The scent of formaldehyde hit Damien like a wall the moment he stepped inside. The air was cold—too cold. Not just from the refrigeration units, but from something else. Something unnatural.
The morgue was silent except for the faint hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. Shadows stretched long against the steel walls, flickering with each step Damien took.
He had been here countless times before. Examining bodies, finding evidence where others saw only corpses. But this time was different.
This time, the case was personal.
Ronan followed close behind, his expression unreadable. His usual confidence was laced with unease. “What exactly are we looking for?”
Damien didn’t answer. He didn’t know.
But his gut told him—whatever it was, it would change everything.
The coroner, Dr. Lyle Ashford, met them in the dimly lit hallway. His face was tense, his usual calm demeanor shaken. His thick-rimmed glasses slid down his nose as he wiped sweat from his forehead.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered, rubbing his temples. “This body shouldn’t be here.”
Damien narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”
Ashford hesitated. Then, he motioned for them to follow.
They entered a room lined with metal storage units. The walls hummed with the steady drone of refrigeration.
Ashford stopped in front of one unit and pulled open the drawer.
A body lay inside, covered in a white sheet. The corners of the fabric were still damp, as if condensation had settled over them.
Slowly, he pulled the sheet down.
Damien’s breath hitched.
The victim’s throat was slit with surgical precision. A deep incision ran across the chest, exposing the ribs. The skin had been sliced so cleanly it almost seemed delicate, like an artist’s brushstroke on canvas.
And then—the marking.
Carved just above the heart, the same insignia Damien had seen before.
A wave of nausea rolled through him. This wasn’t just another victim.
This was a message.
His hands clenched into fists. “Who is he?”
Ashford exhaled. “That’s the thing.”
He handed Damien a file.
Damien flipped it open—and the world tilted.
The name on the report read:
Elias Hawthorne.
Damien felt his heartbeat hammering in his ears. He stared at the file, his mind scrambling to make sense of what he was seeing.
His father’s alias.
“No,” Ronan muttered, peering over Damien’s shoulder. “That’s not possible.”
And yet, the evidence was right in front of them.
A corpse, with his father’s name.
A corpse, murdered with the same precision as Evelyn Carter.
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A corpse, marked with the very symbol that had haunted Damien’s past.
Damien’s mouth went dry. His father had died years ago.
Hadn’t he?
A cold sweat formed on the back of Damien’s neck.
This had to be a trick.
It had to be.
Before he could speak, his phone buzzed.
A restricted number.
Damien hesitated, his fingers tightening around the device. His pulse thundered in his ears as he swiped to answer.
“…Who is this?”
The line crackled with static.
Then—a voice.
Distorted, mechanical. A low, breathy whisper that crawled under Damien’s skin.
“You’re too late, Damien.”
Damien’s grip tightened on the phone. Something in that voice made the hair on his arms stand on end.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
His jaw clenched. “Who are you?”
A long pause. Then, a chuckle.
Low. Amused. Cold.
“You already know.”
The line went dead.
And in that moment, Damien realized—
Whoever was behind this wasn’t just watching.
They were pulling the strings.
And he had just walked right into their trap.
The silence in the morgue stretched on, thick and suffocating.
Damien lowered the phone from his ear, his mind racing.
The voice—the distorted, ghost-like whisper—it was familiar.
Not in a way that he could immediately place, but in a way that made his stomach twist. A primal instinct told him that this was something far deeper than a taunt. This was personal.
“Damien,” Ronan’s voice snapped him back. His partner was staring at him, eyes sharp with concern. “What the hell just happened?”
Damien swallowed, shoving his phone into his coat pocket. His fingers felt cold, numb.
“They knew I was here,” he muttered.
Ronan’s jaw tensed. “Who?”
Damien didn’t answer. His mind was already piecing together the puzzle—too many fragments, too many missing parts.
His father’s name on a murder victim.
The symbol carved into the chest.
The voice on the other end of the call.
A perfect storm of past and present colliding.
And none of it made sense.
Ashford cleared his throat. He looked uneasy, glancing between them. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to see this.”
He turned back to the body and pulled back the sheet completely.
Damien’s stomach lurched.
There, at the victim’s wrist, was a scar. A jagged, deep scar—the exact same place where his father had one.
A scar Damien remembered.
It was an old injury, from a time when Elias Hawthorne was still alive, still untouchable. Still a monster.
No. Damien’s mind rebelled against the thought. This can’t be him.
His father had died in a fire. The house—their house—had burned down when Damien was sixteen. There had been a body.
Hadn’t there?
His breathing turned shallow. The edges of his vision blurred.
A cold whisper slithered through his thoughts.
What if he never died?
Ashford’s voice pulled him out of his daze.
“This came with the body,” he said, holding up a sealed envelope. The paper was yellowed, the corners slightly curled.
No return address. No name.
Just one word written on the front.
Damien.
Ronan cursed under his breath. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
Damien took the letter, his fingers tightening around the fragile paper.
It felt like something from a nightmare—a message from the dead.
Slowly, he tore it open. A single sheet of paper slipped out.
The handwriting was elegant, precise.
A style Damien hadn’t seen in years.
And the words—
You missed something that night.
You should have checked the ashes.
Come home, Damien.
Come home.
His blood ran cold.
“Damien?” Ronan stepped closer.
But Damien didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
Because at that moment, he realized—the fire that was supposed to have killed his father…
May have been the beginning of something far worse.
Damien forced himself to breathe. Think. Focus.
He turned to Ashford. “Where’s the full autopsy report?”
Ashford hesitated.
“That’s the thing,” he admitted. “There isn’t one.”
Damien frowned. “What do you mean?”
Ashford sighed. “The body was found in an abandoned building last night. No ID, no records, nothing. And then, right before you got here, I got a call.”
Damien’s pulse quickened. “What kind of call?”
Ashford lowered his voice. “From someone high up. They told me to keep it off the books. No report, no records—nothing.”
Ronan swore under his breath. “Jesus. Someone’s trying to bury this.”
Damien’s fingers curled into a fist. Someone wanted this body to disappear.
Someone who knew Damien would find it first.
He turned back to the corpse, his mind racing. The scar. The handwriting. The message.
Come home, Damien.
A trap.
But one he had to walk into.
They left the morgue in tense silence. The city outside was just beginning to stir—horns blaring, people rushing to work. But for Damien, it felt like stepping into another world.
A world where his past wasn’t buried.
Where his father’s ghost still whispered in the shadows.
He and Ronan crossed the parking lot when a black car pulled up beside them.
A man stepped out.
Dressed in a crisp suit, sunglasses concealing his eyes.
But Damien knew him instantly.
Special Agent Marcus Keaton. FBI.
The last time they’d met, Damien had been eighteen. And Keaton had been the one who pulled him out of the burning house.
The one who told him his father was dead.
“Detective Hawthorne,” Keaton said, his voice calm but firm. “We need to talk.”
Damien felt the weight of the letter in his pocket.
His past wasn’t just knocking at the door.
It had just kicked it open.
