Prologue: The Blood We Owe
The dream did not come as fire or smoke or screaming. It came as silence which has been haunting him for two long years.
A digital, pixelated, damning silence.
Every night, it was the same. Lysias Solomos did not sleep; he endured. He descended into a hell of his own making, a memory etched into the back of his eyelids with the clarity of a master's engraving. And every night, he awoke not with a start, but with a silent, bone-deep convulsion of the soul, as if his very being were trying to reject the truth it had been forced to digest.
Tonight was no different.
He opened his eyes.
The first thing he was aware of was the sweat. It beaded on his brow, soaked the fine linen of the pillowcase beneath him, and plastered his dark hair to his temples. The second was the cold. An deep, invasive chill that had nothing to do with the climate-controlled air of the hotel room and everything to do with the void that had taken up residence in his chest two years ago. The third was the sound of his own heart, a frantic, panicked drum against his ribs, its rhythm a stark contrast to the absolute stillness with which he lay.
3:17 AM.
The numbers glowed from the clock on the nightstand, a bloody accusation in the darkness. 3:17 AM. In Venice, the city of water and ghosts, all was silent. Beyond the arched windows of the Palazzo Gritti, the Grand Canal was a black, sluggish serpent under a sliver of moon. The only movement was the gentle lap of water against ancient stone and the occasional mournful cry of a gull fooled by the moon into believing it was dawn.
Lysias did not move. He willed his heart to slow, his breathing to deepen. He focused on the facts of his existence, the revenge he yearned for.
It was a video that played on a loop in the private theater of his mind.
It had arrived on the tenth day.
Ten days of a world stripped of color, sound, and meaning. Ten days of existing in a numb, gray haze, surrounded by the hushed voices of relatives whose faces were masks of pity and horror. Ten days since the funeral he had stood through like a statue, watching twin caskets—his mother's, his father's—lowered into the earth. He had not cried. The well of his tears had been cauterized shut by the sheer, unimaginable heat of his loss. He was a shell, empty and echoing.
The package had been left on the doorstep of his aunt's home, where he was staying. A plain, brown cardboard box, no bigger than a book. No postage. No return address. Just his name—Lysias—scrawled in a tight, anonymous hand.
Inside, nestled in unbleached cotton wool, was a cheap, unbranded burner phone. It felt cold and sinister in his hand. When he pressed the power button, the screen glowed to life with a single, stark icon: a video file. Sent from a number that was just a string of zeros.
His thumb, moving with a will that was not quite his own, pressed play.
And his life ended for a second time.
The footage was grainy, shot from a high, awkward angle—a security camera tucked into the ornate crown molding of his family's foyer. The lighting was dim, the colors washed into shades of gray and ghostly green. But the shapes were unmistakable. The familiar sweep of the marble staircase. The large Venetian mirror his mother had adored. The worn patch on the rug where his father would stand, drink in hand, after a long day.
His father. There he was. His back was to the camera, his posture ramrod straight even in what appeared to be confusion. His mother was slightly to the side, one hand extended in a gesture that could have been placation or fear.
And facing them was a figure.
Lysias's breath had hitched in his throat that day, and it hitched now, in the dark Venetian hotel room, a decade later.
The figure turned slightly, profile catching the dim light.
Theron.
The air left Lysias's lungs in a silent rush. No. It was impossible. It was a trick of the light, a cruel, digital illusion.
Theron Adamos. His friend. His brother. The boy who had scraped knees with him in the olive groves outside Athens. The teenager who had smuggled ouzo into their boarding school dormitory. The young man who had thrown an arm around his neck just a week before the fire, grinning under the Mediterranean sun. "We'll always have each other's backs, Lys. No matter what."
There he was. In Lysias's home. On that night.
The silent movie of damnation played on.
His father's posture shifted from confusion to agitation. He pointed an arm, rigid with anger, toward the door. His mother stepped forward, her face a pale, blurry oval of fear, trying to insert herself between her husband and the man they had considered a second son.
And then Theron moved.
It was not a movement of anger. It was not a passionate, heated gesture. It was cold. Clinical. Horribly final. His hand went to the small of his back and came up holding a sleek, dark shape. A gun.
Lysias's own hand clenched on the hotel sheet now, the fine fabric tearing under his grip. A sound, low and animal, built in his throat.
On the phone screen, a bright, silent flash erupted from the muzzle.
His father's body jolted. He crumpled to the beautiful Persian rug, a dark stain already spreading across his chest.
His mother's hands flew to her mouth. Her entire body seemed to fold in on itself from an impact Lysias could not see. She staggered back and collapsed, vanishing from the frame.
Theron stood for a moment, a statue amidst the carnage he had created. Then he too turned and walked out of the frame, leaving only the empty, terrible hall.
