Detective Marcus Kade, NYPD, decorated officer with multiple commendations. Crack shot. Brilliant investigator. Community hero who'd taken down three major drug rings in the past five years. Regular volunteer at youth centers in at-risk neighborhoods. Mentor to rookie cops.
There were photos of him at award ceremonies, shaking hands with the police commissioner, the mayor. Smiling that same charming smile. Looking every inch the dedicated public servant.
Sophia clicked on a news article from two years ago: "Hero Detective Saves Kidnapped Girl." There was Marcus, holding a sobbing eight-year-old, wrapped in a blanket, while her grateful parents embraced them both.
He wasn't just a cop. He was a celebrated cop. A role model. The kind of person no one would ever believe was capable of cold-blooded murder.
A knock on her door made Sophia nearly jump out of her skin. She checked the peephole Marcus again, still in his casual clothes, looking friendly and approachable.
She didn't open it.
He knocked again, then held up his phone to the peephole. On the screen, he'd typed: I know you're scared. But I promise I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to talk. Five minutes. Please.
Every instinct screamed danger. But another part of Sophia the part that had survived by reading people, by understanding human behavior recognized something in his expression. Not remorse, exactly. But not malice either.
Curiosity? Interest? Something almost like… respect?
Against every ounce of common sense she possessed, Sophia opened the door. Kept the chain engaged, but opened it.
Marcus smiled, but this time it reached his eyes, softening his sharp features. "Thank you. I know that took guts."
Sophia just stared at him, her heart hammering.
"I want to show you something," Marcus said. He held up his phone, swiped to a photo. "This is Michael Torres. The man you saw me with last night."
The photo showed the victim the shorter man but not alone. He was with a group of men, all holding automatic weapons, standing in front of what looked like pallets of drugs.
"Torres ran a trafficking operation out of Brooklyn," Marcus continued. "Heroin, mostly. Cut with fentanyl. In the past six months, seventeen people have died from his product. Including a fifteen-year-old girl who thought she was just trying weed for the first time."
He swiped to another photo. A young girl in a school photo, bright smile, whole life ahead of her.
"Her name was Emma Rodriguez. Honor student. Volunteer at an animal shelter. Dead at fifteen because Torres wanted to make an extra buck cutting his product with poison."
Sophia's throat tightened. She signed without thinking: That doesn't justify murder.
Marcus's eyebrows rose. "You sign?"
Obviously.
"Do you… can you teach me? Some basics?"
The question was so unexpected, so weirdly normal, that Sophia almost laughed. Almost. Why?
"Because you're my neighbor. Because communication is important. Because" He stopped, something shifting in his expression. "Because I want to understand you."
Sophia should slam the door. Should call Maya, call a lawyer, call anyone who could help her get away from this man. Instead, she found herself signing slowly: You killed him.
Marcus didn't look away. Didn't try to justify or explain again. Just nodded slowly.
Why tell me this? Why not just let me believe he was innocent?
"Because I don't want you to be afraid of me," Marcus said simply. "I want you to understand that what you saw wasn't murder. It was justice. The kind of justice the system fails to deliver."
You're not judge and jury.
"No. But I'm the one standing between people like Torres and people like Emma Rodriguez. Someone has to make the hard choices. Someone has to do what needs to be done."
Sophia studied his face, searching for the cold killer from last night. But all she saw was conviction, certainty, and something that looked almost like pain.
You're asking me to be okay with what you did.
"No. I'm asking you to understand it. There's a difference." Marcus stepped back from the door. "I'm not a monster, Sophia. I'm just a man trying to make an impossible job a little less impossible. And I'm your neighbor. I'd like for us to coexist peacefully."
And if I can't? If I tell people what I saw?
Marcus's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes went distant. "Then you'll ruin a good cop's career over a justified shooting. You'll give lawyers ammunition to free the men Torres worked for. You'll make it harder for people like me to keep people like you safe." He paused. "And you'll make me your enemy. Which I really don't want to be."
The implied threat hung in the air between them, unspoken but crystal clear.
Marcus turned to leave, then stopped. "By the way, you left your curtains open again tonight. Might want to close them. Like I said dangerous neighborhood."
He walked back to his apartment, leaving Sophia standing in her doorway, uncertain whether she'd just been warned, threatened, or something else entirely.
One thing was certain: her life had just become infinitely more complicated.
And the man responsible was sleeping twenty feet away, separated only by a thin wall and some aging plaster.
Sophia closed and locked her door, checked every window, closed every curtain. Then she sat in the darkness of her living room, trying to decide if she'd just met a vigilante hero or a psychopath.
The terrifying thing was, she genuinely couldn't tell.
Over the next week, Sophia discovered that living next door to Marcus Kade was like living next to a storm you were always aware of its presence, always braced for impact, even during the calm.
True to his word, he'd started learning sign language. She'd see him in the hallway practicing finger spelling, or catch glimpses through her peephole of him watching ASL tutorials on his phone. The effort should have been creepy and part of her insisted it was but another part found it… disarming.
Which was exactly what made him so dangerous.
Maya had finally stopped pushing Sophia to call the police after Sophia showed her the news articles, the photos, the evidence of Marcus's sterling reputation. "Who's going to believe us over him?" Sophia had signed. "And what proof do I even have? My word against a decorated detective's?"
Still, Maya insisted on staying over several nights that first week, sleeping on Sophia's couch like a protective guard dog. But eventually, life demanded she return to her own apartment, her own job, her own responsibilities.
Which left Sophia alone. Next door to Marcus.