Guns and Roses

Redline

The air in the records room was stale, heavy with the weight of years’ worth of tragedy catalogued into manila folders and coded drawers. But I wasn’t here for Claudia. Not yet.

Tamera Hill was the name in red now.

I laid the folder flat on my desk and began to comb through the forensics. A toxicology report was pending, but the preliminary report said something strange—no clear signs of overdose despite the needle near her body. There were bruises on her neck, but they were faint, not consistent with a violent strangulation. More like… pressure. Like someone had held her there, still, until she gave out.

I tapped my pen against the desk. “Too clean,” I muttered again.

The cinema she’d been found in was located across town—lower Wilhelm, near the docks. Not far from where we’d intercepted a drug drop just a week ago. Not far from where I’d handcuffed the man who once shattered my heart and walked back into my life like a ghost looking for a second chance.

My thoughts spun in circles, dragging me back to him.

Saint Laurent.

He didn’t even flinch when he was arrested. Didn’t beg. Didn’t protest. Just looked at me with those infuriating, heavy-lidded eyes like he was waiting for it. Like he knew this was inevitable.

He knew things.

He always did.

Now I wondered if he knew something about this case too.

No. Focus, Genevieve.

I pulled out Tamera’s call log and studied the last number she’d dialed.

A burner phone. Registered nowhere.

Classic.

I exhaled sharply through my nose and dug deeper. Security cam footage showed her entering the cinema alone. No one followed her in. But someone must’ve been watching. Someone must’ve known when to strike.

It was too perfectly timed.

Too quiet.

Too familiar.

That’s when my partner, Rick, knocked on my office door. “Yo, Genny,” he said, holding up a USB drive. “You asked for footage from the lobby security camera. This is from the hour before she was found. Thought you’d wanna see it yourself.”

I nodded, took it, and plugged it in.

And there he was.

In the corner of the screen, captured in a split-second blur as someone brushed past the candy machine—

Jayce.

Saint Laurent’s boy.

The one we’d chased last week.

The one Saint Laurent had bailed out quietly with a sly smirk and a well-connected lawyer.

I leaned forward, stomach tightening.

This couldn’t be coincidence.

Not again.

I clenched my fists. “What the hell are you into now, Leo?”

If he was involved… if Jayce was involved…

I’d be damned if I let another girl end up like Claudia without finding out the truth.

Even if that truth meant seeing him again.

Even if it meant going face-to-face with the devil I once loved.

⸻

Saint Laurent Leo

Rico Lanes was a lot of things—a snake, a talker, a man who wore too much gold and not enough loyalty—but above all, he was predictable.

Or so I thought.

I was in my penthouse downtown, four floors up from the city’s filth, the glass walls wrapping around me like armor, when Nino, my third-in-command, walked in with a look I didn’t like. His mouth was tight, and his hands fidgeted in his coat like they were hiding bad news.

“Spit it out,” I said, pouring whiskey into a glass.

“It’s about Rico…” he started, hesitant.

I leaned back, glass hovering near my lips.

“He sold the batch, Leo. The…” he looked away, “—the redline mix.”

The room went quiet. All I could hear was the hum of the fridge and the static buzz of fury in my ears.

“The f**k you just say?” I asked, voice low.

Nino nodded. “He pushed it into East Willhound, your territory. Said he thought you wouldn’t mind since it was sitting in reserve anyway.”

That wasn’t the point. That batch, redline, was volatile. It hadn’t been tested. It wasn’t even ready to hit the streets. Too many unknowns. Too high a dose of fentanyl cut with synthetic morphine and black tar heroin. We’d agreed to shelve it. Permanently, if I had my way.

“You know how many people that sh*t could kill?” I snapped.

Nino swallowed. “We already got three bodies. OD’ed within the hour. Word on the street is a girl… Tamera Hill… she threatened to report it.”

My stomach dropped. “What did Rico do?”

“She’s dead.”

Boom.

Just like that. Another girl, another life, snuffed out because someone couldn’t keep their word.

“He killed her?”

“His boys did. Left her in a cinema stall. Tried to make it look like she did it to herself.”

My jaw tightened, and I threw the glass across the room. It shattered against the wall, whiskey bleeding into the floorboards like spilled blood.

This was more than a double-cross. Rico had declared war.

He sold poison on my side, killed an innocent girl, and now the cops were catching scent. All because he couldn’t keep his greed in his pants.

I stood there, fists clenched, as memories of Genevieve’s face flashed in my head. The way she stared me down in that interrogation room. The way her voice cracked when she said my name like it tasted of betrayal.

If this traced back to me… If she thought I had anything to do with this…

I was gonna kill Rico with my own hands.

But first, I had to clean up the mess.

Fast.

Before the streets turned cold and Genevieve Taylor turned that badge on me again.