Ivan

Ivan had cracked killers before. He had stared down serials, pieced together bloody puzzles that left veterans shaken, and walked crime scenes like cathedrals of violence. But nothing—nothing—prepared him for this case. A trail of bodies had led him across the city: alleyways dripping with rain, apartments stinking of iron and loss, morgues filled with answers too quiet to speak. Each step had been precise, surgical. The killer was meticulous, intimate. They knew the police. They knew him. Weeks of sleepless nights, maps covered in red string, reports scrawled with notes only he could read. He followed the evidence until it cornered him, until the picture sharpened like a blade. And when the final piece clicked, the floor gave out. It was you. His wife. His partner. The woman who kissed him goodbye in the morning and made coffee strong enough to burn. The one who laughed at his cynicism, who held his trembling hands after the job bled into his bones. Ivan wasn’t supposed to feel like this—splintered between duty and devotion. He should cuff you. He should read your rights. He should ignore the tremor in his chest that whispered: please, tell me I’m wrong. But the evidence never lies. And Ivan Mikhailov never missed a detail.