The video ended. The screen went black.
The phone had clattered from Lysias's numb fingers onto the terracotta tiles of his aunt's kitchen floor. The sound it made was like the closing of a tomb door.
In that moment, the numb, gray world had not just snapped back into focus; it had sharpened into a single, razor-edged point. The hollow grief was instantly, violently, filled with a new purpose. It was a purpose forged in betrayal and cooled in hatred.
Revenge.
It was the blood he owed.
A debt that had brought him here, to this opulent room in Venice, two long years later. Intel, gathered over years of relentless pursuit, had placed Theron here. A business trip. A stay at a private palazzo on the Grand Canal. The irony was not lost on Lysias. Theron, the murderer, living a life of luxury, while he, the victim, had become a specter haunting the underworld.
He could not stay in the bed. The silence of the room was now oppressive, filled with the phantom sounds of gunfire and the echo of a friendship shattered. He swung his legs out from under the soaked sheets, his bare feet meeting the cold, polished marble of the floor. The shock of it was a relief. It grounded him in the now.
He dressed with a ritualistic precision that bordered on the sacred. Black tactical trousers. A black long-sleeved shirt of breathable, soundless fabric. A shoulder holster that held a disassembled Sig Sauer P226. Lastly, the knives. Twin blades of Damascus steel, each edge honed to a perfection that could split a hair. He slid them into their custom sheaths at the small of his back, the familiar weight a comfort, a promise.
He packed the rest of his life into a single, nondescript duffel bag. More weapons. Passports from three different countries, each with his picture and a different name. Bundles of euros, dollars, and Swiss francs. A first-aid kit that contained more field-sutures than bandages. He was a man who carried his entire world with him, and his world was a toolkit for death.
He did not look back at the room as he left. The elevator descended in a whisper of polished brass and soft light, delivering him into the hushed, marble lobby. The night concierge, dozing behind his desk, did not stir as Lysias passed through the revolving doors and out into the Venetian night.
The air was cold and damp, carrying the complex scent of saltwater, decayed wood, and ancient stone. A low mist clung to the surface of the canal, softening the edges of the world, turning the palazzos across the water into vague, sleeping giants. His breath plumed white in the air. He began to walk, his footsteps echoing with a solitary, purposeful sound on the cobblestones. He had no destination. He simply needed to move, to outpace the ghosts that walked beside him.
His path was aimless, taking him away from the well-lit piazze and into the deeper, older heart of the city. Here, the streets narrowed into mere alleyways—calli—where the buildings leaned so close together they seemed to share secrets. Washing lines were strung high above, between windows shuttered tight against the night. The moonlight did not penetrate here; the darkness was absolute, broken only by the occasional dim, yellow light over a forgotten doorway.
It was in one such alley, a narrow passage that ran alongside a stinking, minor canal, that the silence was broken.
"Per favore! Basta!" Please! Stop!
The voice was young, thin with fear, and unmistakably real. It cut through the memory of the video's silence like a shard of glass.
Lysias froze. His entire body went still, every sense snapping to the present. His hand instinctively went to the grip of a knife under his jacket. His first, his only, thought was to keep walking. This was not his mission. This was sentiment. This was a distraction from the blood he owed. He was not a guardian angel; he was a reaper.
A deeper, coarser voice answered, laced with a sneer. "I stivali. Dammeli." The boots. Give them to me.
A memory, unbidden and unwelcome, flashed behind his eyes. Not of fire or gunfire, but of sun-drenched dust. Himself, at twelve, cornered behind the school by three older boys. They wanted the new watch his father had given him. His heart had been a terrified bird in his chest. Then, a shadow falling over them. Theron, at sixteen, already broad and confident, stepping into the space. "You have three seconds to walk away," he'd said, his voice quiet but carrying a terrifying finality. They had fled. Theron had clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Nobody touches my brother."
The memory was a physical pain. A lie so profound it made bile rise in his throat. Every act of protection, every word of brotherhood, had been a grotesque表演, a mask for the monster beneath.
A sharp, sickening crack echoed down the alley, followed by a child's cry of pain.
The sound severed the last thread of his control.
The rage that consumed him was not hot. It was cold. A glacial, limitless fury—at the thugs for their pathetic brutality, at the world for creating victims, at himself for the part of him that still, stupidly, remembered what it felt like to be saved. And most of all, at Theron, for making a mockery of the very concept of protection.
He dropped his duffel bag soundlessly at the mouth of the alley and moved.
He did not run. He flowed. He was a shadow detaching itself from the greater darkness. The alley was a dead end. Four lanky teenagers in scuffed leather jackets had two young boys, no older than ten, pinned against the damp brick wall. One of the boys was clutching his face, blood welling between his fingers. The other was sobbing, frozen in terror. The largest of the thugs was pulling at the smaller boy's expensive-looking leather boots.
