CENTRAL PARK - 10:23 AM
The city didn't care about last night.
Joggers traced familiar loops around the reservoir. Dog walkers exchanged pleasantries on tree-lined paths. A saxophone player sat on a park bench, bleeding smooth jazz into the spring air. The world kept spinning while twelve bodies cooled in a meatpacking plant, waiting to be discovered.
It should have bothered him.
It didn't.
Seraph found a bench facing the basketball courts—position offering clear sightlines to approaching paths, back to a tree. Old habits. The Scorpios were gone, erased, but the instincts that killed them remained sharp.
A kid sank a three-pointer. His friends erupted, half celebration, half insult. The ball echoed against cracked asphalt.
Seraph watched, trying to remember what it felt like to care about something that small. That innocent.
The memory wouldn't come.
"Enjoying the show?"
He turned his head—casual, unhurried—toward the voice.
Liz Allan stood there, blonde hair catching morning sunlight, holding two coffee cups. She wore a denim jacket over a simple cream blouse, jeans worn soft from actual use. Her smile was warm but carried something underneath he couldn't quite name.
Tired? Worried?
"You," Seraph said, genuine surprise coloring his tone. "Twice in a month. Starting to think you're following me."
"Or you're following me." She extended one of the cups. "Peace offering for the accusation. Black, two sugars—I'm guessing."
He accepted it, noting the detail. She'd bought two cups before seeing him. "Close. But I'll take it. Thank you."
Liz sat down beside him without asking, comfortable in the shared silence. They watched the basketball game together—kids arguing over a foul, the eternal debate of street ball.
"So," she said after a moment, "mysterious stranger with decent timing. What brings you to Central Park on a Tuesday morning?"
"Couldn't sleep. You?"
"Class doesn't start until one. Needed some air before diving into consumer behavior analysis." She sipped her coffee. "Riveting stuff. Really makes you question your life choices."
That pulled a faint smile from him. "Sounds like you're living the dream."
"Oh, absolutely. The dream where you wake up wondering why you're spending four years learning to convince people to buy things they don't need." She paused. "Sorry. That came out more bitter than intended."
"Honesty's underrated."
A pigeon landed near their feet, pecking at a discarded pretzel. Behind them, a trash truck groaned and hydraulic-hissed, the smell of week-old garbage cutting through spring air for just a moment.
Seraph's hand tightened on his cup.
Wet crack. Impact. Something giving way.
He blinked. The memory dissolved.
Liz was saying something about her professor.
"—assigns a thirty-page reading and acts shocked when nobody finishes it. Like we don't have four other classes."
"Sounds exhausting," Seraph said, refocusing. His voice came out steady.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, glanced at the screen—her expression shifted, just for a microsecond, before smoothing back into careful neutrality. She typed a quick response, fingers moving fast, then silenced the phone entirely.
Seraph caught it all. The tension in her jaw. The way her thumb hovered over the screen before she pocketed it. The slight stiffness in her shoulders that hadn't been there a moment before.
Not his business.
"Everything okay?" he asked, keeping his tone light.
"Yeah, just..." She waved it off, manufactured casual. "Group project drama. Someone's not pulling their weight, shocking nobody."
The lie came smooth. Practiced.
"Well," Seraph said, "if you need someone disappeared, I know a guy."
Liz blinked, then laughed—genuine, surprised. "Dark sense of humor. I like it."
"I've been told I have my moments."
They fell back into easier rhythm. She told him about a disastrous presentation where someone's laptop died mid-PowerPoint. He told her about finding a bookstore in Brooklyn that still smelled like old paper and possibility. Surface-level. Safe.
Comfortable.
A police siren wailed past the park entrance—distant, heading somewhere urgent. The sound bounced off buildings, doppler-shifting through the urban canyon before fading toward Hell's Kitchen.
Liz tensed. Subtle. Instinctive. Her hand curled slightly, fingers pressing against her palm before she forced herself to relax.
Seraph pretended not to notice. But he filed it away with everything else. The phone call. The tension. The fear of sirens.
She's running from something.
"You look different," Liz said, studying him with those sharp eyes that probably missed very little. "Last time you seemed... I don't know. Wound up. Ready to bolt any second."
"And now?"
"Less haunted." She tilted her head. "More... settled, I guess. Like you figured something out."
Seraph almost laughed. Settled. He'd killed twelve men eleven hours ago and felt nothing but satisfaction and the lingering warmth of a successful hunt. But he understood what she meant—he'd found his footing in this world. Made his choice about what he was.
"Got a place," he said. "Found some work. Life's easier when you stop running."
