Chapter Three - Eden
I barely sleep.
Every time I close my eyes, the alley flashes behind my eyelids: the gunshot, the body collapsing, the man standing still in the shadows like the violence barely registered.
My mind keeps replaying the scene in fragmented loops, each detail sharpening instead of fading.
I toss and turn, sheets twisted around my legs, heart kicking whenever I hear a car pass outside my window.
I keep thinking I should call someone. Report it. Do the normal, reasonable thing a citizen is supposed to do. Except the thought sends a tight, nauseating pull through my stomach. If I report it, I have to explain why I was there. What I saw. Who I saw.
The more I think about that man—the tall one, the still one—the more certain I am that getting involved would be a mistake.
I get up before dawn, restless and wired, pacing my small apartment barefoot. The city stays loud even at sunrise, though it isn’t suffocating yet. I turn on the TV to drown out my thoughts, flipping channels until I land on a local news station.
The headline hits me like a punch.
Man found dead in Lower West Side alley—suspected suicide.
I freeze. The news camera pans over a cordoned-off section of the neighborhood. Not the exact alley, but close enough that the landmarks match what I remember. The reporter stands stiffly, her voice smooth and practiced as she reads the details.
“Authorities say the victim died from a single gunshot wound. Evidence at the scene suggests it was self-inflicted.”
My breath hitches. I step closer to the screen as if proximity can force the truth to change.
Self-inflicted. A suicide. There’s no mention of another person or mention of a struggle. No mention of witnesses.
I saw him fall. I saw the shooter. I saw the man behind him watching everything with that cold, assessing focus. Nothing about that moment was suicide.
A chill works through me as the camera cuts to a police officer giving a rehearsed statement. He avoids every word that would hint at foul play. He doesn’t look uncertain. He looks… prepared.
Someone arranged that narrative. Someone powerful enough to rewrite reality overnight.
I sink onto the edge of my couch and rub my arms. Fear pulses through me, but so does something else—something sharper, something I don’t want to name. Curiosity. Fascination. Pull.
Who was that man? How did he make a murder disappear?
***
By midmorning, the question gnaws at me so persistently that I grab my notebook and leave the apartment. I tell myself I’m checking the neighborhood one last time just to confirm what I saw, that I’m being rational, methodical, responsible.
I know I’m lying to myself. If I were rational, I’d stay away.
Instead, I take the same train as yesterday, follow the same streets, and end up back at the scene with my pulse thudding against my ribs.
The entire area is flooded with police tape, uniformed officers, and a swarm of reporters. Yellow tape flutters weakly in the breeze. Cameras flash. Microphones extend toward anyone who looks vaguely important.
Officers herd people away from the alley, their expressions firm and exhausted.
I stay behind the closest barrier and observe from a distance. No point drawing attention to myself.
The alley looks smaller in daylight. Less threatening. There are officers blocking its mouth, and I recognize the uneasy stance of investigators who don’t have real answers but are pretending they do.
I shouldn’t be here. Every instinct I’ve ever trusted tells me this is reckless.
Yet I stay anyway.
My fingers twitch around my notebook. I flip it open to a blank page, even though I don’t plan to write anything down. I just need something in my hands, something familiar to counter the tightness in my chest.
Voices blend around me: reporters throwing questions, officers muttering instructions, distant traffic humming through the street. The whole scene feels surreal, like I stepped into a world I wasn’t built for.
A part of me imagines walking straight up to the nearest officer and saying, They’re lying. I saw what really happened. But the thought ends with me lying in a different alley, my body covered by the same kind of tarp they used last night.
If someone can erase a murder this easily, how hard would it be to erase a witness?
I wrap my arms around myself and step farther back from the crowd.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t want to be here. Except that man’s presence still clings to me, sickening and magnetic at the same time. The memory of him won’t let go. That stillness. That certainty. That way he turned his head like he already knew where I was hiding.
Why does it feel like the moment our eyes almost met changed something I can’t explain?
The questions keep circling in my head, tightening like a net. Answers feel both dangerous and necessary.
I try retracing my steps from yesterday.
Not exactly—there are too many people, too many eyes—but close enough.
I walk past the deli where I stood first. I glance down the street where I heard the muffled argument.
Then I stop halfway down the block and look toward the alley from a much safer angle.
The same cold prickle climbs my spine, the exact sensation I felt when that man turned in the alley.
I freeze. My breath stops.
Someone is behind me. Someone watching. Someone close.
I turn, and he’s already there.
He stands close enough that I have to tip my chin up to meet his gaze. I didn’t hear him approach. Not footsteps, not breath, not the faintest shift of air; yet he’s here, solid and immovable, like the city rearranged itself to make space for him.
His presence hits me all at once. Tall. Broad shoulders. Dark coat framing his body like armor. His face stays unreadable; shadow cuts across the sharp planes of his jaw, keeping half of him hidden.
I still don’t have a full picture of his features, but what I can see is more than enough to make my pulse jump.
His eyes settle on me, pale and unnervingly steady, and my throat tightens.
“You lost?” he asks.
The words are simple, but the tone isn’t. Smooth, low, controlled—like he’s used to people answering him without question. Like he already knows the answer and is only asking to see what I’ll do.
