The morgue's back door was locked, so Dorian went through the loading dock instead.He'd called Cole's sister from the tunnel stairwell, voice flat, ribs still screaming from Reaper's fists. She'd given him one name before she started crying too hard to talk. *Nadia Ferro. County toxicology. She'll tell you what they won't put in the report.*Nadia Ferro worked graveyard shift in a building that smelled like bleach and old coffee, and she didn't look up when Dorian let himself into her office at half past midnight."You're bleeding on my floor," she said."Not the first time tonight."She finally looked at him — cataloging the split lip, the swollen eye, the way he favored his right leg — with the flat clinical read of someone who'd seen worse walk through her door. "You're the fighter. Cole's friend.""Was."Nadia set down her clipboard. Thirty, maybe younger, dark circles under sharp eyes that missed nothing. She worked two jobs — one that paid, one that mattered, and Dorian was sta

Jonah Petrik lived in a room the size of a closet above a laundromat, and he laughed when Dorian told him to skip Thursday's fight."You think I haven't thought about that?" Jonah sat on the edge of a mattress that had seen better decades, wrapping his split knuckles with tape gone gray from reuse. "I owe the Pit six grand. Training fees. Board. 'Protection.' You don't just walk away from a number like that.""I'll cover it.""With what? Your last purse was an insult." Jonah's laugh had no humor in it. "Everybody who fights here owes somebody. That's the whole system. You think Reaper wants to be in that cage? Half these guys are working off debts that grow faster than they can pay them down."Dorian's knee throbbed as he crouched to Jonah's eye level. The kid was nineteen and already talking like a man twice his age who'd given up."There's a way out of every system," Dorian said. "I just haven't found this one's door yet."A fist hammered the door before Jonah could answer.Two men

Odette Marchetti didn't look surprised when Dorian showed up at her stall with a half-drunk, terrified man in tow."Reyes Calder," she said, setting down her tablet. "I wondered how long it would take you two to end up on the same side of this.""He needs somewhere Voss can't reach him," Dorian said. "At least until he's told me everything he knows."Odette studied Reyes the way a jeweler studied a stone — assessing, calculating, already deciding what he was worth. "I can keep him safe. Bazaar protection extends to anyone under my roof, and even Voss respects neutral ground. For now.""What's the price?""This one's on the house." Her smile didn't move past her mouth. "Consider it goodwill. I'd rather you owe me exactly one favor, clearly defined, than start losing count."*Clearly defined for her. Not for him.*Dorian's knee ached as he shifted his weight, the damage from six blocks of fast walking and two fights in one night finally catching up with him. He didn't sit. He didn't tru

The fence around Pier 14 was newer than the rest of the dock, which told Dorian someone had recently decided this stretch of waterfront was worth protecting.He counted four guards from the shadow of a shipping container, watching their rounds the way he used to watch enemy patrols — timing, blind spots, the gap between a man's confidence and his actual attention span. Reyes crouched beside him, phone in hand, cross-referencing what he could see against half-remembered numbers from ledgers he'd stopped believing he'd ever need to remember correctly."Container row six," Reyes whispered. "That's the one they never let regular freight touch. I loaded manifests for two years and never once saw what's actually inside it.""We're about to find out."They moved along the fence line, staying low, until a gap in the guards' rotation opened wide enough to slip through. Dorian's knee protested every crouched step, an old complaint that had never once cared about timing.Container six sat apart

The knock on Nadia's apartment door came at 6 a.m., three sharp raps, and Dorian had a hand on the nearest weapon before he registered it wasn't Voss's men. It was worse. It was a badge."Detective Farrah Boyd." She held the ID up without being asked, close enough for Dorian to read it, far enough that she clearly expected trouble. Mid-forties, tired eyes, a coat that had seen more crime scenes than sleep. "I'm not here to arrest anyone. Yet. That word's doing a lot of work in that sentence, so let's both take it seriously."Nadia went rigid beside him. "This is my apartment. You don't have a warrant.""I don't need one to knock." Boyd's eyes moved past them both, cataloging the room — Reyes asleep on the couch, a folder of printouts on the table, the particular exhaustion of people who hadn't slept in days for reasons that weren't good ones. "I've been investigating a string of deaths ruled accidental for the last eight months. Fighters from an unlicensed cage circuit. A toxicology r