Blue walked into the NSPD precinct as if she belonged there.
The building was still alive with movement. Officers worked case boards, some sat behind standby desks fielding questions, and others swapped shifts with the dull exhaustion of people who had seen too much and slept too little. Phones rang. Papers shuffled. Somewhere, a printer groaned like it hated its own existence.
Blue took a donut.
No one stopped her. No one noticed her. Everyone was too busy drowning in their own tasks to pay attention to the woman walking through the station like a shadow in daylight.
She found an unguarded office, opened the door, stepped inside, and locked it behind her.
The man seated there looked to be in his early thirties. He had a low cut, a mole beside his lower lip, and the kind of polished uniform that screamed rank before he even opened his mouth. Medals gleamed against his chest. Authority sat on him naturally.
He looked up from the file in his hands and froze.
Blue dropped into the chair opposite him, completely unbothered. She crossed her legs and rested them on his desk as if she were the one who paid rent there. Then she took another bite of the donut.
"Mmm," she said, inspecting it with genuine admiration. "I didn't know police donuts were this delicious."
The man's expression hardened. He reached for the telephone, quick and sharp, but Blue spoke before his fingers could do much.
"Elena did well on her test today."
His hand stopped.
Blue kept chewing as if she had not just driven a blade straight through his calm. Then, with lazy precision, she pulled out her gold gun and placed it gently on the desk between them.
Silence settled.
"Okay," the man said at last, voice flat and controlled. "I'll bite. What do you want?"
Blue swallowed and leaned back slightly, studying him with those tense, unreadable eyes.
"So you're the captain of the NSPD. I'm sorry, I'd like to be introduced."
She took her legs off the desk and rested her chin over her folded hands, suddenly looking more curious than dangerous. It was a lie, of course. Blue wore innocence the way other people wore perfume—lightly, strategically, and only when it served her.
"I don't know you," the man said.
Under the desk, he pressed a hidden button.
Blue noticed. Of course she noticed.
"I'm Blue," she said. "And that's not the introduction I was asking for, but never mind. My boyfriend is waiting for me outside. I need you to deliver a message to your boss."
"My boss?" he asked. "The commissioner?"
Blue rose from her chair and leaned across the desk.
Instantly, he pulled his gun on her.
"Threatening my niece is one thing," he said, voice sharpening. "And I chose to hear you out. Don't push your luck."
Blue barely glanced at the weapon. Her eyes dropped to the medals on his chest instead, as though the gun was a toy from a cereal box.
"Ben Dev—agh, your surname is difficult. Cape Uni was years ago." She tilted her head. "B... Captain Ben. Tell your boss to back off. Got it?"
She straightened and turned for the door.
Then she paused, looked over her shoulder, and smiled without warmth.
"Oh, and next time you try to record me, at least check the frequency rate."
She stepped out and shut the door behind her.
Only then did the officers outside realize a stranger had somehow been in the captain's office.
Ben shot to his feet and rushed after her, but by the time he reached the corridor, Blue had already slipped into the elevator. The doors closed on the sight of her smirk.
"Who was that, Captain? Are you okay? " one officer asked.
Ben was already moving.
"Get me the surveillance," he snapped. "Serial killers like to show off, and I think she just made a mistake coming here." His eyes hardened. "Hurry up."
Outside, Blue slid into the car, shut the door, and pulled away from the precinct as smoothly as if she had just left a café.
Beside her, Xavier watched her with something between disbelief and admiration.
"You really dared them."
Blue kept her eyes on the road. "For a drug lord, you're actually dumb."
Back inside the precinct, surveillance footage played across a screen. Officers gathered around as the grainy image showed Blue walking into NSPD with insulting ease.
"Who is she?" another officer asked.
"She said she was Blue," Ben replied, eyes fixed on the screen. Then his brow furrowed. "I didn't realize it earlier... but she's oddly familiar."
A woman in a white coat bearing the NSPD logo pushed open the precinct door.
"Captain, you need to see this," she said before turning back toward her operating room.
Ben's attention shifted immediately.
"That must be the ME results on the vigilante victims." He pointed without looking away from the screen. "Veikko, send me a copy of that surveillance. The rest of you, back to work. We need to catch this son of a bitch."
The room broke apart at once.
But Ben stayed where he was for a second longer, staring at Blue's face on the monitor as though a memory was clawing its way out of a locked room in his head.