"God, yes." Liz leaned back against the bench, face tilted toward the sun. "I spent so long trying to be someone else. Chasing... I don't know. Validation? Importance? Turns out the answer was just stopping."
Her phone buzzed again.
She ignored it this time. Didn't even check.
"Persistent group project?" Seraph asked.
"Something like that." Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "You ever feel like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop? Like things are fine, maybe even good, but you keep looking over your shoulder anyway?"
The honesty surprised him. He turned it over carefully before responding.
"Every day," he said quietly. "Comes with the territory of starting over. You keep expecting the past to show up and drag you back."
"Exactly." She looked at him, something like relief in her expression. "Everyone else just tells me to relax. 'You're safe now. It's fine.' But they don't get it."
"They weren't there."
"No. They weren't."
The moment stretched between them—not intimate, but real. Two people who understood what it meant to carry weight nobody else could see.
The basketball bounced off the rim. A kid swore, creative and loud. His friend told him to watch his mouth, there were kids around. The irony wasn't lost on anyone.
Liz's warmth was genuine. Her concern was genuine. She sat here in sunlight, talking about normal things, and meant every word.
And Seraph realized, with uncomfortable clarity, that he was performing.
Not lying, exactly. But wearing a mask of normalcy that fit worse the longer he wore it. He could smile, joke, ask the right questions—but underneath, he was thinking about sightlines, exit strategies, the way her pulse would look under thermal imaging.
This version of himself—Seraph the college-aged drifter finding his footing—felt less real than the thing that moved through darkness last night.
Less honest.
He was pretending to be human in sunlight.
Underground, in blue-green bioluminescent glow surrounded by weapons and targets, he didn't have to pretend at all.
The realization should have bothered him.
It didn't.
Liz checked her watch. "I should get going. Actually need to prepare for class instead of just showing up and winging it."
"Radical concept."
She stood, brushing imaginary dust off her jeans. "You around next week? Same time?"
"Maybe." Seraph looked up at her, backlit by morning sun. "If I'm still breathing."
"Always so dramatic." But she smiled. "See you around, Seraph."
She walked away, weaving through the morning crowd. He watched her go—noting the way she checked her phone immediately, the tension returning to her shoulders, the quick glance over her shoulder.
She's in trouble.
He stood, tossing his empty cup in an overflowing trash can. A rat skittered behind it, fat and unbothered by human presence. Welcome to New York.
The thought of Liz lingered as he walked toward the subway entrance, descending into the humid underground where three different musicians competed for the same acoustic space and someone was selling bootleg watches from a folding table.
This city had eight million people. Most of them were background noise—faces in crowds, bodies filling space. But some people carved out space in your head whether you wanted them to or not.
Liz was becoming one of those.
He didn't like it. Didn't trust it.
But he wasn't sure he wanted to stop it either.
***
1247 CLARENCE STREET - 11:47 PM
The house swallowed him whole.
Seraph descended the hidden staircase, sixty feet down into blue-green bioluminescent light. The workshop hummed with familiar quiet—the kind of silence that felt more like home than anything above ground ever could.
He moved to the planning wall.
Photographs. Maps. Intelligence. A week of work distilled into faces and locations.
His finger traced one target.
Lonnie "Tombstone" Lincoln.
The photograph showed dead black eyes, alabaster skin, that faint smile of someone who genuinely enjoyed breaking things. Seraph stared at it, feeling something cold and anticipatory coil in his chest.
Not fear. Never fear.
Hunger.
This was different from the Scorpios. They'd been a test—twelve men to measure his capabilities, confirm what he could do when the leash came off.
Tombstone was a message.
And Seraph was looking forward to delivering it.
He pulled out a burner phone, fingers moving with practiced efficiency:
[CORRUPTED CINDERELLA IMAGE - 40 SECOND AUTO-DELETE]
Let's play.
He sent it to Tombstone's encrypted line.
The one only his inner circle had.
Seraph set the phone down, watching Tombstone's photograph in the blue-green glow. Behind it, partially obscured in shadow: another face. Older. More dangerous.
Wilson Fisk.
The Kingpin.
Tombstone was infrastructure. A stepping stone. Seventeen blocks of Harlem and the resources that came with it.
But Fisk was the real throne in this city's underworld.
And eventually, every throne needed a new king.
Seraph's lips curved—not quite a smile, but close.
Twelve hours.
Tombstone had twelve hours to prepare.
It wouldn't be enough.
Seraph turned toward his equipment, already running through scenarios, contingencies, the precise amount of force required to break a man made of granite.
One predator at a time.
END CHAPTER 11