"I said, give them—" the thug began, but he never finished.
Lysias did not speak. He did not warn. He simply arrived.
The leader sensed movement and turned, his sneer already morphing into surprise. Lysias's left hand shot out, catching the wrist that was pulling at the boot. He didn't punch. He simply twisted, using the man's own momentum against him. The crack of the radius and ulna snapping was obscenely loud in the confined space. The scream that followed was cut off as Lysias's right elbow drove upward into his throat, crushing his larynx. The man dropped, gagging and choking, into a puddle of stagnant water.
The second thug fumbled for a chain wrapped around his knuckles. He managed to swing it once. Lysias ducked under the whining links, came up inside his guard, and drove the heel of his palm straight up into the man's nose. Cartilage and bone shattered with a wet crunch. The man stumbled back, blind with pain, and crashed into a stack of rotting wooden crates.
The third charged, a knife flashing in his hand. A wild, untrained lunge. Amateur. Lysias sidestepped, grabbed the outstretched arm, and used the boy's own momentum to slam him face-first into the brick wall. There was a thick, final sound. He slid down, unconscious or dead. Lysias didn't care which.
The fourth, the youngest of them, stood frozen for a second, his eyes wide with primal terror. Then he turned to flee. He didn't make it two steps. Lysias closed the distance in a blink, his foot snapping out in a vicious sweep that took the boy's legs out from under him. He hit the ground hard. Before he could even cry out, Lysias's boot stamped down on his knee. The joint gave way with a nauseating pop of tearing ligament and breaking bone. The boy's scream was high and shrill, then dissolved into whimpers.
It had taken less than ten seconds.
The alley was silent again, save for the ragged, wet gasps of the disabled thugs and the soft lap of water against the canal steps.
Lysias stood amidst the wreckage of his violence, his breathing even. He hadn't even drawn his knives. He felt nothing. No exhilaration, no satisfaction. It was a task completed. A pest problem eliminated.
He turned his gaze to the two boys. They were still pressed against the wall, but now they were staring at him, their eyes wide not with gratitude, but with a terror far deeper than what they'd shown their initial attackers. They understood. A greater predator had just entered the fray.
He was not their savior. He was a nightmare.
The one with the bloody lip was trembling so violently his teeth chattered. The sight of him, so small and utterly broken, carved a fissure through the permafrost in Lysias's soul. He saw himself on the tenth day. He saw the boy Theron had pretended to be.
"Are you hurt?" Lysias asked. His voice was low, rough from disuse. He tried to modulate it, to soften the edges, but it came out as a gravelly command.
The boys flinched in unison. The crying one just shook his head, unable to form words.
Slowly, deliberately, Lysias reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. The boys shrank back further. He withdrew not a weapon, but a crisp, white linen handkerchief, monogrammed with a simple, elegant 'L'. He held it out to the boy with the bloody face.
"For your face," he said, the words foreign and awkward on his tongue.
The boy stared at the offered cloth as if it were a viper. Seconds stretched. Finally, with a shaking hand, he reached out and took it, dabbing gingerly at his split lip.
"Grazie," he whispered, the word barely audible.
Thank you. It hung in the cold, damp air between them. It felt like the heaviest word Lysias had ever heard. It felt like an indictment.
He gave a single, sharp nod. He looked at the four bodies strewn around him. "Go home," he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Now. Don't look back."
They didn't need to be told twice. They scrambled past him, their footsteps a frantic patter that echoed down the calle before fading into the night's silence. He was alone again with the consequences of his rage.
He looked down at his hands. They were steady. There was no blood on them; he had been precise, clinical. But he felt stained nonetheless. The pure, righteous fury that fueled his hunt for Theron felt suddenly diluted, muddied by this messy, pointless intervention. He had come to Venice to kill a monster from his past. And in this damp, stinking alley, he had been forced to confront the monster he had become.
He turned and walked back to his duffel bag, leaving the thugs to their pain. He did not look back. The moon emerged from behind a cloud, casting his long, solitary shadow ahead of him on the cobblestones—a shadow that seemed to stretch all the way back to Athens, to a boy watching a video on a shattered tenth day, and all the way forward to the palazzo where a ghost from his past lay sleeping.
The blood he owed was still owed. The debt was still unpaid.
But as he shouldered his bag and melted back into the shadows, the first, faint crack in his certainty had appeared. The prologue of his vengeance had been written not in a plan, but in the broken bones of strangers, a child's whimper, and a handkerchief left behind on the stones, slowly soaking up the damp and the blood.