Meanwhile, Saima finished with her last customer, though her mouth was still running like a generator with no off switch.
Her boyfriend had just gifted another woman a platinum necklace, and Saima had been chewing on the insult ever since.
"She has to bring it back. That bitch thinks just because she's beautiful, she can get anything she wants, just waltzing in here like she owns the whole world—"
She stopped mid-rant when she noticed the man standing at the salon door.
"Holy Jesus. Alexander...?"
She was halfway into her jacket, getting ready to close shop. She zipped it up quickly and tried to recover.
"I'm sorry, I don't do guys' hair."
Alexander gave a faint, distracted shake of his head.
"It's okay. I'm looking for Victoria. She rents an eatery here?"
At the mention of Vicky, Saima's smile faltered for just a second.
"I'm sorry," Alexander continued. "She has the best food, and I wanted to invest. Perhaps you can—"
"No," Saima cut in too fast. Then she softened her voice. "She... um... she's away."
Alexander looked at her properly now.
"She's away?"
Confusion flickered over his face. That made no sense. The man he had placed to quietly watch Vicky had informed him she closed the shop barely an hour ago.
Saima let her shoulders sag dramatically, wearing the expression of a tired friend carrying someone else's burden.
"I'm sorry," she said, dabbing at fake tears. "I can't keep lying for her."
Alexander said nothing.
That was all the invitation she needed.
"Her business isn't all that cool and yummy like people think," Saima went on. "Today she got busted because her chicken was overfrozen and had no taste. She uses rusty coolers and expired ingredients. She sells uncooked beef and forces people—"
The lies kept spilling, one after another, slick and poisonous.
And Alexander, already caught off guard, listened.
Sometimes sabotage did not need a knife. Sometimes all it needed was a bitter woman with timing.
Blue parked in the casino's private parking area and killed the engine.
Then she locked all the doors.
Xavier frowned. "Come on."
Blue turned slightly toward him. "What do you want to know?"
He held her gaze. "Why aren't you killing me?"
"I like you. Next?"
She said it so casually it landed harder than a slap.
For a second, Xavier just stared at her. That's all he needed.
"That's all," he muttered.
Then, in one swift movement, he grabbed her and pulled her closer.
His mouth crashed against hers.
The kiss was sudden, hot, and reckless. He pushed the passenger seat back until it lay almost flat, his body over hers, his tongue demanding, his need raw enough for Blue to feel it in every breath he stole.
She tapped his chest when the kiss stretched too long.
He didn't stop.
So Blue bit his tongue.
Hard.
Xavier jerked back with a muffled curse, touching his mouth. "Auch! Did you bite me?"
He was still half over her, squatting awkwardly as she lay beneath him, and the sight of him looking offended and wounded at the same time made Blue laugh.
The sound caught him off guard.
For a moment, he forgot the blood, forgot the sting, forgot himself.
Playfully, he dragged his tongue across her cheek and started tickling her. Blue twisted beneath him, laughing harder now, and Xavier found himself staring.
Because in that moment she did not look like a killer.
She looked like a girl.
A girl who had probably been broken by men like him. Men from gangs like his. A girl whose laughter sounded too innocent for hands that had spilled blood just hours earlier.
Then Blue moved.
In a sharp blur, she shoved him off balance and climbed on top of him.
Xavier blinked up at her, breathless.
"What?"
Blue's face hovered over his, marked by traces of his blood, her eyes bright and dangerous.
"Join me."
He stared.
"Let's kill the guilty. The criminals." Her voice dropped lower. "You weren't always a drug lord."
That struck somewhere deeper than he liked.
Because she was right.
He had not always been this. But he had been raised in it, shaped by it, fed by it. Criminality was not just his world; it was the language he had learned before he understood what choice even meant.
"Forget about Theo," Blue said. "Forget your adopted family for one sec—"
Xavier's expression changed instantly.
"You know I'm adopted?"
Blue paused.
Then she said it with the same terrible calm she used for everything that could ruin a life.
"Um... you were stolen."
The words hit him like an explosion at point-blank range.
Everything in him went still.
Not adopted.
Stolen.
The car seemed to shrink around him. The air turned heavy. Even Blue's face blurred for a second as the meaning slammed into him again.
This was new.
He had not known that.
And somewhere deep inside, beneath the crime, the anger, the arrogance, and the hunger, something old and buried began to crack.