❝𝘪 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘺, 𝘪 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨❞
or in which a lawyer and a private investigator try to take down the evils of hell's kitchen, all while battling their own demons.
book one in the MARTYRS SERIES
[rivals to friends...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
i. "how about you leave me the fuck alone?"
THERE WERE SOME DAYS WHEN, sick and tired of the godforsaken city's shit, Silvia Flores had to laugh at how aptly named Hell's Kitchen was. Unbeknownst to many, the city possessed a shadow; an exact replica lurking underneath sprawling concrete, festering in alleyways and derelict buildings.
She had stopped believing in the monsters under the bed too early – the product of a childhood swiftly taken with the pull of a trigger – and had instead learned the truth.
Goodness was forced to stay in the shadows, while monsters, true monsters made their home in the light.
Corruption was the city's mistress, using its inhabitants before discarding them like broken dolls. She sat at the tables of politicians and businessmen alike, whispering in their ears, honeyed words dripping with poison. Money was her religion and her lifeblood, singing in her veins as the people of New York suffered.
Silvia had seen it firsthand; the misery that festered beneath the surface, taking and taking until a bloodless husk remained. No matter the case; kidnappings and murders, disappearances and infidelities, she was familiar with each and every one.
Time spent as a private investigator had not been kind, apparent in every jagged piece of her. Dull brown eyes wreathed in violet, bruise-like shadows; bones hollowed-out by a poisonous mixture of hopelessness and permanent exhaustion.
Exposure to the city's sins would do that to you, without a doubt, and Silvia felt them all. She would find herself thrown back to those moments, lying awake at night as they played like a torturous reel in her mind's eye.
The woman found slit open from slender neck to navel, pupils dialated yet unseeing. The elderly gentleman who had died in a home invasion, found rotting and alone in his empty apartment, fingertips lost to the appetites of rats. The young girl snatched from the street on her way to school, used and discarded in an alleyway with a constellation of purple bruises winding around her cold neck.
Blood was spilled, lives were lost; sorrow's sweet symphony played for all to hear.
Violent crimes were harrowing, each one leaving a dark imprint against the crimson corridors of her heart, but the shattered remains left behind were so much worse. Families and friends of victims often crossed Silvia's threshold, seeking retribution for the ones they had lost. While the dead had left this mortal coil, souls shedding the heavy burden of flesh to be transformed into something new, their loved ones had remained, drowning in grief and searching for an answer.
It was her vocation and her penance, to help them in vengeance, in closure.
After all, if God had damned her with these malevolent gifts, she might as well use them for good.