My spine stiffens. My fingers grip my notebook so hard the cardboard cover bends.
“I’m fine,” I manage. My voice betrays the tremor I try to hide.
He tilts his head slightly, studying me the same way he studied the scene last night—precise, unhurried, focused. It feels like he’s peeling back layers without needing to touch me.
“You’ve been standing here a while,” he says. “Most people keep walking.”
I swallow, forcing myself to breathe evenly. “I just… wanted to see what happened.”
“Curiosity.” His gaze drags down to my hands, then back to my eyes. “Dangerous habit.”
The remark lands somewhere between warning and interest. I can’t tell which he intends.
“I live near here,” I lie. “I figured something happened. I was trying to get information.”
He steps a fraction closer. Not enough to be inappropriate, but enough to make the air between us thicken. Heat coils at the base of my spine before I can stop it. Fear, fascination—something tangled between both.
“You don’t look like someone who lives in this neighborhood,” he says calmly.
I bristle without meaning to. “What does someone who lives here look like?”
He doesn’t smile, not fully, but something shifts at the corner of his mouth. “Distracted. Rushed. Guarded. You’re alert. Focused. Too aware of your surroundings.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It depends who’s watching.”
A pulse of heat flicks along my nerves: fear again, but different now. Sharper. Darker.
I force my shoulders to relax. “You seem to know a lot about it.”
“I make it my business to know my surroundings,” he says. His tone softens by a degree. “This area isn’t safe for someone walking alone.”
He doesn’t say for someone like you, but I hear it anyway.
I try to steady my breathing. He’s standing so close the scent of him reaches me: clean, faintly smoky, expensive. His coat brushes the breeze and the fabric shifts just enough to hint at the strength beneath.
“What’s your name?” he asks, voice quieter now.
Every instinct I have screams not to answer. Yet the part of me that’s been replaying his silhouette since last night leans forward, almost involuntary.
“Eden,” I say before I can second-guess it.
His attention sharpens. “Eden.”
He repeats it like he’s testing the weight of it. The syllables roll off his tongue with a strange kind of heat, like he’s already memorizing them.
“Simon,” he adds.
My heartbeat stumbles. Hearing his name feels like something important shifts between us—dangerous in its own right.
“Well,” I say, stepping back slightly, “I should go.”
He doesn’t touch me, but the air feels taut until I move past him. My steps stay measured, controlled, even though everything inside me wants to sprint.
I resist the urge to look over my shoulder, but I can feel him there. His gaze burns into the back of my neck with enough intensity to make my breath stutter.
I shouldn’t look.
Halfway down the block, I glance back anyway.
He stands exactly where I left him. No movement. No softness. Just silent interest carved into a man built for violence. After a moment he turns and walks in the opposite direction without hurry.
I keep going. My hands shake by the time I round the corner. Every rational part of me begs me to stay far away from him.
Something in me—something reckless, something I don’t recognize—keeps replaying the way he looked at me. Calculating. Dangerous. And underneath it all, a strange edge of protectiveness that shouldn’t make sense.
Our encounter wasn’t accidental. I know that as surely as I know my own name.
By the time I reach my apartment building, my nerves are stretched thin. The hallway smells faintly of coffee and old carpet. I’m digging through my bag for my keys when a voice calls from down the hall.
“Eden?”
I turn. A woman rushes forward, short brown hair bouncing, her tote bag knocking against her hip. Suzy. I blink at her in disbelief.
“I didn’t know you were back in the city!” she says, pulling me into a tight hug. Her perfume smells the same as always—vanilla and citrus. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
I hug her back, more grateful for the familiar comfort than I expected. “I’ve been… busy.”
“That’s an understatement.” She pulls back and squints at me. “Are you okay? You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I’m fine,” I lie for the second time today.
She follows me inside when I open my door. The apartment isn’t much, just a small studio meant for students, but Suzy plops onto the couch like she’s been here a hundred times.
“I was talking to Clara last month,” she says, dropping the tote at her feet. “Or, well, I tried to. Her number was disconnected.”
I pause mid-step. “Disconnected, why?”
“That’s the thing. Nobody knows.” She sighs and pulls her legs up. “You know her. She went digging into things she shouldn’t have. That article she wrote about Lukyan Sharov? It blew up for a week and then… nothing. Silence.”
A cold ripple moves through me at the familiar name. Sharov. The kind of name whispered in crime documentaries and off-the-record conversations.
Suzy lowers her voice. “I swear the Sharovs got to her. They’re serious people, Eden. Not the kind you piss off and walk away from.”
I swallow, my pulse uneven again.
Simon Sharov. It’s a massive leap, I know, but there’s a knot in my stomach I can’t seem to get rid of.
“I hope she’s okay,” Suzy murmurs. “Wherever she is.”
I nod, even as my mind drifts back to the alley, to the way Simon looked at me, to the easy control in his voice.
There’s a Simon in the Sharov family, isn’t there? I’ve seen the name in the news. He fits the bill—wealthy, composed, secretive. I know his family have Russian roots from the hint of an accent on his syllables. It’s too much of a coincidence.
Dangerous people.
She has no idea how close I already came to one.