After they dismembered my body, my killer didn’t bother hiding what he did.
He dumped what was left of me into the drainage tunnels beneath the city’s enforcement district—an underground maze controlled by the mafia families, where chemical runoff, blood, and bodies disappeared into darkness.
It took the retrieval unit a full day to find me.
Not police.
Not government.
The Family’s cleanup division.
Men trained to erase scenes of massacres without leaving a trace. Even they struggled to move through the toxic sludge and industrial waste choking the tunnels.
By the time they brought me up, I was no longer whole.
My body was placed on a steel autopsy table inside the Family’s private medical facility. Three veteran field doctors worked for days under harsh white lights, reconstructing what was left of me.
My face was barely recognizable. My bones were broken. Parts of me were missing, swept away in the current.
But the real horror was my abdomen.
It had been cut open.
Not like a doctor would do it.
Like someone was trying to take something out… and hide it at the same time.
Then stitched shut again.
When they reopened it, a fine black powder spilled onto the metal tray.
The chem analyst went silent the moment he saw it.
Then stepped back.
Forbidden compound.
Military-grade interrogation toxin—used by illegal labs tied to rival families during internal wars. Banned even in the underworld because it destroys the nervous system before death.
That’s when the Shadow Division was called.
Not enforcers.
Not street soldiers.
The Family’s execution investigators.
And leading them was Kaelen Ravenscar.
Youngest commander in the organization. The boss’s most trusted weapon. The man sent when a situation needed absolute silence.
When he entered the room, no one spoke.
Kaelen looked at the body.
At me.
No reaction. No recognition. Just cold assessment, like every other case he had cleaned up for the Family.
The head doctor stepped forward.
“Female. Mid-twenties. Severe blunt trauma. Restraint marks on wrists and ankles. Extensive abuse before death.”
A pause.
“She was pregnant.”
The room tightened instantly.
Kaelen didn’t move.
The doctor continued.
“The abdomen was opened while she was still alive. The fetus was removed. This substance was inserted in its place.”
Silence snapped through the room.
“She survived afterward,” the doctor added quietly. “Approximately three days.”
Then—
“She was beheaded while conscious.”
The room erupted—anger, curses, violence held back by sheer discipline.
“This is a message,” one enforcer growled. “Someone is challenging the Family.”
“Only a rival family would do something like this.”
Kaelen finally spoke.
Low.
Controlled.
Final.
“This isn’t a rival warning.”
A beat.
Then—
“This is internal.”
The entire room froze.
Because inside the mafia…
External enemies were war.
But internal betrayal—
Meant execution.
