---
The rain had a rhythm that night - a cruel lullaby humming through the city's veins.
Rachel sat in silence on her apartment floor, back pressed against the cool wall, a half-eaten slice of pizza still resting on the coffee table. Her badge, blood-specked from the last crime scene, glinted in the dim light. Her best friend, Leah, had been texting nonstop - checking in, teasing her about her long work hours, and promising girl-time the next day. Pregnant. Glowing. Eight months along. Radiant.
Rachel had promised to show up the next morning. She didn't.
Because Leah never saw sunrise.
---
They found her in her home.
It was supposed to be safe.
Her throat - slit.
Her body - cradled on the nursery floor, one hand still holding the tiny baby onesie she had wanted Rachel to see.
The worst part?
The baby - ripped from her womb, as if the killer wanted to desecrate not just the body, but the future she carried inside it.
No signs of forced entry.
No security footage.
No mercy.
Just blood.
Everywhere.
And a single message, written on the mirror in crimson smears:
"She got too close. You're next, Detective."
Rachel's scream didn't come until hours later, after she'd scrubbed the blood off her hands again and again - after she'd gone numb staring at the blood-stained ultrasound photo someone had pinned to the fridge... beside a photo of the two of them at the beach, laughing, carefree.
---
Rachel lost a part of her soul that night.
Not just because Leah was gone - but because she knew who did it.
Adrian.
The signature was unmistakable.
But what gutted her deeper...
was his precision.
His restraint.
His message.
This wasn't a crime of rage.
It was surgical. Controlled. Personal.
And that meant Adrian knew everything.
Where Leah lived.
When Rachel would be off-duty.
How far she'd gotten in her investigation.
And most horrifying of all?
It meant someone was watching her - closely.
---
The twin.
Nathan.
He stood in the morgue, unmoving, fists clenched, eyes burning with grief and a guilt he couldn't voice.
Rachel turned to him, her mascara bleeding down her cheeks. "You said you could stop him," she whispered. "You said you would help me-"
Nathan looked away. He couldn't face her.
Because deep down, a sliver of him - the part still tethered to Adrian - had felt it coming.
And he hadn't stopped it.
"You were supposed to protect her," Rachel cried. "You were supposed to protect us."
Silence.
Only the steady hum of the morgue's freezer.
And then Nathan finally spoke. His voice cracked like a bone:
"This is only the beginning."
---
Rachel buried Leah three days later - along with the baby that never got to breathe.
But something inside Rachel changed at that funeral. Her grief hardened into purpose.
The tears dried.
The detective disappeared.
What rose in her place was a hunter.
---
But Adrian was already watching from afar - cloaked in the shadows behind the crowd. Smiling.
Because this pain?
It was his masterpiece.
And the next move?
Was already in play.
---