Guns and Roses

6 feet under

I tried to work.

God, I tried.

I buried myself in reports, scanned through call logs, analyzed surveillance footage, and scribbled down notes with a fury I hadn’t felt since the academy. Anything to get him out of my head.

But Saint Laurent had a way of lingering.

Even when he wasn’t in the room, he was in the room.

Every knock on the door made my heart jolt, every shadow in the hallway made my skin prickle. It was ridiculous. I was a grown woman, a decorated detective with years of field experience and enough nerve to stare down gang lords and crooked cops without flinching. But this man—this boy from my past—had the nerve to rattle me without lifting a damn finger.

And it wasn’t just the memories. It was how he looked now.

He was no longer that reckless seventeen-year-old boy with blood on his knuckles and secrets in his eyes. No, he’d evolved—morphed into something dangerously magnetic. Something sculpted from the very temptation Eve fell for.

He wore a buzz cut now—clean, sharp, faded on the sides in a way that made his bone structure look almost unreal. A pair of diamond studs flickered in his ears like they had no business being that beautiful on a man so lethal. His goatee was perfectly trimmed, a dark curve hugging his jawline like a frame for his sin. The mustache above his lips was faint but defined—an effortless detail, almost like he had someone on payroll to keep it in shape every other day.

And those lips.

Those damned lips.

The top one was tinged ever so slightly with a pinkish-brown pigment, soft and plush despite the words that had once come out of them—lies, half-truths, promises left to rot.

His skin, rich and earthy, reminded me of loamy soil—refined loamy soil. Polished, warm, powerful. The kind of brown that belonged in oil paintings and mythological stories. He looked like he’d been carved by divine hands, kissed by sin, and released into the world just to remind women like me why temptation was dangerous.

There was a slit in his left brow now. Intentional, of course. Sharp. Stylish. A little cocky. He had a nose piercing, a tiny stud nestled neatly as if daring the world to question his masculinity. And just when you thought you’d seen it all, there it was—an almost invisible earring sitting right where no one should have the audacity to wear one and look that good doing it.

And I hated it.

I hated how perfect he looked.

How wrong it was that the devil came wrapped in everything I once dreamed of.

Lucifer must have looked like him. That was the only explanation. Saint Laurent was the closest I’d ever seen to a living Adonis—flawless and forbidden. He was the kind of man who made you pray and sin at the same time.

And yet, while my mind was busy painting him in myth and shadow, my heart was screaming don’t you dare.

So I did what I did best: shut it all down.

I straightened my back, gritted my teeth, and focused on my computer screen like my life depended on it.

Because maybe it did.

I wasn’t supposed to take another case that day.

Technically, I was still riding off a few days of leave after the Saint Laurent mess. But the second the chief walked into the bullpen, clutching a folder with that look on his face—the one that said this one’s bad—I knew I wasn’t going home anytime soon.

He dropped the file on my desk without a word, and I flipped it open with a sigh.

Victim: Tamera Hill, age 19.

Location: Cinema bathroom, East Wilhelm.

Cause of Death: Undetermined.

Time of Death: Estimated between 8:30 PM and 9:10 PM.

Discovery: Found slumped over in the far stall by a cleaner.

My blood chilled.

The photos inside showed a pretty girl with caramel skin and long, curly hair. Her lipstick was still intact. So was the eyeliner she’d probably taken her sweet time to perfect that evening. There was no sign of a struggle, just a single needle on the ground near her feet and a faint bruise on her neck.

It was too neat.

Way too neat.

I leaned back in my chair and pressed my knuckles into my jaw, staring at the scene.

My mind immediately, involuntarily, went to Claudia Jenkins.

God.

That name still made my chest tighten.

She’d died when I was seventeen. Found in the girl’s locker room at our high school with a gash on her forehead and a broken rib. The story had been wrapped up in whispers, tied to Saint Laurent in a way that never sat right with me. They arrested him a week after the funeral. Said he was a suspect, a flight risk. He never confessed. Never fought back either.

And something about that had always haunted me.

Back then, I was too hurt, too blinded by my own emotions to look beyond the betrayal I thought he dealt me. I never asked questions. I didn’t want to believe he was innocent because I needed a reason to stop loving him.

But now?

Now I wasn’t that girl anymore.

Now I had a badge. Authority. Access.

And a reason to go digging.

Because something about this new case, about Tamera Hill’s body in that cinema stall. It felt eerily familiar. The staged death. The silence around the scene. The slow drip of rumors starting to float around already. Someone in the office had muttered under their breath, “Sounds like that Claudia Jenkins case all over again.”

That did it.

I stood, grabbed my keys, and headed straight for Records.

If Saint Laurent knew something back then…

If he went to prison for a murder he didn’t commit…

If he kept his mouth shut to protect someone or himself. I needed to know why.

Not for him.

But for Claudia. For Tamera. For my own peace.

Because deep down, I remembered how he looked when they hauled him off in cuffs. How cold his face had been. How detached. Like he’d already buried the truth six feet under and dared the world to dig it up.

Well.

I was about to bring a shovel.