him, the problem was keeping him—alive, talking, and in one piece.Detective Harris stood at the center of the operations room, sleeves rolled, tie loosened, with a whiteboard full of names, photographs, and question marks behind him. Kroos. Marquez. The Boss. Three names written in bold black marker, each circled in red, each linked to Rico by thick lines drawn across the board. The man they now had in a cell was the only one who ha
Rico had been walking with his hood low, the night air damp against his skin. He’d managed to keep himself unseen for weeks, slipping between safe houses, alleys, and rundown apartments. He knew Kroos was still hunting. He knew Salvatore Marquez had placed a price on his head. And he knew The Boss—damn fool that he was—still claimed to love him.But Rico had learned the trick of shadows. He didn’t show himself unless he wanted to.Or so he thought.The first sign was the headlights. Two beams cutting across the dark street. A patrol car rolling deliberate, like a wolf sniffing out a trail. Rico stiffened but kept walking, pretending to be nothing more than another man in a broken city.The second sign was the radio static that crackled, then hushed. The cops inside weren’t chatting anymore. They were watching.Rico’s instincts screamed at him—move, disappear, vanish. He turned into an alley, but before he made ten steps, another cruiser slid across the far end, blocking his path.“Don
Rico had been listening. Not just to the voices in the streets, not only to the murmurs that slipped through late-night taverns and corner shops, but to the full chorus of a city that suddenly seemed to be speaking his name again.For weeks, he had stayed tucked away in the shadows, living in the half-world of a man both hunted and needed. He read the newspapers carefully when they were left behind in cafés, folded neatly but screaming headlines that bled ink onto his fingertips. He tuned in to a battered transistor radio whose static became as familiar to him as a heartbeat. And now, after Marquez’s press interview and The Boss’s broadcast, the city had turned him into something larger than flesh and bone: a symbol, a puzzle, a ghost who had left too many debts unpaid.But ghosts cannot hide forever.Rico sat in a cramped room, peeling paint on the walls, the scent of mold heavy in the corners. A single bulb dangled overhead, casting its yellow glow across the table where photographs